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Of Rules and Speakers

Toward a Theory of Institutional Change for the U.S. House of Representatives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Richard Bensel
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Extract

The study of the institutional development of the U.S. House of Representatives, long a mainstay of traditional scholarship, has recently undergone a revival with the rise of rational choice approaches of interpretation. In earlier years, most research was highly formal and descriptive; the emphasis was on legislative offices and parliamentary rules. While scholars noted changes in the formal structure of the House of Representatives, their descriptions of these changes consisted mostly of anecdotal accounts in which theoretical explanations played little part. More recently, many scholars have defined institutions primarily or even solely in terms of procedural rules and, from that perspective, have focused on organizational form as an important factor in the empowerment of legislative coalitions and the expression of member preferences. However, because rules are frequently viewed as a rigid structural setting for legislative behavior, institutional change has often been downplayed as outside the scope of most research.

Type
Roundtable: The U.S. Congress in the Twentieth Century
Information
Social Science History , Volume 24 , Issue 2 , summer 2000 , pp. 349 - 366
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 2000 

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