Performance of an Institutionalized Legislature

In: Political analysis: PA ; the official journal of the Society for Political Methodology and the Political Methodology Section of the American Political Science Association, Band 3, S. 1-25

Abstract

Within the context of a game-theoretic model with incomplete information, three dimensions of performance are defined and used to evaluate and analyze an institutionalized legislature. The performance of an institutionalized legislature is also compared to that of a noninstitutionalized legislature, one without any internal differentiation and in which members are equally uninformed about key parameters of the choice environment. Among the results are that increasing institutionalization (lower member turnover and the application of universal decision criteria) can diminish legislative performance. Additionally, a noninstitutionalized legislature always dominates the institutionalized legislature on at least one performance dimension. Institutionalization is neither necessary nor sufficient for superior legislative performance.