The choice of bicameralism: Introduction
Chapter 6 is devoted to paper and Kenneth A. Abhinay Muthoo Shepsle analyzing the interactions between the chambers parliamentary elections as often performed over time. Is defined as a bicameral political system that seeks to distinguish in a parliamentary two chambers, room "high" most often elected by indirect suffrage and a room "low", meeting traditionally elected by direct suffrage. The aim is clearly to moderate the action against the executive, the direct representatives of the people submit their decisions to the members of the Upper House, which generally represent different regions, provinces or states within a nation. Bicameralism is particularly justified in the context of a federal state, with a chamber representative of the people directly elected assembly and a representative of the various states. For example, Congress is an illustration of what constitutes political bicameralism, since it brings together two assemblies: the Senate or "upper room" consisting of two representatives from each state and the House of Representatives or "lower house" consisting of 435 representatives the U.S. population. The Senate elections are staggered in time (partial renewal every two years) while the House of Representatives re-elected simultaneously. The goal of bicameralism here is relatively clear, since the Upper House can rebalance the powers in order not to disadvantage the "small states" in the development of U.S. laws.
The interest of this analysis, both empirical and theoretical paper is to highlight the incentive effects of institutions, in a dynamic time, emphasizing balance dependent part in terms of parliamentary elections. It is obvious that the institutional structure of a State has undeniable effects on the behavior of political agents, through different degrees incentives, which are subject to problems of collective choice (see Theory of Mancur Olson). For example, a presidential or parliamentary, unicameral or bicameral, under a proportional electoral system and determines the level and composition of public spending, debt, and especially growth rates and levels of development of nations . It is an empirical point of view, an analysis that stands, although other factors obviously come into account in the analysis of economic performance is what makes all the variety of the work of 'Helpman.
The theoretical analysis and Shepsle Muthoo is an analysis of micro institutional differences, around a cake sharing between the two parliamentary chambers, taking into account the different modalities of elections (simultaneous or staggered in both bedrooms, one simultaneous, staged in the other). These differences are obviously justified by the stylized facts (U.S. Congress, Swiss Confederation, Senate and National Assembly in France).
Model theoretical assumptions
The first step is the definition of the basic model "Baseline" to analyze the effects of changing legal frameworks and economic environment. The authors therefore assume that initially two rooms are the legislature and the other, they hypothesize that for each period, the economy shows a surplus fixed and exogenous, known as the cake will be allocated among the various entities represented on the assemblies. For simplicity, the authors introduce no tax policy and taxation, nor any arbitration between private and public allocation of the cake.
The temporal structure of the model is composed of periods t = 0, 1,2,3 ... during which each chamber is composed of two legislators, each having been elected by an electoral body separate or "electoral district".
The authors pose the following hypothesis: it defines the probability that a legislator or member П is reelected, according to a principle of retrospective voting, which implies that this probability depends positively П or at least not negatively share of the pie received by the electoral district in the previous period. This probability of reelection is introduced in the model is designed by the authors in its reduced form, exogenously. The voting rules and voter behavior are not modeled in the model. Another fundamental assumption of this model is the informational imperfection in a temporal sequence. Each voter has a partial and incomplete information on what happened during past periods by former legislators. In other words, voters have limited memory on allowances previously distributed the cake and not re-elect their representatives in accordance with the allocations received recently.
Ѳ The authors pose the likelihood that a legislator is recognized and influential enough so that it can provide a breakdown of the cake which has the whole House. If his proposal is accepted, then the electoral district receives the appropriate share of the cake, if the offer is refused by the assembly in question, then any gain is lost. It also requires that if the Legislature is indifferent between acceptance or rejection of a proposed distribution, so he accepts; It is quite clear that the legislature chooses to propose an allocation that maximizes the pie allocated to its own districts.
At time t =- 1, that is to say when the development of constitutional system, it is assumed that all the conditions for elections, training meetings and decision making are commonly decided by the Founding Fathers with a view to optimizing their interests joints.
Each parliamentary chamber is in charge of the distribution of half the cake, and will Muthoo and Shepsle analyze sequentially the various electoral arrangements simultaneous or staggered. For each institutional review, the political balance achieved is a Markov equilibrium, namely that once the institutional choices made (eg choice of bicameralism) in period -1, the political strategies driven by a logic of historical independence decisions. The balance mechanism can not account for any intertemporal choice or cooperative.
What are the main results obtained?
By imposing a constraint in which the starting monocameral is chosen by the founders, the authors show that it is sometimes preferable to establish procedures for elections staggered rather than simultaneous. Indeed, from the point where elections are concurrent, ie the assembly is totally unique challenge to each election date, the probability that the elections completely renew the membership of the assembly is strongly positive, which implies little political experience in the room Parliamentary and thus a relative inefficiency of the decisions taken. As part of a phased and partial replacement, this type of scenario is impossible. In addition, the existence of a single chamber increases the risk that the legislature denied a proposal for the distribution of the cake and the electoral district does finally perceive no contribution. This last element is at the heart of the analysis the degree of risk aversion of agents.
Recall now that the basic model is a bicameral structure, which divides the cake in half. Three cases must be examined in turn: both chambers are simultaneously renewed, or both are partially re-elected, or one of two known staggered elections and not the other.
- In the first case, the model shows that a bicameral legislature with a single electoral event is a Pareto-superior if there is a single room. Bicameralism will be chosen ex ante, tending to confirm the choice of the base case, also reflecting the risk aversion of agents. Indeed, this scenario can provide a greater probability of receiving a share.
- Just as when both meetings have staggered election terms, the model shows superiority as the Pareto criterion in relation to unicameral, always on the basis of a risk aversion of agents, who prefer to maximize the likelihood of receiving a share of the cake, as form of allocation, rather than risk getting nothing.
- The third case of asymmetry of electoral conditions of the two chambers is not directly measurable through the model specification. Indeed, the optimality of either procedure depends on the value of certain parameters such that the probability of reelection of legislators (which we recall depends allocations received in previous period by each entity election) but also the likelihood of legislators to be sufficiently influential to offer themselves a division of the pie, a parameter that depends on him even elections (plus the approaching elections for some lawmakers, their means of more actions will be important).
Nevertheless, the authors argue that when the parameters are such that the power to impose an agenda for legislators is the same in the context of elections partial or total, then, agents will be indifferent to the three possible structures of bicameralism.
Conclusions
In choosing to highlight this study, Helpman seeks to emphasize the importance of institutional organization, but also incentives for policy makers. If the analysis focuses on the ex-ante choice of institutional structure, that does not link these findings to the main stylized facts that highlight the differences in economic performance related to the functioning of institutions. The cons-powers are necessary and more economic agents are risk averse, the greater the presence of two constituent rooms will be required. Muthoo and Shepsle have thus shown that under certain conditions; bicameralism is a more appropriate choice as the unicameral. Indeed, the balance achieved through a program of maximizing share of the pie is Pareto superior to equilibria reached under which a single parliamentary chamber is established. It is however important to remember that this model depends heavily on assumptions advanced by the authors and especially the value of the main parameters of the theoretical model. This recall that there is no single institutional structure which is optimal without it depends on the size and characteristics of each nation .
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