| Srl | Item |
| 1 |
ID:
158483
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
Many institutions—including American federal bureaucracies and legislatures world-wide—are characterized by one set of actors who possess the right to determine which policies will be enacted and an opposing set of actors who possess the right to delay the enactment of those policies. However, this interaction is not well understood. We provide a model that shows that a modest procedural right to delay but not veto the enactment of policies affords considerable influence over the policy agenda, so long as policymaking is time-consuming and time is scarce. In an application to the US Senate, our model exhibits properties that are consistent with common empirical claims about partisanship, polarization, and gridlock. It also justifies the considerable variation in the amount of delay imposed on the passage of various bills and the historic reluctance of the Senate to adopt reforms that would expedite the tedious cloture process.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 2 |
ID:
167342
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
Politicians bequeath an important legacy after they leave office: the public’s memories of their time in office. Indeed, the media often discuss legacy concerns as a key motivation of politicians. Yet, there has been little empirical analysis of how politicians’ legacies are interpreted and used by the mass public. Analyzing millions of comments from online discussion forums, we show that citizens frequently mobilize memories of past politicians in their discussions of current events. A randomized survey experiment rationalizes such invocations of past politicians: they bolster the persuasiveness of contemporary arguments—particularly bad ones—but only when made in the context of a policy domain specifically associated with a past politician. Our findings suggest that politicians have a strong interest in cultivating a positive, broad, and enduring legacy because memories of them influence policy debates long after they leave office.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|