Constituency influences on legislative policy choice

Conclusion

This paper presented a general formal model of policy choice. The assumptions upon which the model is based are well founded in the literature and generally non-controversial. The model is also one of legislative choice and the consequences derived also speak to significant issues in the study of legislatures: the policy nature of representation, the impact of electoral incentives, and the relationship of legislators to their constituents. In this way, the model unifies two subfields of research—policy and legislative politics—into a general framework.

Several important consequences follow formally from the calculus we have presented. Legislators will prefer to select “indirect” forms of policy whenever possible: this preference is for forms of policies which muddle the perception of costs incident to the policy. The legislator's preference for command and control regulatory instruments and for particularistic policies are principal examples of this consequence. The possibilities for melding the advantages of market (or exchange) and political (or authority) control systems are, then, seemingly remote (cf. Lindblom, 1977). The representative system of democracy, and the incentives it provides for legislators, hinder the imposition of market-like incentive system in favor of the more indirect “thumbs, no fingers” mechanisms.

Further consequences, that legislators will select policies which benefit groups with high support rates for the legislator, i.e. his primary and re-election constituencies, were derived. A number of these consequences are new and unique. A number have been derived elsewhere, though, through a variety of specific modeling techniques. That all of these consequences follow from this general model developed here is one of the model's principal strengths.