The Institutionalization of the U.S. House of Representatives
The Institutionalization of the U.S. House of Representatives
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美国众议院的制度化
DOI：
10.2307/1953331
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发表时间：
1968
影响因子：
6.8
通讯作者：
N. Polsby
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
N. Polsby
在我看来，大多数研究政治的人至少在两个主张上达成了普遍共识。首先，我们同意，一个政治体系要可行，要成功地代表大量人口执行权威资源分配、解决问题、解决冲突等任务，就必须制度化。也就是说，必须创建和维持专门从事政治活动的组织。1否则，政治体系可能会不稳定、脆弱，无法满足其组成群体的需求或保护其利益。其次，人们普遍认为，要使一个政治体系在某种意义上自由和民主，就必须找到手段将代表性及其所暗示的各种多样性制度化，并使制度合法化，同时将政治反对派包含在体系内。2我们对这两个命题以及它们所指出的问题日益增长的兴趣，可以开始表明研究高度专业化的政治制度的现存的极少数例子之一的重要性，从长远来看，这种制度是一种高度专业化的政治制度。 成功地代表了大量不同的选民，并在复杂的政治体系（即美国众议院）内使政治反对派合法化、表达和遏制政治反对派。我在这里关注的焦点首先是描述性的，将不同的线索汇集在一起——其中一些已经存在于文献中3——试图表明我们在什么意义上可以将众议院视为一个制度化的政府机构。正如我将指出的，对于这个相当困难的描述性问题，尚未完成所有必要的工作。其次，我将对众议院制度化的原因、后果以及可能吸取的教训提出一些推测性的观察。
Most people who study politics are in general agreement, it seems to me, on at least two propositions. First, we agree that for a political system to be viable, for it to succeed in performing tasks of authoritative resource allocation, problem solving, conflict settlement, and so on, in behalf of a population of any substantial size, it must be institutionalized. That is to say, organizations must be created and sustained that are specialized to political activity.1 Otherwise, the political system is likely to be unstable, weak, and incapable of servicing the demands or protecting the interests of its constituent groups. Secondly, it is generally agreed that for a political system to be in some sense free and democratic, means must be found for institutionalizing representativeness with all the diversity that this implies, and for legitimizing yet at the same time containing political opposition within the system.2 Our growing interest in both of these propositions, and in the problems to which they point, can begin to suggest the importance of studying one of the very few extant examples of a highly specialized political institution which over the long run has succeeded in representing a large number of diverse constituents, and in legitimizing, expressing, and containing political opposition within a complex political system—namely, the U.S. House of Representatives. The focus of my attention here will be first of all descriptive, drawing together disparate strands—some of which already exist in the literature3—in an attempt to show in what sense we may regard the House as an institutionalized organ of government. Not all the necessary work has been done on this rather difficult descriptive problem, as I shall indicate. Secondly, I shall offer a number of speculative observations about causes, consequences, and possible lessons to be draw from the institutionalization of the House.