Formal Models of Committee Behavior

委员会行为的正式模型

• 批准号: 8811022
• 负责人: Gary Cox
• 金额: $ 20.16万
• 依托单位: University of California-San Diego
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 1988
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1988-07-15 至 1990-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=8811022&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Formal; Models; Committee; Behavior

Collective action is fraught with difficulty. The difficulties of coordinating the actions of individuals exists in all segments of society. Though scholars have reported on general problems confronting communities - - largely dilemmas resulting from an incompatibility between the individuals' incentives and the collective goal - - relatively little attention has been directed toward understanding the principles by which communities solve these problems. For example, why do communities solve some problems via a decentralized system of individual property rights while other problems require hierarchical organizations? Why are some organizational arrangements, for example firms and committees, successful at mitigating collective difficulties for their communities, while other organizational structures, for example communes, are not successful? The failure of communities to accomplish their collective goals is a failure of institutional design. This project focuses on the institutional structure of legislatures and parties. It is common in studies of party-dominated legislatures, such as the British House of Commons, to see changes in the rules of procedure as intimately linked to changes and developments in the party system. In the U.S. House of Representatives, however, with its relatively weak parties, legislative structure is more often linked to the electoral concerns of individual legislators, rather than to any collective electoral concerns. This is especially true of research that is in or influenced by the rational choice perspective. In this research investigation the researchers explore the degree to which specifically partisan factors enter into, and have historically entered into, the structure of the House of Representatives. The investigators focus on the committee system and articulate a view of committees as agents of political parties. This necessitates answering a number of broader questions: What is a party and how can it control any agents that it might appoint, committees or not? What are agency relationships like when they involve collective principals, such as a party? What is the role of the party leadership? How do the specifics of committee appointment affect their responsiveness to partisan demands? What is the relationship between committees and the floor? Employing an approach that is consistent with rational choice premises, the investigators develop and test this model of committee behavior, based on principal agent theory.

集体行动充满了困难。协调个人行动的困难存在于社会的各个阶层。尽管学者们已经报道了社区面临的一般问题--主要是由于个人的动机和集体目标之间的不相容而造成的困境--但相对较少的注意力被引导到理解社区解决这些问题的原则上。例如，为什么社区通过分散的个人产权制度来解决一些问题，而另一些问题则需要等级组织？为什么一些组织安排，例如公司和委员会，成功地减轻了其社区的集体困难，而其他组织结构，例如公社，却不成功？社区未能实现其集体目标是制度设计的失败。该项目侧重于立法机构和政党的体制结构。在对政党主导的立法机构(如英国下议院)的研究中，常见的是将议事规则的变化视为与政党制度的变化和发展密切相关。然而，在政党相对薄弱的美国众议院，立法结构更多地与个别议员的选举关切挂钩，而不是与任何集体选举关切挂钩。这对于处于理性选择视角或受理性选择视角影响的研究尤其如此。在这项研究调查中，研究人员探索了特定的党派因素在多大程度上进入并历史上进入了众议院的结构。调查人员将重点放在委员会制度上，并阐明了委员会是政党代理人的观点。这就需要回答一些更广泛的问题：什么是政党，它如何控制它可能任命的任何代理人，委员会还是非委员会？当代理关系涉及集体委托人时是什么样子的，比如一个政党？党的领导的作用是什么？委员会任命的细节如何影响他们对党派要求的反应？委员会和发言之间是什么关系？采用一种与理性选择前提一致的方法，调查人员基于委托代理理论开发和测试了这一委员会行为模型。