Formal Models of Committee Behavior

集体行动充满了困难。社会各阶层都存在协调个人行动的困难。尽管学者们已经报道了社区面临的一般问题——主要是由于个人动机与集体目标之间的不相容而造成的困境——但相对而言，很少有人关注社区解决这些问题的原则。例如，为什么社区通过分散的个人产权系统来解决一些问题，而其他问题则需要等级组织？为什么有些组织安排，例如公司和委员会，成功地减轻了社区的集体困难，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。这个项目的重点是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，发现议事规则的变化与政党制度的变化和发展密切相关是很常见的。然而，在美国众议院，由于其政党相对薄弱，立法结构更多地与个别立法者的选举问题联系在一起，而不是与任何集体选举问题联系在一起。在理性选择视角下或受其影响的研究中尤其如此。在这项研究调查中，研究人员探讨了具体党派因素进入众议院结构的程度，以及历史上进入众议院结构的程度。调查人员的重点是委员会制度，并阐明了委员会作为政党代理人的观点。这需要回答一些更广泛的问题：什么是党，它如何控制它可能任命的任何代理人，委员会或不是？当代理关系涉及集体委托人（如一方）时，代理关系是什么样的？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？委员会和议会之间的关系是什么？采用与理性选择前提相一致的方法，研究者基于委托代理理论开发并检验了委员会行为模型。

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.