Prospects for Formal Models of Legislatures

Abstract

Formal models have come to play an important role in the development of theory about legislative processes and outcomes. Such formal models will achieve maximum utility to researchers insofar as they can be interrogated deductively. Such interrogation will be enhanced to the extent that considerable institutional detail is built into formal models. The importance of constructing formal models which incorporate institutional reality is illustrated from a game-theoretic perspective, in the context of institutional equilibrium, from the perspective of political incidence analysis, and, finally, drawing upon theories of agency. The future prospects of legislative modeling are propitious; these institutions lend themselves to modeling inasmuch as they are arenas that mold, channel, and constrain self-interested behavior.