Legislative Productivity Research Articles

How Does Political Polarization Impact Legislative Gridlock And Policy-Making Processes

Contemporary governance is characterized by a trend toward political polarization resulting in legislative gridlock and policy-making processes. The relationship between polarization and stagnation in the U.S. Congress is explored, focusing on how far ideological extremes have contributed to the breakdown of policymaking and articulation. Social Identity Theory, Elite Theory, Agenda Setting Theory, Rational Choice Theory, and Cultural Theory are all theoretical frameworks that offer insight into how polarization comes about. When a band of congressional members increasingly espouse radical positions, there is virtually no bipartisan cooperation and a corresponding decline in legislative productivity. The result is a stalemate, and while that in and of itself doesn't stop necessity from arising, it does prevent the consideration of pressing matters, namely (but not limited to) the federal minimum wage, which has repeatedly failed to increase despite the broad agreement on its necessity. The challenges of policy implementation in the polarized environment of resourced allocation disputes and judicial challenges also further complicate governance. In the end, the polarization and legislative deadlock that is cyclical, calls us to strategic interventions that increase the effectiveness of policymaking and return American democracy to functioning

An Assessment of the Productivity and Effectiveness of Law Making from the Legal Perspective of the Indonesian State

The People's Representative Council of the Republic of Indonesia (DPR RI) plays a crucial role in the legislative process that shapes national policies. However, its effectiveness is often questioned due to discrepancies between the number of enacted laws and the set targets. This study aims to evaluate the legislative performance of the DPR RI during the 2019-2024 period, focusing on the quality and relevance of the laws produced. The research employs a normative approach to assess the alignment of legislative outputs with constitutional principles, alongside an empirical approach to measure legislative productivity and its impact on society. The findings indicate that although the DPR RI successfully enacted several laws, many of these legislative products fall short of public expectations in terms of both quantity and quality. The implications of this study highlight the need for improved legislative efficiency and increased public participation to ensure that the laws produced are more responsive to societal needs.

Deference and Legislative Productivity

Deference and Legislative Productivity

Legislative Civility, Gridlock, Polarization, and Productivity

AbstractThis article examines the relationship between legislative civility and legislative productivity in US state legislatures. The research employs data from the National Survey of State Legislative Lobbyists and from the State Policy Innovation and Diffusion (SPID) database. The former dataset is used to generate an overall civility index for each state as developed by Kettler et al. The SPID database allows one to measure the legislative productivity of a state legislature. Employing these data, negative binomial and Poisson regression models reveal that state legislatures rated as more civil by their own lobbyists produced significantly more pieces of noteworthy legislation than those legislative bodies rated as less civil. These results suggest that the quality of internal legislative dynamics matters for legislative productivity.

Legislative Gridlock and Policymaking Through the Appropriations Process

Divergent preferences within and across American lawmaking institutions make it difficult to enact legislation. Yet, individual legislators and parties have incentives to effect policy change, even during periods of gridlock. We claim appropriations offer an alternative means of policymaking when legislation is likely to be unsuccessful using authorizations because appropriations bills have an extreme reversion point. Using an original dataset of appropriations laws, we measure the quantity of policy enacted given distributions of House, Senate, and executive preferences. The findings show that a larger gridlock interval and greater distance between the House and Senate medians promote the use of appropriations bills as substantive policymaking vehicles. This effect is especially pronounced when new chamber majorities come to power. We conclude that divergent preferences among lawmaking institutions affect legislative productivity, but winning coalitions can still make substantive policy changes using unorthodox lawmaking processes.

Measuring the Person-Job Fit on Perceived Productivity: A Case of Indone-sian Legislators

Person-job fit and its relationship with technical training (Bimtek) and productivity or work performance have been widely discussed in private and public organizations but scarcely in the legislative organization. Compared to what companies have generally practiced, the mismatch between jobs and legislators' educational backgrounds and experiences is quite common. In addition, the nature of the job is often temporary and prone to rotation between commissions within legislative bodies. This study aimed to examine the impact of Bimtek on the person-job fit and productivity of legislators in Indonesia and how the experience could moderate the relationship. The research design used a quantitative method by employing a correlational approach. Of the 110 population, eighty-one Indonesian legislators were valid to be used as the respondent. Bimtek was used as the independent, person-job fit as the mediator, perceived legislation productivity was employed as the dependent, and the moderator was the experience. All hypotheses were tested using independent t-test, mediation, and moderation techniques employing Hayes PROCESS models 1, 4, and 8. The major findings showed that repeated Bimtek improved person-job fit and productivity. Legislators' experience moderated the effect of person-job fit on perceived legislation productivity. This study concludes that attempting an appropriate person-job fit and optimal legislative productivity requires sufficient technical training for legislators to perform their legislative functions. In this case, when the person-job fit increases, the new legislators have higher perceived productivity than their seniors.

COVID-19 And Rule By Decree – A Case Study Of The NCT of Delhi

ABSTRACT The article attempts a quantitative as well as a qualitative analysis of the National Capital Territory (“NCT”) of Delhi’s legislative productivity in the year 2020. The Legislative Assembly of Delhi produced only one piece of substantive legislation throughout the year, sitting for one of its fewest number of sessions. However, the business of the Government continued to run apace through several subordinate legislations. While most of these pertained to routine matters of day-to-day administration, two primary regulations embodied the entirety of the State’s pandemic response on the back of a colonial-era skeleton legislation. The article discusses the constitutional questions of concern raised by such promulgation of subordinate legislations, while acknowledging the backdrop of the emergency nature of the pandemic and the unique power-sharing arrangement in the Constitution of India regarding the National Capital Territory of Delhi.

LEGISLATURE AND DEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCE: AN ASSESSMENT OF THE 9th NATIONAL ASSEMBLY IN NIGERIA

The 9th National Assembly in Nigeria was elected in 2015 and represents the most extensive democratic period of legislative governance in the country’s history. This study examines the performance of the National Assembly as a mechanism of democratic governance in Nigeria. Specifically, we explore the legislative processes used by the Assembly, the extent of its accountability to the electorate, and the way it has impacted Nigerian democracy and development. Structural functionalism was adopted as the theoretical framework on the function of the Legislature, we employed qualitative methods to explain the Legislature and good governance, and evaluate the performance of the ninth assembly of the Nigerian State. The analysis of its roles in the creation of laws revealed a sizable disparity in terms of public involvement and consultation. Findings also revealed that the poor relationship between the executive and the legislative branch of government has slowed the development of democratic governance. It is recommended that Nigerian Legislators should prioritize legislative productivity and concentrate on passing legislation that will directly benefit society. In conclusion it was deduced that there is a substantial disparity between legislators and their constituents, according to the appraisal of legislators' performance in the Ninth Assembly in terms of representation as most law makers are perceived to be self-serving.

A Philippine Strongman's Legislative and Constitutional Reforms Legacy

This article examines five years of legislation and constitutional reform under former President Rodrigo R. Duterte. An overview of post-1986 republic acts shows administrations being more successful in legislating social and economic laws than political laws. President Duterte is no exception to this, yet his presidency stands out in both legislative productivity and the passage of long-overdue laws. This success is due in part to high presidential approval, a supermajority coalition in Congress, and a unified Cabinet. These strengthen his influence over Congress, raising expectations that charter change can be fulfiled. His administration's failed attempt at federalism then raises questions on his commitment to the policy in the first place. Despite a populist campaign and institutional means at his disposal, Duterte does not appear any different from his predecessors who prioritised economic laws favoured by the business class over deep political reform with broader implications on governance and development.

Influence of politicians’ ideology on their legislative activities: the case of South Korea

ABSTRACT The legislative bill is a critical factor in assessing whether a representative democracy is functioning well, and the politicians’ ideologies have a significant impact on legislative activities. By investigating complete legislative bills in Korea’s parliament from 2004 to 2016, classified using machine-learning techniques, and politicians’ ideology, measured by the W-NOMINATE method, this study systematically examines the relationship between lawmakers’ ideology and legislation. The results reveal that politicians with a strong conservative ideology propose more bills in general and a higher ratio of bills with an economic focus. The passing and processing rate of welfare-related bills sponsored by conservative lawmakers decrease, while the processing period lengthens. These results are aligned with common beliefs regarding the scope of the legislative agenda according to ideology. As ideological discrepancy increases between individuals and their party increases, the number of bill proposals decreases, and bills are less likely to be processed, reducing legislative productivity and efficiency. This study finds that lawmakers’ ideology has a notable influence on legislative productivity and efficiency. It also suggests that these effects are closely related to both the absolute intensity of a lawmakers’ political ideology and its relative position with respect to the affiliated party.

Party Competition Structure and Legislative Productivity of Local Councils: From the 4th to 6th Local Councils in Korea

The Korean local autonomy system has a unique feature in that it grants councils, mayors, and governors the right to submit bills. Because of Korea’s extensive experience with authoritarianism, the relative legislative productivity of the assembly with respect to the head of the group—that is, the person who has the legislative initiative—has become an evaluation criterion for the activities of local councils in Korea. In this study, we address the question of why the relative legislative productivity of individual councils appears to be the cause of problematic awareness in situations where the legal and institutional conditions—for example, the organization and function of local councils, operating methods, and support systems—are very similar. Accordingly, regarding the 4th to 6th parliamentary period (2006–2018) of 15 parliaments, panel data analysis was performed to understand how the structure of party competition between the heads of the group and parliament and the structure of party competition within the assembly affects the relative legislative productivity of the assembly from a macro perspective. It was found that the relative legislative productivity of the parliament for mayors increases when there is a divided government rather than unified one and when the seat share of the first party in parliament increases. However, it was also found that the greater the difference in seat share between the first party in parliament and the second party in parliament, the higher the index of party concentration in parliament and the lower the relative legislative productivity of parliament. In Korea’s political reality, it was confirmed that the political structure of a divided government at the local level does not necessarily lead to a decrease in legislative productivity. The significance of this study is that these ideas were verified.

Law Production in Multiparty Presidentialism: Veto Player Theory and its Application to Korea

AbstractIn this article, I offer a theory of lawmaking in multiparty presidential systems with different legislative institutions. I present a model that combines Krehbiel's pivotal politics theory with Tsebelis's veto players theory. This model simplifies various institutional veto players into the de facto veto players. I analyze the model to explain how the government type (unified versus divided governments), the legislative rules (majoritarian versus supermajoritarian rules), and the party system (two-party versus multiparty systems) affect legislative productivity. I apply the theoretical results obtained to solve the puzzle about the nondifferential legislative performance between unified and divided governments in the National Assembly. I test a hypothesis stating that the distance between the ideological positions of the agenda-setter and the de facto veto players has a negative effect on the proportion of controversial bills enacted between the 16th and the early 21st National Assemblies.

Examining the relationship between political spending and legislative activities

AbstractLawmakers’ political spending plays an essential role in the representation of the public through legislative activities. Based on a rich dataset from South Korea, this study examines the relationship between political spending and legislative activities in the National Assembly. We focus on lawmakers’ average legislative performance during the term rather than specific roll call votes by adopting novel measurements of legislative productivity and efficiency. We find that the total number of bill proposals increases when political spending increases, suggesting an improvement in lawmakers’ legislative productivity. The timeliness of legislation is enhanced by reducing the processing period. However, little evidence exists that the passing and processing rates of legislation requiring bipartisan collaboration and political compromise are improved. The effects are heterogeneous by legislation and expenditure types, affiliated party, and electoral term. The results indicate that political spending has positive effects on lawmakers’ individual productivity but restrictive effects on legislative efficiency.

Legislative Capacity & Administrative Power Under Divided Polarization

Abstract Conventional wisdom holds that party polarization leads to legislative gridlock, which in turn disables congressional oversight of agencies and thus erodes their constitutional legitimacy and democratic accountability. At the root of this argument is an empirical claim that higher levels of polarization materially reduce legislative productivity as measured by the number of laws passed or the number of issues on the legislative agenda addressed by those laws, both of which are negatively associated with party polarization. By focusing on the content of statutes passed rather than their number, this essay shows that in the era of party polarization and divided government, Congress has actually 1) enacted an ever growing volume of significant regulatory policy (packaged into fewer laws); 2) increasingly employed implementation designs intended to limit bureaucratic and presidential power; and 3) legislated regulatory policy substance in greater detail (reducing bureaucratic discretion) when relying on litigation and courts as a supplement or alternative to bureaucracy. This essay thereby complicates, both empirically and normatively, the relationship between Congress and administrative power in the era of party polarization and divided government.

Productivity-based retrospective voting: Legislative productivity and voting in the 2019 European Parliament elections

Are European Parliament (EP) elections used to pass judgement on the legislative behaviour of parties serving in the EP? Do Europeans give a bonus in EP elections to political parties whose members were highly active during the legislative term? The article will focus on the role of legislative activities in the eighth EP term (2014–2019) in informing the 2019 vote choice. The analysis combines the European Election Studies (EESs) 2019 Voter Study data with original legislative behaviour data, as well as with data on European electoral systems. The evidence points to productivity-based retrospective voting being a feature of the 2019 elections. Furthermore, the analysis finds that this type of retrospective voting is stronger in countries where electoral rules encourage candidates to promote past legislative records in electoral campaigns, and particularly so for voters that paid attention to the EP campaign in such systems. This has significant implications for the retrospective voting and EU elections literatures, since it is evidence that the very demanding democratic desiderata of retrospection can be met in multi-level and supranational contexts as well.

Legislative and Constitutional Reforms Under the Duterte Administration

This article provides a brief overview of five years of legislative and constitutional reforms under the Duterte administration. President Duterte’s bold campaign promises were backed by wide public support, a supermajority coalition in Congress, and a unified Cabinet. Indeed, empirical evidence points to how the President’s coalition in Congress, upcoming national elections, and the President’s capacity to tag bills as urgent or priority can help fast-track the passage of laws. While this was able to translate to high legislative productivity in the 17th and 18th Congresses, crucial aspects of the President’s legislative agenda still remain pending. Moreover, key reforms that were passed are widely criticized for promoting efficiency over equity and for falling short in addressing key governance issues. Even though the President had the unprecedented institutional means to steer legislation to his agenda, we find that Duterte is no different from his predecessors who prioritize short-term and rewarding laws over meaningful long-term reforms.

Legislative Capacity and Administrative Power Under Divided Polarization

It is commonly argued that party polarization leads to legislative gridlock, which in turn disables congressional oversight of agencies and thus erodes their constitutional legitimacy and democratic accountability. At the root of this argument is an empirical claim that higher levels of polarization materially reduce legislative productivity as measured by the number of laws passed or the number of issues on the legislative agenda addressed by those laws, both of which are negatively associated with party polarization. By focusing on the content of statutes passed rather than their number, this essay shows that in the era of party polarization and divided government Congress has actually (1) enacted an ever growing volume of significant regulatory policy (packaged into fewer laws), (2) increasingly employed implementation designs intended to limit bureaucratic and presidential power, and (3) legislated regulatory policy substance in greater detail (reducing bureaucratic discretion) when relying on litigation and courts as a supplement or alternative to bureaucracy, a design choice that occurs more frequently under party polarization combined with divided government. It thereby complicates, both empirically and normatively, the relationship between Congress and administrative power in the era of party polarization and divided government.

Does Transparency Inhibit Political Compromise?

AbstractGovernments around the world face an apparent tension when considering whether to allow public access to the governing process. In principle, transparent institutions promote accountability and good governance. However, politicians and scholars contend that such reforms also constrain politicians' capacity to negotiate and compromise, producing inefficiency and gridlock. This argument—that transparency inhibits compromise—is widely accepted, but rarely empirically tested. We develop a theoretical framework around the claim and evaluate it in the context of American state legislatures. We leverage temporal variation in state “sunshine law” adoptions and legislative exemptions to identify the effects of transparency on several observable indicators of compromise: legislative productivity, polarization, partisanship, policy change, and budget delay. Our analyses generally do not support the argument; we mostly report precisely estimated negligible effects. Thus, transparency may not be the hindrance to policy making that conventional wisdom suggests. Effective governance appears possible in state legislatures even under public scrutiny.

Exit Strategy: Career Concerns and Revolving Doors in Congress

Although the majority of research on revolving-door lobbyists centers on the influence they exercise during their postgovernment careers, relatively little attention is given to whether future career concerns affect the behaviors of revolving-door lobbyists while they still work in government. We argue that the revolving-door incentivizes congressional staffers to showcase their legislative skills to the lobbying market in ways that affect policymaking in Congress. Using comprehensive data on congressional staffers, we find that employing staffers who later become lobbyists is associated with higher legislative productivity for members of Congress, especially in staffers’ final terms in Congress. It also is associated with increases in a member’s bill sponsorship in the areas of health and commerce, the topics most frequently addressed by clients in the lobbying industry, as well as granting more access to lobbying firms. These results provide the systematic empirical evidence of pre-exit effects of the revolving-door among congressional staff.

The Public and Congress: Legislative Productivity or Conflict

This paper provides a theoretical overview of different theories of public congressional relationships. It examines the media, legislative conflict, and procedural conflict.