Legislative Preferences Research Articles

Основные подходы к рассмотрению понятия «дериватив» как правовой категории

Introduction: there is no unity of approach to the concept of ‘derivative’ as a legal category in doctrine and in legislation. When defining the term ‘derivative financial instrument’, economists and financial experts base their definitions on the non-legal attribute of price derivativeness as well as on maturity of the assets. Purpose: to analyze approaches to the concept ‘derivative’ that have developed in various sources, including Russian and foreign legislation, scientific works on finance, doctrinal legal sources, soft law acts, and standard agreements. Methods: general scientific (analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction), special legal methods (historical, comparative legal, formal legal), statistical methods. Results: the author distinguishes between the narrow and the broad contractual approaches to the category ‘derivative financial instrument’. There is also outlined an approach according to which embedded derivatives, i.e., conditions for the placement of securities or contracts that are not related to derivative instruments, should also be classified as ‘derivative financial instruments’. In addition, the author outlines an approach according to which securities such as issuer options or depositary receipts can be classified as derivatives. Conclusions: referring certain constructs to derivatives largely depends on the legislator's preferences and traditions established in the financial and stock exchange circles, since a repo agreement, which to a certain extent has the features of maturity and derivativeness, is not classified as a derivative financial instrument in any of the studied sources.

Gender Differences in Policy Preferences of Legislators: Evidence from China’s National Legislature

Abstract Do female legislators have different policy preferences than male legislators? Despite a large body of literature from liberal democracies and recent studies of electoral authoritarian regimes, this topic has received little attention in the context of single-party regimes. Based on quasi-experimental methods and regression models, we analyze original data from 38,383 proposals introduced during China’s 12th National People’s Congress and test the effect of gender on policies concerning conventionally selected feminine issues and “political stance,” issues that are unique to single-party regimes. The analysis confirms the effect of gender on policy preference across several feminine issues. However, the effect of gender is null on issues concerning political stance. Our findings suggest that while single-party regimes allow gender differences to emerge among legislators on issues that are not politically important, they tend to discourage such differences on politically prominent issues. This study advances the literature on both gender politics and authoritarian politics.

Women’s Political Representation and Corruption

We assess the degree to which the policy preferences of female legislators explain the widely observed negative association between women’s political representation (known as “women in parliament,” or WIP) and corruption. While a broad literature suggests that WIP reduces corruption, there is little consensus on how. Some suggest that the effect is driven by women’s psychology—perhaps women are more prosocial or more risk-averse than men, and thus engage in less corruption. Others suggest that the effect is driven by policy preferences: because it serves the interest of their female constituents, women promote social spending, which in turn reduces corruption. We employ a mediation analysis that allows us to test the mediating effect of social spending, and to provide an upper bound for alternative explanations. Our results suggest that social spending explains as much as 69 percent of the effect of WIP on corruption, leaving as little as 31 percent for alternative explanations. These results are robust to concerns about spurious WIP effects, sample composition, and the potential for endogeneity in the link from either WIP or social spending to corruption. We conclude by implicating these findings in broader discussions about the beneficial effects of WIP for governance.

Religion, morality, law, and abortion policy

The abortion controversy often affects both religion and politics. Abortion is a highly politicized issue, as governments often seek to amend abortion laws according to elected leaders' preferences or the electorate's mood. However, few studies establish a causal relationship between leader preferences and abortion outcomes. In this article, we reveal whether the religious affiliation of legislators affects the number of abortions in the districts they elect, provided their party affiliation. The question is why the debate about abortion does not stop, why it becomes an arena of intense struggle not only around changes in the family, where politics is at stake. Regulation of abortion was not widespread at the time of the republic's founding, but it became pervasive within the next century. By the twentieth century, abortion had become strictly regulated throughout the nation. As time progressed, numerous states relaxed their laws in response to pressure for political change. Typical grounds for allowing abortion included pregnancies that presented a danger to the mother's life, resulted from rape or incest, or carried the likelihood of congenital disabilities, to establish a woman's freedom to choose as a fundamental national right, advocates for a woman's freedom to choose expanded their plan from the legislature to the courts. A natural person explains this by a lack of political commitment. We investigate the role of preferences of legislators around the world. In particular, since Muslims express more tremendous opposition to abortion than Hindus, we ask whether Muslim legislators are more effective in reducing sexual intercourse. Keywords: abortion rights, politics, liberal views, conservative views, embryo.

A Nonparametric Bayesian Model for Detecting Differential Item Functioning: An Application to Political Representation in the US

AbstractA common approach when studying the quality of representation involves comparing the latent preferences of voters and legislators, commonly obtained by fitting an item response theory (IRT) model to a common set of stimuli. Despite being exposed to the same stimuli, voters and legislators may not share a common understanding of how these stimuli map onto their latent preferences, leading to differential item functioning (DIF) and incomparability of estimates. We explore the presence of DIF and incomparability of latent preferences obtained through IRT models by reanalyzing an influential survey dataset, where survey respondents expressed their preferences on roll call votes that U.S. legislators had previously voted on. To do so, we propose defining a Dirichlet process prior over item response functions in standard IRT models. In contrast to typical multistep approaches to detecting DIF, our strategy allows researchers to fit a single model, automatically identifying incomparable subgroups with different mappings from latent traits onto observed responses. We find that although there is a group of voters whose estimated positions can be safely compared to those of legislators, a sizeable share of surveyed voters understand stimuli in fundamentally different ways. Ignoring these issues can lead to incorrect conclusions about the quality of representation.

Legislatures and Reforms: A Two-Decade Experience with the Ukrainian Legislature

This study addresses the question of what drives legislators to prioritize different areas of reform in post-authoritarian societies that take on a path of democratization. Specifically, this study uses the case of the Ukrainian legislature to analyze legislative preferences toward tackling corruption and economic or institutional reforms. We use eight waves of surveys of Ukrainian legislators spanning two decades to identify what factors are associated with preferences that legislators have toward different reforms. We find that party affiliation, regional ties, and committee membership are important factors in explaining the preferences of Ukrainian legislators.

Who votes for free trade and when? Geopolitics as the source of legislative preferences on free trade agreements

Why do legislators support some free trade agreements but oppose others? Despite a wide variation in legislative support for free trade agreements, the heterogeneous preferences of legislators have received little attention in the literature, which largely focuses on general trade policy preferences of legislators and individual voters. We bring in geopolitical factors as a key source of legislative preferences on specific free trade agreements. Using voting records of the U.S. House representatives on all major bills related to free trade agreements, we find that the geostrategic importance of potential trading partner has a substantial effect on voting for trade agreements. We find that legislators become less sensitive to their constituents’ economic interests when considering trade agreements with allies or countries with closely aligned interests. This highlights the importance of examining security externalities of trade cooperation.

A Bayesian spatial voting model to characterize the legislative behavior of the Colombian Senate 2010–2014

This paper characterizes the legislators voting behavior in the Colombian Senate 2010–2014, by implementing a one-dimensional standard Bayesian ideal point estimator via Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms. Our main goal is to retrieve the political preferences of legislators from their roll-call voting records, which individualizes the electoral behavior of the legislative chamber. Furthermore, we conclude about the nature of the latent trait underlying the deputies voting decisions and the legislators locations in political space. Finally, we also offer several methodological and theoretical tools to guide the analysis of nominal voting data in the context of unbalanced parliaments (multi-party systems), taking as reference the particular case of the Colombian Senate.

CLASSIFICATION OF INVESTMENTS: REAL AND FINANCIALIURII

In the scientific environment, there are many options for classifying investments, but almost all authors divide investments into real and financial ones. At the same time, there is no single approach to classification by the object of investment in the scientific community, as, however, there is no consensus on the composition of signs that distinguish real and financial investments from the entire spectrum of possible investments. At the same time, the problem of determining the main features of real and financial investments is quite relevant today, since there is no regulatory definition, and the presence of such a definition may be in demand in the near future, which is primarily due to the demand for investments in the real sector of the country's economy, and as a consequence, the establishment of legislative benefits and preferences for enterprises that make real investments in state-defined industries, which is quite problematic to implement in the absence of a regulatory definition. By analyzing the existing points of view on the nature of real and financial investments and their place in the classification, two main directions of opinions on the essence of direct investment can be distinguished. According to some authors, all investments in the object of investment can be divided into real and financial. Another group of scientists suggests a broader classification, adding intangible and intellectual investments, investments in human capital, etc. to real and financial investments. According to the author of the article, investments in intangible assets and tangible assets are components of real investments, and intellectual investments and investments in human capital, in turn, are included in intangible investments. The article also proves that portfolio investments cannot be identified with financial investments, and real investments cannot be identified with direct investments.

Comitology and Delegation System in the European Union

The article addresses the system of comitology and delegation in the European Union. It explores such issues like evolution of comitology, contemporary procedures of the control over the European Commission in the process of elaboration of implementing and delegated acts, preferences of legislators regarding control procedures, factors determining the final choice among these procedures. The article shows that the system is based on the “police patrol” model.Should we consider the comitology / delegation procedures as a mechanism of control or discussion (deliberation)? This question is of the greatest theoretical interest. The purpose of this article is to show based on the existing empirical studies, the actual preferences of EU institutions when choosing the procedures of comitology/delegation and the factors influencing the final decision. The article demonstrates that both prior to and after the Lisbon Treaty, the preferences of institutions in choosing procedures differ significantly and can be largely explained by the goal of maximizing their own influence. An empirical analysis of the results of the final choice of procedures demonstrates that the main factors that push toward stricter control procedures are institutional conflict and the complexity of the issue under discussion. These preferences and factors of the choice of procedures allow to conclude that the EU institutions consider the system of comitology and delegation primarily as a mechanism of control over the Commission in the logic of the principal-agent theory.

Unveiling Inconsistency: Consensus and Contestation along the Council–Comitology Cycle of EU Policy‐Making

Do Member States behave inconsistently along the EU policy life cycle? Existing research has extensively examined patterns of conduct in the Council and in comitology. However, the question of whether national governments' behaviours differ along both stages of EU policy-making is under-explored. This article examines whether and under what conditions voting outcomes along the Council–comitology cycle differ. Based on a dataset combining voting records in the Council and in comitology, the study tests hypotheses derived from delegation theory and demonstrates that legislative contestation, changing legislative preferences, and stringent delegation procedures increase inconsistency. Moreover, it demonstrates that inconsistency increases when there is contestation in the Council and changes in national governments' preferences between the two votes increase. Ultimately, inconsistency is associated with the reversal of Council contestation in comitology.

How Do Electoral Gender Quotas Affect Policy?

Electoral gender quotas now exist in a majority of national legislatures worldwide. In general, quotas are followed by greater legislative attention to the interests and priorities of women as a group. Across cases, effects have been most pronounced on issues related to women's rights, public health, and poverty alleviation. Quotas can influence policy in two general ways: First, quotas may send cues to all officeholders, prompting broad changes in legislator behavior among both men and women. Second, quotas typically bring more women into legislatures, causing a shift in aggregate legislator preferences and increasing women's ability to collectively influence legislative decisions. Yet, the positive effects of quotas are not universal, and some research reveals instances in which quotas have led to limited policy changes or even to more gender-inegalitarian outcomes. I suggest several variables that may moderate the relationship between quota adoption and policy change, including underexplored dimensions of quota design.

Digital technologies in wine sector: Russian legislator preferences

Russia has revived its vitiviniculture in the beginning of XXI century. Without the burden of old regulation and established reputation the modern technologies including digital technologies could be expected to prosper here. To certain extent it happened and Russian academics and innovators have offered some digital solutions for the wine makers related to the mapping of the vineyards and crop. Still predominantly, the digital technologies in Russia are designed for the control and surveillance. The legislation on viticulture and wine making and its social environment push the technology development toward the vigilance and control of the final product rather than towards the transformation of vineyards management. The renaissance of the viticulture in Russia opens unique opportunity to make Russian vitiviniculture modern and advanced sector of economy. However, this innovative potential is still left unexploited.

Why the DEA, not the FDA? Revisiting the Regulation of Potentially-Addictive Substances

In addressing the opioid overdose crisis, Congress has explicitly questioned its historic reliance on a criminal justice approach to problem drug use and has instead adopted a more health-oriented approach. Despite Congress' rhetoric, the DEA, a criminal justice agency, continues to retain the power to make key decisions on the classification of potentially-addictive substances, thereby affecting their manufacture, distribution, and overall availability. While the DEA is statutorily required to defer to the Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”), a public health agency, at junctions of the decision-making process, the current “split enforcement” scheme laid out in the statutes has not actualized the legislative intent of balancing the medical and scientific considerations with those of law enforcement, tilting the weight of determinations instead to law enforcement criteria and a criminal justice approach to its regulation and enforcement. The current shift in legislative preference for a health-oriented approach begs the question: Why continue to give such regulatory powers to the DEA and not a public health agency like the FDA? While such transfer of regulatory powers may seem radical, it becomes less so after an analysis of some often-forgotten FDA history. For at least 20 years prior to the DEA’s creation, the FDA regulated and enforced the regulations of illicit sales of non-narcotic drugs, like barbiturates and amphetamines. In 1966, Congress formalized these enforcement powers by creating the Bureau of Drug Abuse Control (“BDAC”) within the FDA. However, the BDAC was transferred out of the FDA just two short years later. It was merged with the FBN and then moved to the DOJ. It later became the agency we now know as the DEA. To some, the BDAC’s short-lived existence might suggest that Congress perceived the FDA’s enforcement efforts as a failure. Others may correctly point out that FDA Commissioners were eager to get rid of the BDAC when given the opportunity to do so. Why should Congress consider transferring exclusive powers to regulate controlled substances to the FDA, if previous FDA Commissioners lobbied to rid the agency of these powers decades ago? Building a case for the transfer of regulatory powers from the DEA to the FDA is a subject worthy of a book-length manuscript, but an apt starting point is to gain a deeper understanding of how the DEA, instead of the FDA, ended up with the primary powers to regulate and enforce the regulations on potentially-addictive substances. While other scholars have described the circumstances surrounding this assignment of powers to the DEA, this article extends their research and makes new findings about the circumstances surrounding the transfer of the BDAC, and its power to regulate, to the DEA. Using oral history testimonies from FDA investigators and administrative officials, this Article adds to the historic literature on the allocation of regulatory and enforcement powers over potentially-addictive substances. In doing so, this Article provides evidence in support of a contemporary transfer of regulatory power from the DEA to the FDA. The primary contribution of this Article is that it demonstrates that the removal of the BDAC from the FDA was not due to the BDAC’s poor performance or its more regulatory approach to enforcement, but rather in large part due to FBN infiltration into the BDAC and the corruption and criminal justice approach that accompanied the FBN influence.

Does money have a conservative bias? Estimating the causal impact of Citizens United on state legislative preferences

Recent work has suggested that the US Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United (2010), eliminating restrictions on independent campaign expenditures, increased the election probabilities of Republican state legislative candidates (Klumpp et al. in J Law Econ 59(1):1–43, 2016). Left unexplored has been whether the Court’s ruling in Citizens United increased not only the number of Republican state legislators, but also the conservatism of their estimated policy preferences, net of any effects on election probabilities. We attempt to distinguish between the possible electoral and preference effects of Citizens United. Our estimates consistently suggest that Citizens United led not only to greater likelihoods of election for Republican state legislative candidates, but also to larger within-district increases in their conservatism. The estimates, which are robust to a series of matching and placebo exercises, may provide support for the claim that more money in elections has contributed to greater conservatism among state-level Republican officeholders.

The Politics of Procedural Choice: Regulating Legislative Debate in the UK House of Commons, 1811–2015

AbstractThe historical development of rules of debate in the UK House of Commons raises an important puzzle: why do members of parliament (MPs) impose limits on their own rights? Despite a growing interest in British Political Development and the institutional changes of nineteenth-century UK politics, the academic literature has remained largely silent on this topic. Three competing explanations have emerged in studies of the US Congress, focusing on efficiency, partisan forces and non-partisan (or: ideology-based) accounts. This article falls broadly into the third category, offering a consensus-oriented explanation of the historical development of parliamentary rules. Working from a new dataset on the reform of standing orders in the House of Commons over a 205-year period (1811–2015), as well as records of over six million speeches, the author argues that MPs commit more quickly to passing restrictive rules in the face of obstruction when legislator preferences are proximate within both the opposition and government, and when polarization between both sides of the aisle is low. The research represents, to the author's knowledge, the first systematic and directional test of a range of competing theories of UK parliamentary reform, shedding light on the process of parliamentary reform over a prolonged period of Commons history, and advancing several new measures of polarization in the UK House of Commons.

Looks Like Me, Thinks Like Me: Descriptive Representation and Opinion Congruence in Brazil

This article argues that descriptive representation, or demographic similarities between legislators and the public, can provide effective substantive representation of citizens’ concerns. We examine representation through the lens of opinion congruence or alignment in the policy preferences of legislators and citizens sharing various identities. Congruence may result from shared material interests or from self-selection into an identity group on the basis of policy views, but it can also be a product of networks and organizations that socialize masses and elites into a common worldview. Though political parties were historically the most important agents of political socialization, we argue that religious organizations constitute a more powerful socializing force in many new democracies. Examining the case of Brazil, we draw on three legislative surveys and fifteen mass surveys to analyze congruence across seven issue areas. Legislators and voters from underrepresented groups—women, Afro-Brazilians, evangelical Christians, and those of lower social class—are generally closer in their opinions than those sharing a party or electoral district. Evangelicals are often the most congruent. Analyzing original surveys of congregations and clergy, we argue that this finding results from the socializing role of churches.

Bargaining in legislatures over private and public goods with endogenous recognition

This paper studies a sequential model of multilateral bargaining under majority rule in which legislators make decisions in both private and public good dimensions via an endogenous recognition process. Legislators can expend resources to become the proposer and to make proposals about the allocation of private and public goods. We show that legislators exert unproductive effort to be the proposer and make proposals in both dimensions depending on legislative preferences. Effort choices in equilibrium depend mainly on preferences in both distributional and ideological dimensions as well as the patience level of legislators and the legislature’s size. We also show that in a diverse legislature it may be possible to observe distributive policies when the majority of legislators have collective-leaning preferences, or vice versa.

New Data for Investigating the President’s Legislative Program: OMB Logs and SAPs*

AbstractThis article introduces two newly available sources of data on presidents’ legislative programs. The first consists of administration legislative initiatives cleared by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for submission to Congress. We refer to these records as “OMB logs” because they record OMB’s clearance actions on executive‐branch legislative proposals. The second consists of memoranda, officially called Statements of Administration Policy, that OMB sends to floor leaders detailing the president’s position on legislation pending floor consideration. We compare these new data on presidents’ legislative initiatives and policy preferences with those contained in currently available sources—The Public Papers of the Presidents and Congressional Quarterly’s scoring of presidential positions on roll‐call votes—and with a long available but seldom used fifth source, the Congressional Record. Both new data sources list bills and legislative preferences that are not included in the currently available sources. We illustrate the value of these new data by calculating presidents’ impressive “legislative effectiveness” in the House when all presidential initiatives are taken into account.

The Political Economy of Abandoned Mine Land Fund Disbursements

What factors determine federal spending on environmental goods? Is severity of the hazard the only metric of consideration, or do other factors play a vital role in explaining spending? This paper seeks to answer this question and to identify disbursement patterns within the context of the Abandoned Mine Land Fund (AMLF) program, a fund created as an aspect of the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977. We explore whether political factors, as well as environmental and health factors, have an explanatory role in disbursement of AMLF monies. The political factors examined include environmental interest group influence and legislator preferences and/or pressures to fund sites in their home states or districts. The results found here suggest that there exists a mix of public and private interests present in AMLF disbursement decisions during the overall span of the program, and that political influences have gained strength in the decision-making calculus in response to changes in the funding structure of the AMLF.