Changes

In many political and business settings, control over the agenda of policy changes is a

party fails to use its agenda control powers, congressional policy making is not partisan

but instead is majoritarian.

(i) Formulate a model that captures the central features of Cox and McCubbins’

thesis as described above, being specific about all of the elements of the model.

(ii) Posit an empirically testable set of predictions from the model and prove why

they hold. (Hint: consider absolute and relative rates at which laws pass the

Congress when a particular party prefers the status quo).

Part B. Now consider an alternative institutional arrangement under consideration: that

the Executive (president) can decree a policy that will be implemented at some cost to the

executive. This is a common feature in many presidential systems (e.g. in a number of

Latin American democracies).

(iii) Explain how you would modify your model in Part A to account for executive

decree authority.

(iv) How would your predictions in part A(ii) above change. Prove your results.