Abstract
Much work in the field spatial models has concerned the conditions under which majority rule is stable in a multi-dimensional policy space. Some have suggested that legislative practices such as germaneness rules (Shepsle, 1979; Denzau and Mackay, 1981, 1983; Krehbiel, 1987) and different types of agendas (Shepsle and Weingast, 1984; Banks, 1985; McKelvey, 1986) either induce stability or limit the set of possible outcomes. However, they do not consider how stable the choice of these rules may be. This paper shows how the choice of germaneness rules inherits the instability of the policy space. While the use of any particular germaneness rule limits the set of possible outcomes (Feld and Grofman, 1988), it is shown that the process of choosing these rules is unstable.
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I am grateful to Randall Calvert, Arthur Denzau, Evelyn Fink, Thomas Hammond, Kenneth Shepsle, Albert Van Cleef, Rick Wilson, and three anonymous reviewers for theiry very helpful comments. I would also like to thank the Center for Political Economy at Washington University in St. Louis which provided partial support for this project.
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Humes, B.D. Majority rule outcomes and the choice of germaneness rules. Public Choice 75, 301–316 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01053441
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01053441