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Interests, Institutions, and Positive Theory: The Politics of the NLRB

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Terry M. Moe
Affiliation:
Stanford University

Extract

The claim that institutions “matter” is a subject of lively debate in the study of politics today. It is also something of a nonissue that is not really being debated at all. The reason it can be both at once is that the claim is loaded with theoretical baggage. If it is taken to mean that the actions of politicians or bureaucrats are in fundamental respects autonomous of social interests, the statement can easily prove controversial. If it is taken to mean that institutional context shapes the decisions of political actors, or that the relation between social interests and political outcomes varies with the institutional setting, then there is not much to debate; for there has long been a virtual consensus among students of politics that institutions do matter in these general respects.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

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References

1. For an overview of these issues and the surrounding literature, see Krasner, Stephen D., “Approaches to the State: Alternative Conceptions and Historical Dynamics,” Comparative Politics (01 1984): 223–46Google Scholar; Skocpol, Theda, “Bringing the State Back In: Strategies of Analysis in Current Research,” in Evans, Peter B., Rueschemeyer, Dietrich, and Skocpol, Theda, Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985)Google Scholar; and March, James G. and Olsen, Johan P., “The New Institutionalism: Organizational Factors in Political Life,” American Political Science Review 78 (09 1984): 734–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. Among other classic pluralist works, see Truman, David B., The Governmental Process: Political Interests and Public Opinion, 2nd ed. (New York: Knopf, 1971)Google Scholar; and Dahl, Robert, Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961)Google Scholar.

3. March and Olsen, “The New Institutionalism.”

4. Stigler, George J., “The Theory of Economic Regulation,” Bell Journal of Economics and Management Science 2 (01 1971): 321CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “Free Riders and Collective Action: An Appendix to Theories of Economic Regulation,” Bell Journal of Economics and Management Science (Autumn 1974): 359–65; Peltzman, Sam, “Toward a More General Theory of Regulation,” Journal of Law and Economics 19 (1976): 211–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Becker, Gary, “A Theory of Competition among Pressure Groups for Political Influence,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 98 (1983): 371400CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “Public Policies, Pressure Groups, and Deadweight Costs,” Journal of Public Economics 28 (1985): 329–47.

5. For a thoughtful perspective on the positive theory of institutions, see Shepsle, Kenneth, “Institutional Equilibrium and Equilibrium Institutions,” in Weisberg, Herbert F., ed., Political Science: The Science of Politics (New York: Agathon Press, 1986)Google Scholar. For a comparison of the economic theory of politics and the positive theory of institutions, see Romer, Thomas and Rosenthal, Howard, “Modern Political Economy and the Study of Regulation” (Paper presented at the NSF/CMU Conference on Regulation, Airlie, Va., 09 12–14, 1985)Google Scholar.

6. The argument I present here is based in part upon the available literature and in part on interviews I have conducted with present and former participants in NLRB politics—people who have variously occupied positions in the agency, the White House, the House and Senate Labor committees, the Department of Labor, the major business and labor groups, and law firms. Collectively, their experiences with the board span the entire period, from the 1930s and 1940s to the present.

7. This article is an early, abbreviated version of a book I am now in the process of writing. The argument I outline here—or a close relative of it—will be developed and documented in greater detail in the book.

8. Scher, Seymour, “Congressional Committee Members as Independent Agency Over-seers,” American Political Science Review 54 (1986): 911–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9. See especially Wilson, James Q., The Politics of Regulation (New York: Basic Books, 1980)Google Scholar. Wilson has been most responsible for popularizing this environmental typology, which has found its way into both the economic theory of politics and the positive theory of institutions.

10. I should say at the outset that, although a truly well-balanced treatment of NLRB politics would take systematic account of the courts, I will not attempt to do so here. The courts place important constraints on what agency decision makers can do and provide important points of access for business and labor in their attempts to shape NLRB policy. But the central themes of the following analysis would not be altered in any fundamental way were the courts dealt with explicitly.

11. On the politics surrounding the creation and early years of the NLRB, see Gross, James A., The Making of the National Labor Relations Board (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1974)Google Scholar; Berstein, Irving, The New Deal Collective Bargaining Policy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1950)Google Scholar, and Turbulent Years (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970); Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr, The Politics of Upheaval (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960)Google Scholar; Tomlins, Christopher L., The State and the Unions: Labor Relations, Law, and the Organized Labor Movement in America, 1880–1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Irons, Peter H., The New Deal Lawyers (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982)Google Scholar.

12. On the politics leading up to Taft-Hartley, see especially Gross, James A., The Reshaping of the National Labor Relations Board (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1981)Google Scholar.

13. For an overview of the provisions of the Wagner and Taft-Hartley acts, as well as other aspects of the board's mandate, see McCulloch, Frank W. and Bornstein, Tim, The National Labor Relations Board (New York: Praeger Press, 1974)Google Scholar.

14. Perhaps the most exhaustive account of the NLRB'S tumultuous politics in the Truman and early Eisenhower years is provided by Scher, Seymour, “The National Labor Relations Board and Congress: A Study of Legislative Control of Regulatory Activity” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1956)Google Scholar. I draw on his account here and in the remaining paragraphs of this section.

15. See Greenstone, J. David, Labor in American Politics (New York: Knopf, 1969)Google Scholar; Slichter, Sumner H., “Are We Becoming a ‘Laboristic’ State?” New York Times Magazine, 05 16, 1948: 11ff.Google Scholar; Slichter, Sumner H., Healy, James J., and Livernash, E. Robert, The Impact of Collective Bargaining on Management (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1960)Google Scholar; Brody, David, Workers in Industrial America: Essays on the Twentieth Century Struggle (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980)Google Scholar.

16. As I point out later, there are two exceptions (prior to the full-scale battles of the late 1970s): the politics of Landrum-Griffin and the unions' attempt to repeal 14(B) in 1965. But these were not of great consequence for the structure of NLRB politics. I should also note that the shift away from Congress included the appropriations committees, which I do not discuss in this article. The NLRB is a reactive agency, processing cases as they come in, and its budget goes to process the caseload. There is substantial agreement among the NLRB, the OMB (previously BOB), and the appropriations committees about the tight linkage of budget and administrative effectiveness; and, although the standard belief is that business benefits from delay, whereas labor is hurt, business has not (with rare exceptions) made systematic efforts to pressure for reduced budgets. Most participants, even within business, seem to favor an efficient NLRB. Moreover, the aspects of agency performance they most want to influence, the board's final decisions, are unrelated to the budget anyway. Thus, it is not surprising that the NLRB'S budget has been all but depoliticized. In effect, it is determined by a technical formula relating money to expected caseload.

17. On the unions' organizational decline, see, for example, Lipset, Seymour Martin, ed., Unions in Transition (San Francisco: Institute for Contemporary Studies, 1986)Google Scholar; Freeman, Richard B. and Medoff, James L., What Do Unions Do? (New York: Basic Books, 1984)Google Scholar.

18. On the transformation of labor relations within big business, see Kochan, Thomas A. and Capelli, Peter, “The Transformation of the Industrial Relations and Personnel Function,” in Osterman, Paul, ed., Internal Labor Markets (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1984)Google Scholar; Golden, Clinton S. and Parker, Virginia D., Causes of Industrial Peace under Collective Bargaining (New York: Harper, 1955)Google Scholar; Strauss, George, “Industrial Relations: Time of Change,” Industrial Relations 23 (Winter 1984): 115Google Scholar; Mills, D. Quinn, “Management Performance,” in Steiber, Jack, McKersie, Robert B., and Mills, D. Quinn, eds., U.S. Industrial Relations 1950–1980: A Critical Assessment (Madison, Wise.: Industrial Relations Research Association, 1981)Google Scholar; Freeman, Audrey, Managing Labor Relations (New York: The Conference Board, 1978)Google Scholar.

19. A nice illustration of the political cleavage between big-business moderates and small-business extremists can be found in Scher, “The National Labor Relations Board and Congress.” See also Levitan, Sar A. and Cooper, Martha R., Business Lobbies (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984)Google Scholar; and Green, Mark and Buchsbaum, Andrew, The Corporate Lobbies: Political Profiles of the Business Roundtable and the Chamber of Commerce (Washington, D.C.: Public Citizen, 1980)Google Scholar.

20. The analysis of appointments is based largely on interviews with participants. In al-most every case, individuals requested confidentiality—in part because the labor relations community is fairly small and tightly knit, and they do not want to go on record as having said anything disparaging or controversial about their acquaintances. At this stage, at least, I am accordingly not in a position to indicate through citations who said what.

21. On the logic of cooperation among self-interested actors, see Axelrod, Robert, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1984)Google Scholar.

22. See Moe, Terry M., “The Politicized Presidency,” in Chubb, John E. and Peterson, Paul E., The New Direction in American Politics (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1985)Google Scholar.

23. Perhaps the most striking example of labor's electoral influence on a Republican president came in 1972 when Nixon, courting Teamster support, acceded to their demand that he reappoint the liberal John Fanning.

24. Note that the repeated-game logic of cooperation applies to the historical emergence of these norms, just as it does to the relationship between business and labor in their struggle for influence. See Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation, for discussion of its widespread applicability to politics. The literature on appointments per se, however, is not oriented by this or any other theory. The most comprehensive overview can be found in Mackenzie, G. Calvin, The Politics of Presidential Appointments (New York: Free Press, 1981)Google Scholar.

25. Since Watergate, senators have been somewhat more likely to scrutinize presidential appointees in general. But the extent of this is exaggerated by media accounts of a few spectacular cases. If there has been any breakdown in the norm of deference to the president, it has been of only marginal importance.

26. See Moe, Terry M., “Control and Feedback in Economic Regulation: The Case of the NLRB,” American Political Science Review 79 (1985): 10941116CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McCulloch and Bornstein, The National Labor Relations Board; Delorme, Charles D., Hill, R. C., and Wood, Norman J., “The Determinants of Voting by the National Labor Relations Board on Unfair Labor Practice Cases: 1955–1975,” Public Choice 37 (1981): 207–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cooke, William N. and Gautschi, Frederick H. III, “Political Bias in NLRB Unfair Labor Practice Decisions,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 35 (1982): 539–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McGuiness, Kenneth, The New Frontier NLRB (Washington, D.C.: Labor Policy Association, 1963)Google Scholar.

27. Because of its specificity, I should point out that this material is based on interviews with Farmer, Stanley Strauss (legal counsel to Philip Rodgers), and other familiar with the Eisenhower board. The same basic story is told by a long line of participants about subsequent boards.

28. His professionalism did not rule out all strategic behavior, of course. In order to ensure greater control over policy, for instance, Farmer temporarily did away with decision making by three-member panels and required that all cases be heard by the full board. Similarly, he deferred some controversial cases until, with Eisenhower's appointment of Beeson in 1954, he had a new majority. But strategy was not allowed to violate the sanctity of decisions on individual cases.

29. For accounts of NLRB personnel problems (at all levels) during the early years—along with the political problems they caused—see Gross, The Reshaping of the National Labor Relations Board, and Scher, “The National Labor Relations Board and Congress.”

30. For an account of the politics surrounding Landrum-Griffin, see McAdams, Alan K., Power and Politics in Labor Legislation (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964)Google Scholar.

31. See, for example, Goulden, Joseph, Meany (New York: Atheneum, 1972)Google Scholar.

32. The battle over common situs picketing was concerned with whether individual unions should have the legal right to picket an entire construction site; in practice, this would often allow them to shut down work by subcontractors and members of other unions working at the same site, enhancing their economic power in collective bargaining with employers. Labor law reform was concerned more generally with union-supported modifications of the Taft-Hartley Act intended to reduce delays and increase the penalties for employer violations of the law.

33. For accounts of these turbulent years, see, for example, Levitan and Cooper, Business Lobbies; Green and Buchsbaum, The Corporate Lobbies.

34. The following is based on interviews with John Fanning, Betty Murphy, Donald Zimmerman, John Truesdale, Robert Thompson (Chamber of Commerce), Randy Hale (National Association of Manufacturers), Douglas Soutar (appointments activist for business), Lawrence Gold and Thomas Donohue (AFL-CIO), Robert Baptiste (Teamster lawyer), and many others.

35. The following is based largely on interviews and news accounts. For general treatments of Reagan's appointments strategy, see National Academy of Public Administration, Recruiting Presidential Appointees (Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Public Administrations, 1985); and Nathan, Richard, The Administrative Presidency (New York: Wiley, 1983)Google Scholar.

36. See, for example, Congressional Quarterly, Auguest 28, 1982, 2113–14.

37. See National Academy of Public Administration, Recruiting Presidential Appointees.

38. See, for example, Business Week, July 6, 1981, 27–28.

39. See, for example, Kemble, Penn, “The New Antiunion Crusade: How Reagan's NLRB Is Subverting Industrial Democracy,” New Republic, 09 1983, 1820Google Scholar.

40. Business Week, June 11, 1984, 122.

41. Congressional Quarterly, December 29, 1984, 3168.

42. See, for example, Business Week, March 25, 1985, 34.

43. Quoted in Kemble, “The New Antiunion Crusade,” 20.

44. See, for example, Freeman and Medoff, What Do Unions Do?; Strauss, “Industrial Relations: Time of Change”; Leo Troy, “The Rise and Fall of American Trade Unions: The Labor Movement from FDR to RR,” in Lipset, Unions in Transition.

45. See, for example, Downs, Anthony, An Economic Theory of Politics (New York: Harper & Row, 1957)Google Scholar, and Inside Bureaucracy (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1966); Buchanan, James M. and Tullock, Gordon, The Calculus of Consent (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Niskanen, William, Bureaucracy and Representative Government (Chicago: Aldine-Atherton, 1971)Google Scholar.

46. Olson, Mancur, The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971)Google Scholar.

47. See Peltzman, Sam, “Constituency Interest and Congressional Voting,” Journal of Law and Economics 27 (1984): 181210CrossRefGoogle Scholar

48. Peltzman, “Toward a More General Theory of Regulation.”

49. Becker, “A Theory of Competition among Pressure Groups for Political Influence.”

50. For a review and critique of this literature, see Roger Noll, “Economic Perspectives on the Politics of Regulation,” in Richard Schmalensee and Robert Willig, eds., Handbook of Industrial Organization (Amsterdam: Elsevier, forthcoming). See also Derthick, Martha and Quirk, Paul J., The Politics of Deregulation (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1985)Google Scholar; James Q. Wilson, The Politics of Regulation.

51. Coase, Ronald, “The Problem of Social Cost,” Journal of Law and Economics (1960): 144Google Scholar.

52. Coase's theorem, along with its assumption of zero transactions costs, has direct implications—never thoroughly addressed by writers in this tradition, to my knowledge—for the economic theory's perspective on political control and other aspects of institutional politics. It is also inconsistent with Olson's logic of mobilization. These issues will be considered later. For one account (somewhat different from mine) of how transactions costs figure into the economic theory, see Noll, “Economic Perspectives on the Politics of Regulation.”

53. Arrow, Kenneth J., Social Change and Individual Values, rev. ed. (New York: Wiley & Sons, 1963)Google Scholar.

54. See Shepsle, Kenneth A., “Institutional Arrangements and Equilibrium in Multidimensional Voting Models,” American Journal of Political Science 23 (1979): 2760CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shepsle, “Institutional Equilibrium and Equilibrium Institutions”; Riker, William H., “Implications from the Disequilibrium of Majority Rule for the Study of Institutions,” American Political Science Review 74 (1980): 432–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shepsle, Kenneth A. and Weingast, Barry R., “Structure-Induced Equilibrium and Legislative Choice,” Public Choice 37 (1981): 503–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55. In addition to the above cited works, see, for example, Denzau, Arthur T. and Mackay, Robert J., “Gatekeeping and Monopoly Power of Committees: An Analysis of Sincere and Sophisticated Behavior,” American Journal of Political Science 27 (12 1985): 1117–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Weingast, Barry R. and Marshall, William J., “The Industrial Organization of Congress,” Working Papers in Economics (Stanford: Hoover Institution, 1986)Google Scholar.

56. See, for example, Calvert, Randall L., McCubbins, Mathew D., and Weingast, Barry R., “Political Control and Agency Discretion: The Fallacy of Execution” (Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, 08 1986)Google Scholar; Hammond, Thomas H., Hill, Jeffrey S., and Miller, Gary J., “Presidents, Congress, and the ‘Congressional Control of Administration’ Hypothesis” (Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, 08, 1986)Google Scholar; Mackay, Robert J. and Weaver, Carolyn L., “The Power to Veto,” Working Papers in Political Science (Stanford: Hoover Institution, 1986)Google Scholar.

57. See, for example, Weingast, Barry R. and Moran, Mark J., “Bureaucratic Discretion or Congressional Control? Regulatory Policymaking by the Federal Trade Commission,“Journal of Political Economy 91 (1983): 765800CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Weingast, Barry R., “The Congressional-Bureaucratic System: A Principal-Agent Perspective with Applications to the SEC,” Public Choke 44 (1984): 147–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Barke, Richard and Riker, William, “A Political Theory of Regulation with Some Observations on Railway Abandonments,” Public Choice 39 (1982): 73106CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McCubbins, Mathew D. and Schwartz, Thomas, “Congressional Oversight Overlooked: Police Patrols versus Fire Alarms,” American Journal of Political Science 28 (1984): 165–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar;

58. McCubbins, Mathew D., “The Legislative Design of Regulatory Structure,” American Journal of Political Science 29 (1985): 721–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fiorina, Morris P., “Legislative Choice of Regulatory Forms: Legal Process or Administrative Process?Public Choice 39 (1982): 3366CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59. There is an interesting irony at work here: the new economics of organization traces its roots to a seminal article by Coase, in which he argued that organizations arise because of—and therefore are explained by—attempts by rational actors to minimize transactions costs. See Coase, Ronald, “The Nature of the Firm,” Economica 4 (1937): 386405CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Thus, the economic theory of politics and the positive theory of institutions are both grounded in classic articles by Coase—but they are different articles that proceed from diametrically opposed assumptions. His “Nature of the Firm” assumes transactions costs are substantial and uses this to explain the emergence of organizations. “The Problem of Social Cost” argues that, in a world of zero transactions costs, individuals can overcome collective action problems through market exchange. There is nothing inconsistent about the two arguments per se. The economic theory tends to adopt a “negligible transactions costs” view of the world, whereas PTI and the new economics of organization tend to embrace a “high transactions costs” view—with very different consequences, obviously, for their explanations of politics.

60. See Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation; Shepsle, “Institutional Equilibrium and Equilibrium Institutions”; McCubbins, “The Legislative Design of Regulatory Structures”; , Calvert, “The Role of Reputation and Legislative Leadership” (Mimeo, Washington University, St. Louis, 1986)Google Scholar.

61. For a discussion of some of the issues surrounding institutional “inertia,” see Shepsle, “Institutional Equilibrium and Equilibrium Institutions.”

62. Two points should be made here. First, the all-or-nothing nature of majoritarian elections (an institutional property) and candidate strategies (which are institutionally conditioned) imply that virtually identical constituencies might elect politicians with very different support coalitions; even though both politicians might subsequently act as conduits, very different constituency interests would get reflected in their political choices. See Fiorina, Morris P., Representatives, Roll Calls, and Their Constituents (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1974)Google Scholar. Second, because transactions costs are so high, constituents cannot achieve a high degree of control over politicians. Were politicians motivated to pursue their own policy preferences (were they ideological, for instance), they would have some flexibility to do so even in the presence of electoral constraints. PTI typically assumes, however, that politicians care only about reelection and that their policy preferences are entirely induced, so these sorts of control issues are rarely explored. For early attempts to do so, see Kau, James B. and Rubin, Paul H., “Self-Interest, Ideology, and Logrolling in Congressional Voting,” Journal of Law and Economics 22 (1979): 365–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kalt, Joseph and Zupan, Mark, “Capture and Ideology in the Economic Theory of Politics,” American Economic Review 74 (1984): 279300Google Scholar.

63. For a general discussion of these issues, see Moe, Terry M., “Congressional Control of the Bureaucracy: An Assessment of the Positive Theory of ‘Congressional Dominance’,” Legislative Studies Quarterly 12 (1987):CrossRefGoogle Scholar forthcoming; McCubbins and Schwartz, “Congressional Oversight Overlooked.”

64. Acknowledging the significance of transactions costs, for example, would do more than simply justify the theoretical role now accorded Olson's logic of mobilization. It would also lead to the conclusion that political control is often highly problematic—which directly undermines the economic theory's presumed chain of control from groups to politicians to bureaucrats, as well as its claim that public policy can be explained without any attempt to model these links in the chain. By acknowledging the importance of transactions costs, the economists would presumably be led to the kind of theoretical perspective now being developed within the positive theory of institutions.

65. For an attempt to extend Olson's logic to issues of organization, see Moe, Terry M., The Organization of Interests (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980)Google Scholar.

66. An alternative is that Reagan was indeed responding to business pressure, but to the antiunion, small-business elements of his support coalition. Interviews with participants strongly suggest otherwise. The Reagan administration was taking the initiative on these matters, not responding to pressure.

67. See Kalt and Zupan, “Capture and Ideology in the Economic Theory of Politics.”

68. On these issues generally, see Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation, and Weingast, , “A Rational Choice Perspective on Congressional Norms,” American Journal of Political Science 23 (1979): 245–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

69. There have been some promising moves in this direction within PTI, but they still get back to notions of direct control. McCubbins, for instance, argues that agencies are largely controlled by virtue of the structural—programmatic, organizational, procedural—constraints imposed by Congress. Once these are in place, Congress “controls” the agency without intense monitoring and all the rest. His assumption, however, is that legislators design these structural constraints for optimal control—this is their purpose. Thus, it is ultimately grounded in a model of conscious, intentional control. See McCubbins, “The Legislative Design of Regulatory Structure.” Much the same can be said of McCubbins and Schwartz, who argue that legislators have little incentive to engage in continuous oversight for control purposes (“police patrol” oversight), that their incentive instead is to intervene in response to constituency “fire alarms.” When these bells go off, however, they wield their various rewards and sanctions to whip bureaucrats back into line. Again, bureaucrats are held in check by direct efforts to control their behavior. See McCubbins and Schwartz, “Congressional Oversight Overlooked.”

70. See especially Weingast and Moran, “Bureaucratic Discretion or Legislative Control?”

71. This general perspective on professionalism and political control is widely accepted in political science and is not confined to PTI. See, for example, James Q. Wilson, The Politics of Regulation, and Rourke, Francis E., Bureaucracy, Politics, and Public Policy, 3rd ed. (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1984)Google Scholar.

72. See Weingast, “A Rational Choice Perspective on Congressional Norms.”

73. See Wildavsky, Aaron, The Politics of the Budgetary Process, 3rd ed. (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1979)Google Scholar.

74. For a discussion of their relevance to PTI and its further development, see Shepsle, “Institutional Equilibrium and Equilibrium Institutions.”

75. See Romer and Rosenthal, “Modern Political Economy and the Study of Regulation.”

76. Most notably, Cyert, Richard M. and March, James G., A Behavioral Theory of the Firm (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963)Google Scholar.

77. See March and Olsen, “The New Institutionalism,” for a review.

78. See, for example, Keohane, Robert, After Hegemony (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984)Google Scholar; Wagner, R. Harrison, “The Theory of Games and the Problem of International Cooperation,” American Political Science Review 77 (1983): 330–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

79. See, for example, Nordlinger, Eric, On the Autonomy of the Democratic State (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981)Google Scholar.