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Publications by Author: Shepsle, Kenneth A.

2009
Shepsle, Kenneth A, Torun Dewan, and Keith Dowding. 2009. Rational Choice Politics. SAGE Publications. Publisher's Version Abstract

The formal modeling techniques of rational choice theory have become central to the discipline of political science, for example with regard to the understanding of the working of legislatures, coalition governments, executive-bureaucracy relations, or electoral systems. The collection includes the very best work in this field, as well as an editors’ introduction to each volume that describes the importance of the articles and their place in political science.

  • Volume I: Social Choice and Equilibrium
  • Volume II: Voting, Elections and Electoral Systems
  • Volume III: Legislatures and Pressure Politics
  • Volume IV: Bureaucracy, Constitutional Arrangements and the State
(Four Volume Set)
2008
Shepsle, Kenneth A, and Alvin Rabushka. 2008. Politics in Plural Societies: A Theory of Democratic Instability. Pearson Education. Publisher's Version Abstract
This landmark study in the field of comparative politics is being celebrated for its return to print as the newest addition to the "Longman Classics in Political Sciencer" series. Politics in Plural Societies presents a model of political competition in multi-ethnic societies and explains why plural societies, and the struggle for power within them, often erupt with inter-ethnic hostility. Distinguished scholars Alvin Rabushka and Kenneth Shepsle collaborate again in this reissuing of their classic work to demonstrate in a new epilogue the persistence of the arguments and evidence first offered in the book. They apply this thesis to the multi-ethnic politics of countries that are of great interest today: Iraq, Lebanon, Sudan, Yugoslavia, and more.
(Longman Classics Edition)
2007
Shepsle, Kenneth A, and Michael Kellermann. 2007. “Congressional Careers, Committee Assignments, and Seniority Randomization in the U.S. House of Representatives”. Abstract
We consider the effects of the initial assignments of committee seniority on the career outcomes of Democratic members of the House of Representatives from 1949 to 2006. When more than one freshman representative is assigned to a committee, positions in the seniority queue are established by lottery. This ensures that, within these groups of freshmen, queue positions are uncorrelated with other legislator characteristics. This natural experiment allows us to estimate the causal effect of seniority on a variety of outcomes. We find that lower ranked committee members are less likely to serve as subcommittee chairs on their initial committee, are more likely to transfer to other committees than members who receive higher ranks, and have fewer sponsored bills passed in the jurisdiction of their initial committee. On the other hand, we find little evidence that the results of the seniority randomization have a net effect on reelection, the total length of time the members serve in the House, or the total number of sponsored bills passed during their tenure.
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Shepsle, Kenneth A, and Abhinay Muthoo. 2007. “Information, Institutions, and Constitutional Arrangements”. Abstract
This paper develops a theory of optimal institutional structure for staggered-term (OLG-type) organizations such as legislative bodies like the US Senate and the Indian Rajya Sabha. Our model is a simple stochastic game of a particular kind of multi-principal, multi-agent dynamic relationship. It captures interactions in each of an infinite number of periods on the one hand, amongst two or more legislators (legislative policy-making), and on the other hand between each legislator and his principal/voters (elections). Two key institutional features of these interactions are jointly determined by the principals (from the distinct electoral districts) when the legislature is founded, at the constitutional moment. We emphasize two main results. First, the principals will agree to institute a mechanism that endows (imperfectly informed) legislators in each period with all the required information about the history of play in the legislature. Transparency of agentactions to agents (in order to enable agents to hold each other to account) is a key and robust feature of the principal-optimal institutional structure. Second, under some circumstances, the principals will be indifferent to the structure of legislative procedures (which determine the allocation of agenda power amongst the agents). We apply our results to the US Senate.
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Shepsle, Kenneth A, and Silvia Console-Battilana. 2007. “Nominations for Sale”. Abstract
Models of nomination politics in the US often …find "gridlock" in equilibrium because of the super-majority requirement in the Senate for the confo…rmation of presidential nominees. A blocking coalition often prefers to defeat any nominee. Yet empirically nominations are successful. In the present paper we explore the possibility that senators can be induced to vote contrary to their nominal (gridlock-producing) preferences through contributions from the president and/or lobbyists, thus breaking the gridlock and con…forming the nominee. We model contributions by the president and lobbyists according to whether payment schedules are conditioned on the entire voting pro…file, the vote of a senator, or the outcome. We analyze several extensions to our baseline approach, including the possibility that lobbyists may …find it more productive to offer inducements to the president in order to affect his proposal behavior, rather than trying to induce senators to vote for or against a given nominee.
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Shepsle, Kenneth A, Samuel Abrams, Robert Van Houweling, and Peter Hanson. 2007. “The Senate Electoral Cycle and Bicameral Appropriations Politics”. Abstract
We consider the consequences of the Senate electoral cycle and bicameralism for distributive politics, introducing the concept of contested credit claiming, i.e. that members of a state’s House and Senate delegations must share the credit for appropriations that originate in their chamber with delegation members in the other chamber. Using data that isolates appropriations of each chamber, we test a model of the strategic incentives contested credit claiming creates. Our empirical analysis indicates that the Senate electoral cycle induces a back-loading of benefi…ts to the end of senatorial terms, but that the House blunts this tendency with countercyclical appropriations. Our analysis informs our understanding of appropriations earmarking, and points a way forward in studying the larger consequences of bicameral legislatures.
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2001
Shepsle, Kenneth A. 2001. “Working and Shirking: Equilibrium in Public Goods Games with Overlapping Generations of Players”. Abstract

In overlapping–generations models of public goods provision, in which the contribution decision is binary and lifetimes are finite, the set of symmetric subgame–perfect equilibria can be categorized into three types: seniority equilibria in which players contribute (effort) until a predetermined age and then shirk thereafter; dependency equilibria in which players initially shirk, then contribute for a set number of periods, then shirk for the remainder of their lives; and sabbatical equilibria in which players alternately contribute and shirk for periods of varying length before entering a final stage of shirking. In a world without discounting we establish conditions for equilibrium and demonstrate that for any dependency equilibrium there is a seniority equilibrium that Pareto–dominates it ex ante. We proceed to characterize generational preferences over alternative seniority equilibria. We explore the aggregation of these preferences by embedding the public goods provision game in a voting framework and solving for the majority–rule equilibria. In this way we can think of political processes as providing one natural framework for equilibrium selection in the original public–goods provision game.

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