Final voting in legislatures
研究美国国会最终投票的时间、顺序和结果，认为立法机构是成本高昂且不完美的组织，投票规则和制度源于内部控制问题，对理解立法者行为有重要意义。
In representative democracies, such as the United States, legislatures provide the transmission mechanism through which pressure from private interests becomes public policy. Considerable attention has been given in the literature to explanations of the relevant forces that appear to be driving the legislative process. For example, much research has focused on the relative impact of economic vs. ideological influences on congressional voting behavior. In this approach, the way that legislators vote on proposed legislation is modeled as a function of the preferences of various economic and ideological interests groups, including the legislator's own preferences for wealth and ideology (James Kau and Paul Rubin, 1979; Joseph Kalt and Mark Zupan, 1984; Sam Peltzman, 1985). Missing from this approach is the idea that when legislatures are the transmission mechanism, they are costly and imperfect organizations for generating political influence (Gary Becker, 1983). As such, rules and institutions will emerge that are related to problems of internal control within the organization of a legislature. In this paper, we focus on the role of floor voting from the standpoint of legislator organization and control. We seek to expand the interpretation of the meaning of floor voting activity by examining the timing, sequence, and outcomes of such votes. Specifically, we look at final floor voting in the U.S. Congress. The patterns described in the analysis below suggest that a broader analytical perspective on the economic function of floor voting is required. The findings also suggest that to identify more precisely the forces that are driving legislator voting behavior, it is important to recognize the role of legislative transactional costs and institutional constraints. In Section I, the conceptual framework for the empirical results is discussed in more detail. The purpose is not to develop a fullblown theory of legislative organization, rather, it is to focus the reader's attention on several hypotheses about the function of final floor voting as a device for controlling legislator behavior within the legislature. Empirical results, including an explanation of the timing and sequence of final votes on bills, are reported in Section II. The data for these tests are drawn from legislative activities in the U.S. House of Representatives during the 96th and 98th Congresses. Some concluding remarks are offered in Section III.