A Rational Choice Perspective on Congressional Norms

This paper begins with a contrast between the conclusions of theoretical and empirical work on distributive policy-making. The former predicts that a minimum winning coalition will make public policy; the latter reveals universal or unanimous coalitions. This paper presents a model whose predictions conform to empirical findings. It first defines a "Distributive Legislative Game" and then shows that the set of minimum winning coalitions is the core of the game. To explain the observation of unanimous coalitions, it is shown that another game, the "Universalism Legislative Game," which allows only the coalition of the whole, dominates the previous game in the sense that the ex ante expected benefits are higher for all legislators. The observed "norm" of universal coalitions in Congress is thus interpreted as legislators choosing the rules of the game to maximize their expected benefits.