This study asks how communication shapes the uptake of expert-produced information by decision-makers in spatial (land-use) planning. The authors contribute a mixed-method investigation of Italian regional lawmakers and local decision-makers, examining whether and how accessible language, formats and channels affect understanding and legislative behavior when documents are technical and highly specialized.
This study asks how gender and status shape conversational dynamics in parliament and highlights interactional asymmetries as a mechanism of marginalization. Using parliamentary question-and-answer exchanges from Croatia, the authors analyze how MPs adjust the frequency, length and depth of engagement depending on the gender and executive status of interlocutors. The contribution frames withholding speech and abbreviated engagement as a form of non-cooperation that can reproduce parliaments as masculine institutions while shaping oversight quality.
This paper asks whether and how electoral rules affect politicians’ incentives to pursue programmatic redistribution, exploiting France’s switch to—and later abandonment of—proportional representation in the interwar period. Using new data on deputies’ legislative initiatives and manifesto commitments, the authors compare the same politicians under different electoral rules to isolate how open-list PR versus single-member majoritarian rules related to programmatic effort in both parliamentary behavior and campaigning. The contribution is a within-politician comparison that tests whether open-list PR reduced programmatic redistribution relative to majoritarian rules, and situates the results in dialogue with both economic and political-science theories of electoral systems.
This article builds a new database of physician members of the U.S. Congress (PMCs) and links those biographical data to lawmaking activity to examine whether PMCs differ from other members in sponsoring and passing health policy. The authors assemble information on PMCs' years served, gender, and party affiliation since 1921 and merge those data with measures of lawmaking activity from 1973 onward, then compare PMCs to other members on health-policy sponsorship and success. The study's central contribution is a systematic, comparative description of PMCs' legislative behavior and effectiveness on health issues, reported with qualifications about the scope and time coverage of the merged data.
This study asks whether executives exploit gaps between legislative sessions to pursue policy by unilateral action, and when legislatures can block that tactic. Using variation across US states in intersession timing, divided versus unified government, and whether legislatures control special session timing, the authors identify conditions under which governors increase executive orders during adjournments. The central contribution is evidence—drawn from state-level analysis—that intersession breaks create opportunities for executive unilateralism, but only when legislatures lack the power to call or control special sessions.