Legislatures in the Policy Process: The Dilemmas of Economic Policy(Advances in Political Science)

The role legislatures play in the public policy-making process is of central concern to political scientists. Conventional wisdom claims that all legislatures except perhaps the US Congress are either marginal to the policy-making process or becoming increasingly so. In Legislatures in the Policy Process leading specialists in comparative government reassess this view and significantly advance research on the influence of legislatures. In the opening chapter, David Olson and Michael Mezey identify three categories of variables - external influences, internal influences and policy attributes - which can affect the policy-making role of legislatures. They specify sixteen hypotheses that describe the relationship between these variables and the policy participation of legislatures. In subsequent chapters, these hypotheses are examined through a series of individual and comparative country studies which focus upon the role of the legislatures in various aspects of economic policy making. These include the influence of the French, German, British and US legislatures on monetary policy; the role of the Brazilian Congress and Indian Parliament in computer and electronics policy and the part played by the Polish Sejm in labour policy.

Table of Contents:
Preface; Acknowledgments; Part I. Introduction: 1. Parliaments and public policy David M. Olson and Michael L. Mezey; Part II. Macroeconomic Policy: 2. Legislative oversight of monetary policy in France, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States Lance T. Leloup and John T. Woolley; 3. The US Congress and credit policy - institutional and policy implications Dennis S. Ippolito; 4. Industrial policy agenda and options in Congress and the executive in the United States David M. Olson, Roger H. Davidson and W. Thomas Kephart; Part III. Microeconomic Policy: 5. The British House of Commons and industrial policy David M. Wood; 6. Congress and the development of a computer industry policy in Brazil Abdo I. Baaklini and Antonio Carlos Pojo Do Rego; 7. Electronics policy and the Indian parliament R. B. Jain; 8. The Polish parliament and labor legislation during Solidarity David S. Mason; Part IV. Conclusion: 9. Parliaments and public policy: an assessment Michael L. Mezey; Name index; General index.

Review :
"This is a very interesting book which provides readers with a wealth of information about the roles played by legislative bodies in making and implementing economic policy. More importantly the book offers students of comparative public policy a convincing set of observations that are derived from genuinely comparative examinations of legislatures working in different constitutional and contextual circumstances...This is a straightforward, honest effort to examine the roles of legislatures across different systems...Yet, this effort goes well beyond most comparative examinations which rarely attain the degree of comparative consistency that is managed here." Policy Currents