AGENT DISCRETION, REGULATORY POLICY-MAKING, AND DIFFERENT INSTITUTIONAL ARRANGEMENTS

This paper examines agent discretion that is a result of the structure of the legislative process. Based on several distributions of lawmaki ng powers, different games are analyzed in which players decide on reg ulatory policies. The analysis shows that agent discretion increases a s lawmaking powers are differentiated and assigned to specialized play ers. Particularly, monopoly initiation power, which allows a player to act as a gatekeeper, has a substantial impact on discretion. Agent di scretion will be even larger when these players also have heterogenous preferences. The framework that is developed in this paper permits co mparisons across different political systems with regard to agent disc retion and legislative control on policymaking.