COMMITMENT, DEFERENCE, AND LEGISLATIVE INSTITUTIONS

Informational theories of legislative institutions have demonstrated t he potential collective gains from committee specialization due to the use of restrictive amendment procedures. For these benefits to be rea lized, however, the floor majority must overcome a commitment problem. I demonstrate that in a multistage game, majority rule, combined with the fact that generations of legislators overlap, allows the legislat ure to solve the commitment problem and to sustain legislative norms a nd institutions even if legislators are ''finitely lived.'' The model suggests that rather than restrictive amendment procedures, it is the committee's expectation of floor deference that sustains committee spe cialization. As a consequence, legislative norms may collapse due to a n unexpected influx of new members even if the distribution of prefere nces in the legislature does not change. Finally, I discuss consequenc es for a comparative study of legislative institutions.