英文摘要 |
Negative agenda setting, which is defined as a power to block a bill from being considered on the floor for its second reading, has been found to be a majority party's most robust legislative power in several legislatures. While existing theories have greatly contributed to our understanding of how such a power shapes legislative dynamics, they are not quite applicable to Taiwan's legislature. This paper develops a new theoretical framework for negative agenda setting by incorporating Taiwan's unique legislative institutions, i.e., more pre-floor stages and multiple chairs of each committee. With considerable costs of disciplining and mobilizing party members on the floor, each party has strong incentives to kill a bill before the second reading, with their efforts focusing on the stage entailing least mobilization costs. The institutional change of party negotiation empowers us to derive additional important hypotheses. Overall, our hypotheses gain vast empirical support from newly collected data from 1993 through 2011, implying that party discipline and mobilization costs play a key role in negative agenda setting in the legislature. |