英文摘要 |
There are two modes of legislative participation: formal and informal. The former is the both public and formal behavior of legislators in the legislative process - incuding initiating, sponsoring, speaking, and voting. The latter mode of participation relates to those activities behind the scene - including persuasion, negotiation, threats, and seduction. Most research focuses only on the formal part of legislative participation. If there exists a striking discrepancy between formal and informal participation, however, those focusing only on the formal part may not observe the whole picture of legislators' participation in the legislative process. There are three major purposes to this exploratory research. The first is to uncover the relationship between formal and informal participation across different bill categories. The second is to uncover the influential factors in legislators' formal and informal participation. Do parties, bill categories, and legislator characteristics affect legislators' formal and informal participation in different ways and degrees? The third purpose is to discuss appropriate methods to observe and measure formal and informal legislative participation for future studies. |