Legislatures in the Policy Process: The Dilemmas of Economic Policy

In Legislatures in the Policy Process leading specialists in comparative governments reassess the conventional view that legislatures are either marginal to the policy-making process or becoming increasingly so. 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 among 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 on the role of the legislatures in various aspects of economic policy making. These include the influence of the French, German, British and American 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 labor policy.