this information building function, with committee systems that break down
policy-making responsibilities according to distinct jurisdictions. The extent
to which legislatures become repositories of policy expertise, however, varies
enormously.
- 4 Decisiveness
The size and diversity of legislatures also reXects a speciWc challenge. The number
of policy options available in any political environment is generally vast.
Well-known theoretical problems of collective decision-making among multiple
actors over large choice sets include indeterminacy and the potential for cycling
among alternatives. Remedies to these problems can involve distributing proced-
ural rights among legislators, providing some with special authorities to block
proposals, to make privileged proposals, or some combination of these. These
remedies, in turn, can become sources of contentiousness, especially to the extent
that they generate inequalities among legislators in their ability to inXuence
collective decisions. At any rate, legislatures are supposed to boil down the poten-
tially inWnite number of policy options available to a manageable and coherent set
of alternatives, among which a meaningful collective decision can be reached.
- 5 Checks
Notwithstanding the privileged place of majorities in almost all democracies,
unrestrained majority rule is widely mistrusted as subject to excesses and abuse
of minority rights. Opposition groups may use the legislature as a forum to oppose,
and perhaps to obstruct, actions by majority coalitions. Moreover, legislatures
everywhere are embedded in broader institutional environments in which policy-
making decisions depend on multiple actors. Legislatures may challenge the
actions of executives who act, to varying degrees, independently. The capacity for
checking majority action within legislatures depends on the distribution of
procedural rights among members; and the capacity for checking external actors
depends on the distribution of policy-making authorities across branches and
across legislative chambers in bicameral systems. In all cases, however, the desir-
ability of legislative checks rests on much the same foundation as the normative
properties of legislatures discussed previously. Checks should reveal information
about policies and about the motivations of their advocates that might not have
been disclosed otherwise. In doing so, checks should encourage deliberation and
foster accountability. Finally, checks may undermine decisiveness in the short run
legislative organization 433