IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/apsrev/v62y1968i1p144-168_2.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Institutionalization of the U.S. House of Representatives

Author

Listed:
  • Polsby, Nelson W.

Abstract

Most people who study politics are in general agreement, it seems to me, on at least two propositions. First, we agree that for a political system to be viable, for it to succeed in performing tasks of authoritative resource allocation, problem solving, conflict settlement, and so on, in behalf of a population of any substantial size, it must be institutionalized. That is to say, organizations must be created and sustained that are specialized to political activity. Otherwise, the political system is likely to be unstable, weak, and incapable of servicing the demands or protecting the interests of its constituent groups. Secondly, it is generally agreed that for a political system to be in some sense free and democratic, means must be found for institutionalizing representativeness with all the diversity that this implies, and for legitimizing yet at the same time containing political opposition within the system.

Suggested Citation

  • Polsby, Nelson W., 1968. "The Institutionalization of the U.S. House of Representatives," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 62(1), pages 144-168, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:62:y:1968:i:1:p:144-168_2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0003055400000137/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sarah Binder, 2020. "How we (should?) study Congress and history," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 185(3), pages 415-427, December.
    2. Scott H. Ainsworth, 1997. "Representation and Institutional Stability," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 9(2), pages 147-165, April.
    3. Nikoleta Yordanova, 2011. "The European Parliament: In need of a theory," European Union Politics, , vol. 12(4), pages 597-617, December.
    4. Yuriy O. Guyvoronskiy & Svetlana A. Karandashova & Elena V. Sirotkina & Anastasia Y. Shishorina, 2014. "The Institutionalization Of The Party System In Russia: Opportunities And Threats At The Elections Of Governors," HSE Working papers WP BRP 17/PS/2014, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
    5. Ndlovu, Nicholas. P. & Borrass, Lars, 2021. "Promises and potentials do not grow trees and crops. A review of institutional and policy research in agroforestry for the Southern African region," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).
    6. Kroszner, Randall S & Stratmann, Thomas, 1998. "Interest-Group Competition and the Organization of Congress: Theory and Evidence from Financial Services' Political Action Committees," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(5), pages 1163-1187, December.
    7. Byung‐Jae Lee & Tae Wan Kim & Jaekwon Suh & O. Fiona Yap, 2021. "Local government performance and democratic consolidation: Explaining ordinance proposal in Busan Metropolitan Council," Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 8(1), pages 15-41, January.
    8. Charles J Finocchiaro & Jeffery A Jenkins, 2016. "Distributive politics, the electoral connection, and the antebellum US Congress: The case of military service pensions," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 28(2), pages 192-224, April.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:62:y:1968:i:1:p:144-168_2. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/psr .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.