Legislative Decision Making and Substantive Policy Information: Models of Information Flow

Abstract

Models of legislative decision making have not adequately connected voting choices with the activities which structure voting alternatives, nor have they included the roles of specialist legislators and their staffs. Here we develop two-stage and threestage models of legislative decision making from existing research findings in information flow. We then test these models in the California Legislature, assessing how well the three-stage model fits decision making there and investigating the link between legislative staff and their information sources.