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Whereas presidents represent the entire nation, members of Congress serve districts and states. Consequently, presidents and members of Congress often disagree not only about the merits of different policies but also about the criteria used to assess them. To investigate the relevance of jurisdictional−and by extension criterial−differences for policymaking, we revisit classic models of bargaining under uncertainty. Rather than define uncertainty about the mapping of one policy into one outcome, as all previous scholars have done, we allow for every policy to generate two politically relevant outcomes, one local and another national. We then identify equilibria in which the president's utility is increasing in the value that a representative legislator assigns to national outcomes. As an application of this theory, we analyze budgetary politics in war and peace. We find that during periods of war, when members of Congress assign greater importance to the very same national outcomes that preoccupy presidents, congressional appropriations more closely reflect presidential proposals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an attempt to identify and assess institutional culture in the Welsh Assembly (WA), this article analyses agency and path-dependency in relation to Assembly Member (AM) perspectives, devolution policy and historical documentation. As primary agents, AMs were posed a number of questions regarding the initial rationales for an Assembly and whether the new institution reflected the cultural tendencies of its incoming membership. In order to identify and understand relationships between agency and path-dependency, this article identifies a distinction between the WA and individual actors. Distinctions between organisational and individual levels identify how different institutions fit together and illustrate relationships between path-dependency and agency. These relationships allow theoretical and empirical insights into cultural difference between the emerging WA and pre-devolution Welsh political institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a psychodynamic perspective on the relationship between an administrator and an advisor. The article examines ways in which bureaucratic incentive systems in which administrators work, as well as the advising relationship itself, contribute to an ambivalence toward an advisor. This ambivalence is expressed in a desire simultaneously to find that the adviser is powerful and to render the advisor impotent. The analysis forecasts on ways in which the advisor's status as outsider, perceived as that of intruder, contributes to efforts to withhold information from the advisor, to discredit the advisor's competence, to sabotage the advisor's recommendations, and to scapegoat the advisor. All advising relationships contain the potential for such efforts, and effective advising depends on a recognition of and response to this potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]