A Legislative Logic for the Rise of Dominant Legislative Parties in Established and New Democracies.

Dominant legislative parties - parties that control the policy-making process in the legislature - have long been a focus of scholarly inquiry. Previous work has focused on the electoral logic by which an organization evolves into a dominant legislative party. We argue that while an elections-centric approach may explain some cases, it does not address the numerous cases in which parties build a dominant position in the legislature over the course of several elections through a combination of strategic behavior between and during electoral contests. Using a computational method for estimating uncovered sets using legislator preference data, we show how dominant legislative parties can emerge from legislative proceedings. We illustrate our theory with data from Israel, Russia, and Ukraine. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]