Party System Institutionalization and the Institutionalization of Legislatures.

This paper seeks to understand the relationship between party system and legislative institutionalization. Much of the existing research on legislative organization suggests that parties create legislative rule sand institutions as means to capture the gains from legislative trades (e.g., Aldrich, 1995; Cox and McCubbins, 2005; Cox and McCubbins, 1993). If parties create rules to benefit their interests, this raises two questions. First, is legislative institutionalization the result of partisan decisions? And, if so, how does the institutionalization of the party system impact legislative institutionalization? This paper seeks to begin answering these questions by examining the relationship between party system and legislative institutionalization in the U.S. The results show strong correlation between the two [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]