Legislative Decision Making and the Size Principle

This article explains why previous empirical tests of the size principle have failed to produce conclusive results. Particular stress is given to formalizing certain aspects of the legislative process that cause minimum-winning coalitions to comprehend very large majorities; the implications of this process for legislative outcomes are explored by means of a simple Monte-Carlo simulation. It also proposes a new test of the size principle and reports some initial empirical findings based upon this test