A legislature is a core institution of the state. Its core defining function is that of giving assent to measures of public policy that are to be binding (Norton, 1990, p. 1). The process by which a measure becomes a law has four principal stages: gestation, drafting, deliberation and adoption, and implementation (see Norton, 2013, pp. 70–7) The legislature is principally and necessarily core to the third stage. Prior to giving assent to a measure, it will normally debate its merits. In some legislatures, primarily in non-democratic nations, the debate may be perfunctory or formal. In others, it may be extensive and measures may be amended, sometimes rejected, as a result of the deliberations. Legislatures have been studied since one can identify them as having come into being, but over the past century scholarly study has been both limited and narrow. It has been limited because of the perception that, as Lord Bryce notably argued, legislatures are in decline (Bryce, 1921, pp. 367–77). Power, he argued, had departed legislatures and gone elsewhere. Mass membership political parties, operating in an era of an expanding franchise, ensured executive dominance of the legislature and the approval of its measures. The focus of study thus shifted elsewhere, not least to executives and bureaucracies. When legislatures were studied, not least those legislatures that did exert some capacity to allocate values (most notably the US Congress), the focus was what happened in the legislature during the passage of a measure. When in post-war years there was a shift in study in the US to behavioural analysis, there was a focus on how members operated within the legislature in determining the outcome of legislation. Recent years, especially since the 1980s, have seen a shift in scholarly attention to legislatures (Martin et al., 2014; Norton, 2020) with some groundbreaking research, not least in the USA. As Martin, Saalfeld and Strom observed, there was a shift from the macro-level analyses of ‘old’ institutionalism to a micro level of analysis, inspired by a general rise of behaviouralism in the social sciences. ‘In this conception of a political system the formal institutions of government were reduced to the “black box”, where the conversion

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立法后审查的意义

立法机关是国家的核心机构。它的核心定义功能是同意具有约束力的公共政策措施（诺顿，1990，第 1 页）。一项措施成为法律的过程有四个主要阶段：酝酿、起草、审议和通过以及实施（见诺顿，2013 年，第 70-7 页）立法机关主要且必然是第三阶段的核心。在同意一项措施之前，它通常会辩论其优点。在一些立法机关，主要是在非民主国家，辩论可能是敷衍的或正式的。在其他情况下，它可能是广泛的，措施可能会被修改，有时会被拒绝，作为审议的结果。人们对立法机构进行了研究，因为人们可以将它们确定为已经形成，但在过去的一个世纪里，学术研究既有限又狭隘。它之所以受到限制，是因为人们认为，正如布莱斯勋爵特别指出的那样，立法机构正在衰落（布莱斯，1921 年，第 367-77 页）。他争辩说，权力已经离开了立法机关，去了别处。在特许经营权不断扩大的时代运作的大众会员政党确保了立法机关的行政主导地位及其措施的批准。因此，研究的重点转移到其他地方，尤其是高管和官僚机构。当研究立法机关时，尤其是那些确实发挥了某种分配价值的能力的立法机关（最显着的是美国国会），重点是在通过一项措施期间立法机关发生了什么。在战后几年，美国的研究转向行为分析，重点是成员如何在立法机构内运作以决定立法结果。近年来，尤其是自 1980 年代以来，学术界对立法机构的关注发生了转变（Martin 等，2014 年；Norton，2020 年），并进行了一些开创性研究，尤其是在美国。正如 Martin、Saalfeld 和 Strom 所观察到的，受社会科学中行为主义普遍兴起的启发，从“旧”制度主义的宏观分析转向微观分析。'在这种政治制度的概念中，正式的政府机构被简化为“黑匣子”，在那里转换 2020 年）进行了一些开创性的研究，尤其是在美国。正如 Martin、Saalfeld 和 Strom 所观察到的，受社会科学中行为主义普遍兴起的启发，从“旧”制度主义的宏观分析转向微观分析。'在这种政治制度的概念中，正式的政府机构被简化为“黑匣子”，在那里转换 2020）进行了一些开创性的研究，尤其是在美国。正如 Martin、Saalfeld 和 Strom 所观察到的，受社会科学中行为主义普遍兴起的启发，从“旧”制度主义的宏观分析转向微观分析。'在这种政治制度的概念中，正式的政府机构被简化为“黑匣子”，在那里转换