MIKHAIL G. MYAGKOV AND D. RODERICK KIEWIET
Czar Rule in the Russian Congress of People's Deputies?
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXI:5-40
We construct a formal model, based upon the rules and structure of the Russian Congress of People's Deputies, to characterize equilibrium strategies pursued by an agenda-setting Speaker. In conjunction with information about the distribution of preferences in the RCPD, our Czar Rule model yields several testable hypotheses. The model receives some empirical backing, but overall the results of our analyses do not support it. We therefore attribute the conflict between the Yeltsin government and the RCPD to fundamental disagreements over policy and not to internal contradictions in constitutional design.
PATRICIA K. FREEMAN AND LILLIARD E. RICHARDSON, JR.
Explaining Variation in Casework Among State Legislators
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXI:41-56
What variables affect the provision of casework in state legislatures? Using survey data of legislators collected in four states, we examine what influences legislators' commitment of time to the provision of constituency service. We find that several variables affect the amount of time legislators devote to casework: state-level factors, the number of demands made on the legislator, and the legislator's belief about what is important. We also examine the relationship between the legislator's time commitment and different types of service activities.
GARY F. MONCRIEF, JOEL A. THOMPSON, AND KARL T. KURTZ
The Old Statehouse, It Ain't What It Used to Be
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXI:57-72
This paper reports data from a survey sent to all state legislators who have served for more than 15 years. The purpose of the questionnaire was to ascertain the nature and extent of changes in the legislature during the members' tenure. Veteran legislators perceived significant changes in influence structures within the legislature, in the nature of their job, and in the general environment in which they legislate. Variations in some of their perceptions are associated with differences between types of legislatures.
SALLY FRIEDMAN
House Committee Assignments of Women and Minority Newcomers, 1965-1994
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXI:73-81
This paper examines the effects of gender and race on the prestige of House newcomer committee assignments since 1965. Due to the advancement of women and minorities in other areas of social life as well as the changing internal character of Congress, there should be increasing equity in the prestige of their congressional committee assignments. Findings generally confirm the author's expectations, although periodic surges and declines in the data, particularly for women, point up the impact of short-run political conditions. More generally, the data highlight linkages between Congress and the larger social system; continued equity depends on the nature of these linkages.
GARY J. MILLER, THOMAS H. HAMMOND, AND CHARLES KILE
Bicameralism and the Core: An Experimental Test
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXI:83-103
While the primary problem confronting democratic theorists in the past several decades has been majority rule instability, recent formal results suggest that this problem is diminished by long-standing constitutional provisions such as bicameralism. Bicameralism should theoretically be much more likely to create a set of stable and undominated outcomes--a core. This paper reports a series of experiments testing whether individuals partitioned into two chambers do in fact behave as the formal theory of bicameralism predicts. In two sets of trials, the outcome chosen under a given bicameral partition is almost always in the bicameral core for that partition, and a change in the bicameral partition has a statistically significant impact on the choice of outcome.
R. MICHAEL ALVAREZ AND PAUL GRONKE
Constituents and Legislators: Learning About the Persian Gulf War Resolution
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXI:105-27
This study examines how much citizens know about a highly salient roll-call vote: the Gulf War Use of Force Resolution. Citizens' awareness of how their representatives voted, while not great, was not trivial. Drawing on survey response theory, the authors determine that how well citizens are able to recall or guess their representatives' positions is structured by individual characteristics and a reasonable set of contextual cues. In their conclusion, the authors draw implications for the impact of public opinion on foreign policy, the ability of citizens to monitor their representatives in noncampaign periods, and for theories of the representation process.
ROBERT K. GOIDEL AND DONALD A. GROSS
Reconsidering the 'Myths and Realities' of Campaign Finance Reform
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXI:129-49
Our analysis uses simulations to consider the likely impact of campaign finance reform on electoral outcomes and electoral competitiveness. The analysis improves upon previous research by both utilizing more than a single econometric model as a basis for the simulations and utilizing a wide range of campaign finance scenarios. Conclusions as to the likely impact campaign finance reform has on electoral competitiveness rely on the model employed and the type of campaign finance reform considered.
ALAN ROSENTHAL
State Legislative Development: Observations from Three Perspectives
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXI:165-98
Political scientists have viewed modern state legislatures from three
perspectives: legislative reform in the 1960s and 1970s, legislative
professionalization in the 1980s, and most recently legislative
institutionalization. Institutionalization is best indicated by the boundedness
of the legislature from the environment, as specified by personnel
differentiation, normative structure, and managerial autonomy. When various
indicators are taken into account, legislatures appear to be moving in the
direction of deinstitutionalization.
JAMES BUTTON AND DAVID HEDGE
Legislative Life in the 1990s: A Comparison of Black and White State Legislators
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXI:199-218
Although the number of black state legislators has increased dramatically in
the last several decades, there is relatively little known about these important
officeholders and how they compare to their white colleagues. Through a
nationwide survey conducted in 1991-92, we gain some information on these
legislators. The results depict some similarities among black and white
legislators in terms of background characteristics and public policy concerns.
The more obvious trends in the survey findings, however, are the many
significant racial differences between these lawmakers, especially their
perceptions of black legislative life and racial progress. While region, racial
composition of district, party status, and gender serve to condition these
racial disparities, significant differences in black-white legislative views
remain.
JAMES W. ENDERSBY AND KAREN M. MCCURDY
Committee Assignments in the U.S. Senate
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXI:219-33
Because fundamental control over the legislative process occurs not on the
floor but in standing committees, and because assignment to important standing
committees increases members' power to control the legislative agenda,
congressional committee assignments are important in determining the political
and electoral success of incumbents. Changing membership patterns of committees
over time provide some clues on the importance of seats on the committees. Using
data on committee membership for the U.S. Senate for congresses from World War
II to the 103d Congress, we measure the relative value of seats on Senate
committees. We assume that senators who transfer from one committee to another
are increasing their political and electoral capital. Two different measures
developed by Bullock and Sprague and Munger are employed to create an ordering
of Senate committee membership prestige. Committee assignment allocation
processes in the House of Representatives and the Senate produce similar,
expected rankings of legislator preferences among seats on standing committees.
PEVERILL SQUIRE AND ERIC R.A.N. SMITH
A Further Examination of Challenger Quality in Senate Elections
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXI:235-48
In this note we use survey data from the 1988 and 1990 NES Senate Elections
Studies to examine the concept of challenger quality in greater depth than
previous studies have done. We look at our measures of challenger quality from a
number of angles to confirm their utility. We also use the pooled data to show
that they produce the expected relationships with campaign-related variables,
and that they perform better than other measures of challenger quality.
STEPHEN ANSOLABEHERE AND ALAN GERBER
The Effects of Filing Fees and Petition Requirements on U.S. House Elections
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXI:249-64
Recent theoretical work suggests that barriers to entry in political
campaigns can affect who runs for office and how much effort they devote to that
enterprise. We investigate the effects of legal barriers to competition—in the
form of filing fees and petition requirements—on congressional election
results during the 1980s. Higher ballot access requirements significantly
increase the frequency of uncontested seats and decrease the frequency of
retirements. Contrary to Supreme Court opinions, petitions pose as great a
burden on potential challengers as filing fees do.
BARRY RUNDQUIST, JEONG-HWA LEE, AND JUNGHO RHEE
The Distributive Politics of Cold War Defense Spending: Some State Level
Evidence
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXI:265-81
This study evaluates the distributive politics theory. We analyze a pooled
cross-section time series of data on the distribution of prime military
contracts among the states during the period 1965-83. Unlike earlier studies,
this one finds a significant relationship between representation on House and
Senate defense committees and the distribution of military contracts.
GARY MONCRIEF, JOEL A. THOMPSON, AND WILLIAM CASSIE
Revisiting the State of U.S. State Legislative Research
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXI:301-35
Fifteen years ago, in this journal, Malcolm Jewell surveyed the field of
state legislative research. In so doing, he identified some topics about which
we, as a scholarly community, did not have adequate information. He also
suggested some lines of inquiry for further research. In effect, in that 1981
article, Malcolm Jewell helped define the research agenda for a generation of
state legislative scholars by discussing the state of our knowledge in seven
specific areas. In this article we update the state of our knowledge in those
seven areas by surveying more than 160 studies published in the years subsequent
to Jewell's "The State of U.S. State Legislative Research."
ANTHONY GIERZYNSKI AND DAVID BREAUX
Legislative Elections and the Importance of Money
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXI:337-57
In this paper we take the analysis of the role of money in legislative
elections one step beyond the extant literature by examining the factors that
affect the impact of spending on the vote. We hypothesize that two sets of
factors, contextual and conversion, condition money's effect on the vote. The
analysis of data from 12 state house races finds some significant support for
the notion that spending responds to the context and the characteristics of the
race, findings which have important theoretical and practical implications.
SARAH MCCALLY MOREHOUSE
Legislative Party Voting for the Governor's Program
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXI:359-81
This research investigates the linkage between the governor's electoral
party coalition and the governor's coalition within the legislature. Legislators
in 10 states in 1983 are examined for their voting loyalty on the governor's
program bills. In the five state with strong parties, where the parties
"endorse" for governor, party line voting for or against the governor
is quite high; whereas, in the states with nonendorsing parties, there is less
gubernatorial party support and less partisan voting. Party line voting is
enhanced also by unified rather than divided party control of government, and
the governor receives greater legislative support following a strong electoral
showing in the districts of legislators.
RONALD D. HEDLUND AND KEITH E. HAMM
Political Parties as Vehicles for Organizing U.S. State Legislative Committees
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXI:383-408
In this paper we assess the role of political parties in organizing state
legislative committees. This research is guided by an explanation found in
Malcolm E. Jewell's early work on responsible political parties in U.S. state
legislatures and in his more recent assessment of the conditions associated with
state legislative control by strong political parties. We evaluate majority
party representation (MPR) on the membership of all standing committees in 10
state legislative chambers for the last two sessions in each decade of the 20th
century. Findings from two of our earlier studies of majority party
representation on committees are also included.
DIANA DWYRE
Spinning Straw Into Gold: Soft Money and U.S. House Elections
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXI:409-24
Our understanding of congressional campaign finance and party behavior is
incomplete because scholars have not yet examined the millions spent in soft
money by the national parties. This analysis of soft-money spending shows that
federalism and campaign finance regulations provide both opportunities and
constraints that influence the parties' ability to turn soft-money
"straw" into hard-money "gold." A party's level of
hard-money wealth significantly shapes how it spends soft money and helps
explain why the parties pursue different strategies. The analysis suggests that
the parties play a larger role in congressional campaign finance than has been
previously reported, since parties spend soft money in ways that can benefit
House candidates.
ROBERT A. JACKSON
The Mobilization of Congressional Electorates
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXI:425-45
This study examines voter turnout in congressional districts during the 1988
and 1990 elections. Drawing heavily from studies of congressional campaign
finance and vote outcomes, the analyses demonstrate the importance of campaign
context. In addition to the fundamental influence of sociodemographic factors
(e.g., district education level and population density) on turnout, vigorous
campaigns waged by strategic elites increase political excitement and the flow
of information, which in turn spur aggregate participation. In races where the
House incumbent faces opposition, incumbent efforts (measured as campaign
expenditures) have a significant and positive influence on turnout. The
strategic position of the challenger has both direct and indirect effects on
voter turnout, with a strong challenge translating into heavier turnout. In a
nonpresidential year, high-profile senatorial and gubernatorial campaigns also
get out district voters. However, a presidential contest provides a largely
overriding stimulus that diminishes the influence of these state-level races on
voter turnout.
JAMES M. SNYDER, JR.
Constituency Preferences: California Ballot Propositions, 1974-90
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXI:463-88
What effect do their constituencies' voting preferences have on legislators'
roll-call voting patterns? Through a study of citizens' votes on statewide
ballot propositions and legislators' votes on roll calls in California, I find
that when aggregated into legislative districts, the revealed preferences of
California voters can be described by a spatial model with just three
dimensions; that the constituency preference dimensions defined by this spatial
model do an excellent job of predicting the overall roll-call voting patterns in
the California legislature; and that there is evidence of a strong
dimension-by-dimension correspondence between constituency preferences and
legislative roll-call patterns. These findings suggest that the high degree of
constraint found in roll-call voting in many U.S. legislatures may be due to
legislator-constituency linkages.
REBEKAH HERRICK AND DAVID L. NIXON
Is There Life After Congress? Patterns and Determinants of Post-Congressional
Careers
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXI:489-99
Little is known about the political activities of former members of
Congress. Political pundits, journalists, and theories concerning subgovernment
politics suggest former members have lucrative jobs with either bureaucracies or
interest groups, but there is little confirmation of this. In this note we
examine the post-congressional occupations of House members who retired between
1971 and 1992 and find that former members of Congress pursue a wide variety of
careers. While many work for the government or interest groups, former members
are more likely to leave career politics. Additionally, much of the variation in
members' post-congressional careers can be explained by their interests and
opportunities. Members who express interest in remaining politically active or
see career opportunities in politics outside of Congress are likely to find jobs
with the government or with interest groups. Conversely, members who are ill or
have reached retirement age are likely to leave politics.
EDWARD L. LASCHER, JR.
Assessing Legislative Deliberation: A Preface to Empirical Analysis
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXI:501-19
Recent scholarship has stressed the importance of deliberation in
legislative decision making. Yet the empirical basis for claims about
deliberation is weak, and the concept of deliberation itself needs to be
sharpened. In this article I attempt to lay the groundwork for a systematic
analysis of deliberation in real-world legislatures. I provide a framework for
studying deliberation, consider the largely ignored issue of deliberation
quality, and offer a set of indicators for determining the extent and quality of
deliberation. Additionally, I provide testable hypotheses about factors that
promote deliberation. Perhaps most importantly, I provide recommendations for
analyzing the consequences of deliberation.
J. MORGAN KOUSSER
Estimating the Partisan Consequences of Redistricting Plans—Simply
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXI:521-41
Although some judges and political scientists have recently questioned the
idea that it is possible to predict the partisan consequences of redistricting
plans, I demonstrate that it is simple to do so with a pair of OLS equations
that regress voting percentages on major party registration percentages. I test
this model on data for all California Assembly and congressional elections from
1970 through 1994, and compare it to more complicated equations that contain
incumbency and socioeconomic variables. The simplest equations correctly predict
nearly 90% of the results. I show that analogous equations using registration or
votes for minor or even major offices in California, North Carolina, and Texas
can also predict outcomes with considerable accuracy. Using these equations, I
show that the so-called "Burton Gerrymander" of 1980 had minimal
partisan consequences, while the nonpartisan plan instituted by the California
Supreme Court's Special Masters in 1992 was nearly as biased in favor of the
Republicans as the proposal of the Republican party. I also introduce a new
graphic representation of redistricting plans and conclude with a discussion of
some seemingly methodological choices that have important substantive
implications for assessing the fairness of redistricting plans.
SUSAN WEBB HAMMOND
Recent Research on Legislative Staffs
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXI:543-76
In this article, I survey the literature on legislative staffing from 1983
to the present. Recent studies of the staffs of the U.S. Congress, U.S. state
legislatures, and legislatures outside of the United States present new data and
analyses. Research includes increasingly precise and sophisticated analyses of
staff influence and power, and offers perspectives on specialized staff groups,
legislative enterprises, and staff members as candidates for elective office.
Interesting and significant questions remain for further research.
FRANCES E. LEE AND BRUCE I. OPPENHEIMER
Senate Apportionment: Competitiveness and Partisan Advantage
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXII:3-24
This paper examines two unanticipated consequences of the equal representation
of states on Senate elections-competitiveness and partisan advantage. Using a
fixed-effects (LSDV) model that controls for important intervening variables to
test the hypothesis that variation in state population size affects the
competitiveness of Senate elections, we find a far stronger relationship between
state population and electoral competitiveness than have previous works. In
addition, Senate apportionment has had implications for the partisan composition
of the Senate. When we compare the actual outcomes of Senate elections over time
with hypothetical outcomes, which we derive by holding state population
constant, we find that Senate apportionment has had important consequences for
the partisan composition of the Senate in several periods. From the mid-1970s
until (but not including) 1994, Senate apportionment enabled Republicans to hold
seats disproportionate to their party's share of the national Senate vote.
RICK K. WILSON AND CHERYL D. YOUNG
Cosponsorship in the U.S. Congress
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXII:25-43
Over half of all bills introduced in the U.S. Congress are cosponsored, and,
while many observers assume that cosponsorship is crucial to the legislative
process, few have analyzed what it means. We view cosponsorship as a signal
about the content of legislation and ask whether it is a meaningful signal for
members. Specifically we focus on whether cosponsorship influences a bill's
passage. Three types of signals are considered: bandwagon, ideological, and
expertise. Using data drawn from the 99th Congress, we analyze 8,002 House and
Senate bills. Our findings show that cosponsorship is common. However, they also
show that it is an overrated cue. At best it provides a signal concerning
expertise at the outset of the legislative process, but generates a very weak
signal thereafter. In short, cosponsorship has become a routine and rarely
effective aspect of the legislative landscape.
STEVEN D. LEVITT AND CATHERINE D. WOLFRAM
Decomposing the Sources of Incumbency Advantage in the U.S. House
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXII:45-60
This paper develops a model of incumbency advantage that takes into account
candidate quality, and then estimates the parameters of that model using panel
data on the U.S. House from 1948 to 1990. Our approach allows us to go beyond
the previous literature, which has focused primarily on measurement of
incumbency advantage, to a decomposition of its sources. The primary explanation
for the rising incumbency advantage appears to be the increasing ability of
incumbents to deter high-quality challengers. In contrast, direct officeholder
benefits (e.g., franking privileges, media exposure, fund-raising advantages,
etc.) have been relatively stable over time and now account for less than half
of the overall incumbency advantage.
STEPHEN K. MEDVIC AND SILVO LENART
The Influence of Political Consultants in the 1992 Congressional Elections
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXII:61-77
Beginning with the common knowledge that political consultants heavily
influence the outcome of election campaigns, and adding inferences drawn from
the few available academic studies of consultants, we test the hypothesis that
professionally run campaigns in the 1992 U.S. House races were characterized by
higher vote percentages than those without such professionals. We examine only
nonincumbent candidates and find clear support for this hypothesis, both
according to level of campaign professionalization and according to specific
types of political consultants.
L. SANDY MAISEL AND WALTER J. STONE
Determinants of Candidate Emergence in U.S. House Elections: An Exploratory
Study
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXII:79-96
The difficulty with studying the challenger side of the incumbency
effect-the unwillingness of potentially strong challengers to run against U.S.
House incumbents-has been in identifying strong potential candidates who, in
fact, decide not to run. We rely upon a sample of politically astute informants
to identify potential candidates prior to the 1994 elections. Our survey of
these potential candidates reveals three common characteristics: they had many
of the attributes one would expect of strong House challengers, there was
variance in what they stated was the likelihood of their running for the House
in 1994, and they were most strongly influenced by what they perceived to be
their chances of winning their party's nomination in their district. In
addition, they understood that they would be much less likely to receive their
party's nomination if they shared party affiliation with the incumbent, a
finding that reinforces the incumbency effect. We also find that respondents who
held elective office at the time of the survey were more likely to run, and that
there is little evidence that personal factors related to the costs and benefits
of running weigh heavily in the decision to run.
CHRISTOPHE CROMBEZ
The Co-Decision Procedure in the European Union
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXII:97-119
This paper presents a spatial model of the EU's co-decision procedure,
introduced by the Treaty of Maastricht. The theory characterizes the set of
policies that can be adopted and the equilibrium EU policy as a function of the
ideal policies of the member countries, the Commission, and the Parliament, and
the location of the status quo. The paper examines whether the Parliament has
become a legislator of equal stature to the Council, and discusses the
Commission's power and the extent of indecision under the co-decision procedure.
A comparison with the EU's other principal legislative procedures yields
comparative statements about EU policy and the institutions' powers.
EMILY VAN DUNK AND RONALD E. WEBER
Constituency-Level Competition in the U.S. States, 1968-1988: A Pooled Analysis
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXII:141-59
This work examines constituency-level competition in U.S. state legislative
races for the period 1968-88 using two measures of competition--proportion of
seats marginal and proportion of seats contested. An incentive model is assessed
to determine the impact of four variables--legislative institutionalization,
incumbency, the likelihood of the minority party taking control of the chamber,
and legislative performance--in a pooled time-series analysis. We find some
support for the impact of the explanatory variables, particularly legislative
institutionalization and incumbency. Finally, we present both descriptive and
statistical evidence that the degree of constituency-level competition is
decreasing during the time period under study.
STEPHEN ANSOLABEHERE AND ALAN GERBER
Incumbency Advantage and the Persistence of Legislative Majorities
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXII:161-78
Between 1955 and 1995, although the GOP occasionally controlled the Senate
and won landslide presidential election victories, the Democratic party
controlled the majority of seats in the U.S. House. This paper argues that
Republican, indeed, any minority party's problems stem from the interaction
between career decisions and electoral prospects. We argue that there is a
previously overlooked link between the incumbency advantage and the long-term
persistence of legislative majorities. We develop a model that shows how the
incumbency advantage can produce higher retirement rates among the minority
party, which in turn decreases the likelihood that the minority party will win a
majority of seats in the next election. Data on actual retirement rates of
members of the U.S. House and of the U.K. Parliament fit the patterns predicted
by our model.
RICHARD A. CLUCAS
Party Contributions and the Influence of Campaign Committee Chairs on Roll-Call
Voting
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXII:179-94
Herrnson (1988) hypothesized that the increased activity of the four
congressional campaign committees may increase the power of the campaign
committee chairs on policy matters. In this paper I examine Herrnson's
hypothesis. First, I analyze selected roll-call votes from the 98th and 99th
Congresses to determine whether the committees' activities encourage members to
be more supportive of positions advocated by the chairs of the House Democratic
and Republican campaign committees. I then analyze the effect of these
contributions on building party loyalty. I find that although the committees'
activities have some influence on the amount of support freshman recipients give
to the committee chairs, they have no effect on building support for the party.
PAUL FRYMER, THOMAS PAUL KIM, AND TERRI L. BIMES
Party Elites, Ideological Voters, and Divided Party Government
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXII:195-216
Do voters consciously split their tickets in order to "balance"
the national government between the two major political parties, as some
theories of divided government contend they do? Or do "sincere" and
ideologically consistent voters split their ballots in response to elite
behavior and party cleavages? Focusing on the 1988 election, the last time
divided government was the direct result of split-ticket voting, we find that
most split-ticket voters in national elections are ideologically conservative in
their policy views. These conservative voters split their tickets in favor of
the Republican presidential candidate and a Democratic House candidate they
perceive to be similarly conservative. Meanwhile, the smaller proportion of
voters who split for the Democratic presidential candidate and a Republican
House candidate are ideologically liberal, and they respond to House Republicans
perceived as similarly liberal. Finally, we discuss the implications of both our
theory and our findings for the 1994 Republican midterm victories.
DAVID M. WOOD AND GARRY YOUNG
Comparing Constituency Activity by Junior Legislators in Great Britain and
Ireland
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXII:217-32
To compare the relationship between constituency service and reelection
concerns for British junior MPs and Irish junior deputies (TDs), we analyze
interviews with 45 British MPs and 40 Irish TDs. Using a comparison of
frequencies and Poisson regression analysis, we find support for the familiar
expectations that TDs are substantially more active in their constituencies than
are MPs, that they are more inclined than MPs to cite reelection as a motive for
such activity, and that there is a stronger statistical relationship between
reelection motivation and constituency activity for TDs than for MPs. We also
find a positive relationship for both countries between distance from the
capital and number of days per week spent in the constituency doing constituency
work.
ROGER M. SCULLY
Policy Influence and Participation in the European Parliament
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXII:233-52
How does a legislature's influence over policy outputs affect its members'
behavior? This paper examines this question, a question that has been neglected
in the legislative literature. Using an unusual natural experiment in the
European Parliament (EP), I investigate whether greater policy influence leads
legislators to participate more in parliamentary votes. In addition to the
impact of other variables--including the timing of votes, leadership cues, and
the requirement that an absolute majority of members vote at certain stages--EP
members are stimulated to participate more in votes on legislation where the
EP's influence is greater. The implications of this result for legislative
theory, and for our understanding of the EP, are discussed in the conclusion.
SUSAN E. SCARROW
Political Career Paths and the European Parliament
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXII:253-63
This study examines how seats in the European Parliament fit into domestic
political careers. It shows that the Parliament's four largest national
delegations have developed a core of MEPs who have made long-term commitments to
the European institution. There are significant national differences in these
patterns, but as a whole they make it more likely that future European
Parliaments will be filled with careerist MEPs who will view the Parliament as
their principal political arena, and who will seek to increase the institution's
prestige and power relative to other European and domestic institutions.
MALCOLM E. JEWELL
Trends in Research on U.S. State Legislatures: A Review Article
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXII:265-74
Books Reviewed:
Drawing the Line: Legislative Ethics in the States. Alan
Rosenthal.
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press 1996).
How Women Legislate. Sue Thomas. (New York: Oxford University
Press 1994).
Statehouse Democracy: Public Opinion and Policy in the American States.
Robert S. Erikson, Gerald C. Wright, and John P. McIver.
(New York:
Cambridge University Press 1993).
Time, Politics, and Policies: A Legislative Year. Burdett A. Loomis.
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas 1994).
The Speaker's Electoral Connection: Willie Brown and the California Assembly.
Richard A. Clucas. (Berkeley: University of California
Institute of Governmental Studies Press 1995).
Narratives of Justice: Legislators' Beliefs about Distributive Fairness.
Grant Reeher. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press
1996).
The Art of Legislative Politics. Tom Loftus. (Washington, DC: CQ Press
1994).
MATHEW D. MCCUBBINS AND MICHAEL F. THIES
As a Matter of Factions: The Budgetary Implications of Shifting Factional
Control in Japan's LDP
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXII:293-328
For 38 years, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) maintained single-party
control over the Japanese government. This lack of partisan turnover in
government has frustrated attempts to explain Japanese government policy changes
using political variables. In this paper, we look for intraparty changes that
may have led to changes in Japanese budgetary policy. Using a simple model of
agenda setting, we hypothesize that changes in which intraparty factions control
the LDP affect the party's decisions over spending priorities systematically.
This runs contrary to the conventional wisdom expressed in the voluminous
literature on LDP factions, which asserts that factions, whatever their raison
d'être, do not exhibit different policy preferences. We find that strong
correlations do exist between which factions comprise the agenda-setting party
mainstream and how the government allocates spending across pork-barrel and
public goods items.
REUVEN Y. HAZAN
Executive-Legislative Relations in an Era of Accelerated Reform: Reshaping
Government in Israel
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXII:329-50
Israel's democracy is in the midst of a dramatic and comprehensive
restructuring, a so-called "constitutional revolution." Because it
lacks a written constitution, Israel turns to its parliament, the Knesset, as
both the source and the target of most governmental reforms. As a result of
these reforms, the 13th Knesset (1992-96) behaved very differently from its
predecessors and changed the existing patterns of executive-legislative
interaction. The reshaping of government in Israel presents an institutionally
unique and developing political laboratory in which evolving
executive-legislative relations can be analyzed while the composition and
construction of the regime continues to unfold. This article has three primary
aims. I first describe the reforms that were enacted toward the end of the 12th
Knesset (1988-92) regarding the two branches of government. Then I analyze the
evolving executive-legislative relations in the 13th Knesset. And third, I
assess the significance of these changes for the stability and governability of
Israeli democracy in general and the 14th Knesset in particular.
BRIAN D. POSLER AND CARL M. RHODES
Pre-Leadership Signaling in the U.S. House
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXII:351-68
This research note builds on the work of scholars who have identified the
importance of ideological and partisan criteria in the selection of
congressional leaders. Viewing leadership selection as a problem of agency, we
develop a framework for conceptualizing how ideology and partisanship affect
leadership selection. Testing the framework on House leaders from 1875-1987, we
find substantial variation between the two parties. While Republican leaders
conform to the "core" hypothesis, Democratic leaders behave in
accordance with the "polarizer" hypothesis. We conclude by suggesting
that these interparty differences are the result of varying levels of intraparty
heterogeneity.
DAVID B. HOLIAN, TIMOTHY B. KREBS, AND MICHAEL H. WALSH
Constituency Opinion, Ross Perot, and Roll-Call Behavior
in the U.S. House: The Case of NAFTA
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXII:369-92
This paper examines the extent to which electoral support for Ross Perot
influenced House members' votes on the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Using Perot's share of the congressional district vote and members' electoral
safety as key predictor variables, we test a logit model, holding constant
district demographic characteristics, members' party and ideology, region, and
labor and business PAC contributions. The results of the analysis indicate that
the magnitude of the Perot vote exerted a significant effect on the NAFTA vote
outcome, specifically for marginal House Republicans. Thus, we provide evidence
that under certain conditions members respond to Independent political movements
and Independent voters in their districts when deciding on legislation.
DAVID M. CANTOR AND PAUL S. HERRNSON
Party Campaign Activity and Party Unity in the U.S. House of Representatives
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXII:393-415
This study investigates the relationships between party campaign activity
and party unity in the House of Representatives. Using data from the 1984 and
1992 elections and the 99th and 103d Congresses, we find little support for the
hypothesis that previous party unity influences the distribution of party money
or assistance in campaign management, fundraising, or communications. There is
also little support for the hypothesis that party spending, campaign assistance,
or recruitment efforts lead to greater party unity on normal roll-call votes.
Nevertheless, Democratic candidates who receive substantial assistance in
developing their campaign messages are more likely than others to vote with
their party on key votes. Overall, the results show that U.S. political parties
are more election than policy oriented.
PEVERILL SQUIRE
Another Look at Legislative Professionalization and Divided Government in the
States
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXII:417-32
Does the professionalization of state legislatures lead to more instances of
divided government? Fiorina (1994) persuasively argues that it does. In this
article I reexamine that relationship, looking at divided government in the
states from 1960 to 1990, the years of the professionalization movement. I argue
that few state legislatures are professionalized. But, while most of the other
state legislatures have been professionalizing, they have few of the
characteristics we would expect of legislatures where entrenched incumbents are
equipped to fend off changing political tides the way we expect congressional
incumbents to be able to do. I then test several variations on the hypothesis
that the level of professionalization is linked to the incidence of divided
government. Although some results lend support to the general hypothesis,
overall the relationship is not very robust. I conclude by suggesting several
reasons for the weak results, pointing in particular to the rise of
candidate-centered gubernatorial campaigns and the adoption of professional-like
behavior on the part of state legislators in every sort of institutional
setting.
SCOTT MAINWARING AND ANÍBAL PÉREZ LIÑÁN
Party Discipline in the Brazilian Constitutional Congress
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXII:453-83
This paper focuses on 1988 roll-call votes in the 1987-88 Brazilian
Constitutional Congress in an analysis of party discipline within the Congress.
Because of the large number (1021) of roll-call votes during the Constitutional
Congress and the availability of an excellent database, the Brazilian
Constitutional Congress offers an opportunity for one of the most detailed
studies ever conducted on party discipline in a third-world legislature. We
begin by discussing how we calculated discipline scores, given some distinctive
features of the Brazilian party system and the Constitutional Congress. We show
that the biggest Brazilian parties of this period were comparatively
undisciplined, and we also show that the leftist parties were a powerful
exception to this general tendency. We demonstrate that legislators who switched
parties during the Constitutional Congress were more likely than others to be
undisciplined before switching, and that their discipline increased markedly
after their move to new parties. Finally, we attempt to explain why discipline
was low in all but the leftist parties.
WILLIAM B. HELLER
Bicameralism and Budget Deficits: The Effect of Parliamentary Structure on
Government Spending
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXII:485-516
In this study I look at the relationship between bicameralism and government
budget deficits. The more actors there are who can kill legislation or influence
its content, the more deals must be cut to pass a budget. Bicameralism sets up a
bilateral veto game between legislative chambers, which leads to higher
government budget deficits, all else constant. Since it is easier to cut deals
to raise spending than to raise taxes, the need to cut deals across the chambers
of a bicameral legislature generally leads to higher spending and, hence, higher
deficits. I test this hypothesis on a sample of deficits from 17 countries, from
1965 to 1990.
SCOTT H. AINSWORTH
The Role of Legislators in the Determination of Interest Group Influence
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXII:517-33
In addition to structuring the rules governing legislator-lobbyist interactions,
legislators also affect their interactions with lobbyists by promoting lobbying
enterprises, which are groups of like-minded lobbyists and their legislative
allies, all of whom seek to coordinate their efforts. The long-term
relationships inherent in lobbying enterprises reduce uncertainties, insure
ready access to legislators, and allow lobbyists to reach undecided legislators
indirectly. Lobbying enterprises complement staff systems, the committee system,
and members' constituent contact committees. This article concludes with
specific suggestions for incorporating concepts developed here into empirical
and formal theoretic work on lobbying influence.
ROBIN M. WOLPERT AND JAMES G. GIMPEL
Information, Recall, and Accountability: The Electorate's Response to the
Clarence Thomas Nomination
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXII:535-50
In order to further our understanding of the empirical value of the
constituency control model of representation, we seek to determine whether
differences in voter information and recall affect the capacity of elections to
serve as instruments of accountability. We address this question by focusing on
the degree to which voters held their senators accountable for their votes on
the Clarence Thomas nomination in the 1992 senate elections. We find that
policy-specific accountability requires voters to correctly recall their
incumbent's roll-call behavior. Reliance on more general cues such as party
identification and ideology leads some voters to mistakenly hold their
representatives accountable for something they did not do. Since these cues are
not so helpful on cross-cutting issues like the Thomas nomination, citizens who
invest in detailed information will minimize errors in judgment made in the
frequent instances when legislators' actions cross partisan and ideological
lines. The high school civics texts may be right about the importance of an
informed citizenry to democratic practice after all.
ROBERT E. HOGAN
Voter Contact Techniques in State Legislative Campaigns: The Prevalence of Mass
Media Advertising
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXII:551-71
What methods of voter contact are used by candidates running for state
legislative office? A number of studies on the congressional level suggest that
mass media advertising, particularly on television, is becoming the predominant
form of voter contact. However, few studies have questioned whether these
findings are generalizable to state legislative races. This analysis of itemized
expenditure data for 583 primary and general election candidates in Texas and
Kansas shows that state legislative campaigns differ dramatically from
congressional campaigns in their methods of voter contact. In both primary and
general election campaigns, state legislative candidates allocate a
preponderance of their voter contact dollars to direct forms of contact, such as
mailings and pamphlet distribution. However, some candidates do allocate
resources to advertising in mass media. District-level features condition the
choice more than do candidate type, level of expenditures, or electoral
competition.
CHARLES S. BULLOCK III AND DAVID J. SHAFER
Party Targeting and Electoral Success
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXII:573-84
ORVIS, a measure of partisan strength calculated from the precinct-level
vote share in previous statewide elections, has been used since 1988 to target
Republican efforts in Georgia state legislative contests. The top-down approach
implied in the use of this targeting device has paid dividends. Successful
Republican challengers come disproportionately from districts with high ORVIS
scores. The relationship between ORVIS scores and the share of the vote going to
Republican candidates persists after factors such as campaign funding are
controlled. The party's past success in statewide contests is a much better
predictor of performance than is the showing in the previous legislative
contest.
WES CLARKE
Divided Government and Budget Conflict in the U.S. States
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXIII:5-22
Much of the recent literature on the topic of divided government has
concentrated on explanations for its occurrence at the national and state
levels. In this article I use agency data from twenty states to assess the
effects of divided government on budgetary conflict between governors and
legislatures. After controlling for state party system characteristics and
gubernatorial power, I found that divided government indeed contributes to
conflict, but only when the legislative chambers are united against the
governor. If split partisan control of the legislature exists, the governor's
position with respect to agency spending levels is supported.
PEVERILL SQUIRE
Membership Turnover and the Efficient Processing of Legislation
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXIII:23-32
Is membership turnover related to the ability of a legislature to
efficiently process legislation? I examine this question using pooled data on
state legislatures from 1989 to 1993. Membership turnover is not related to the
number of bills enacted per legislative day, nor to the percentage of bills
passed. Instead, legislative efficiency is related to the number of interest
groups in a state, the number of bills legislators introduce, and a
legislature's level of professionalization. Legislative rules also influence
efficiency. The implications of these findings for the debate on term limits is
discussed.
ERIK GARTZKE AND J. MARK WRIGHTON
Thinking Globally or Acting Locally? Determinants of the GATT Vote in Congress
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXIII:33-55
While there exist many influences on legislators' votes, the U.S. system of
plurality districts should ensure that constituent interests weigh most heavily.
However, in marked contrast both to theories of legislative influence and to
representatives' own explanations for their votes, quantitative analysis of
congressional roll-call voting has largely failed to show a significant
relationship between constituent interests and congressional behavior. We
examine the 1994 House and Senate votes on the General Agreement on Tariffs and
Trade (GATT) in light of this incongruence between empirical research, anecdotal
evidence and theoretical argument. Unlike previous studies, we compile data at
the level of congressional districts. Our analysis pays special attention to the
construction of competing economic models of constituent interest and welfare.
Finally, our research supports the argument that congressional committees are
pivotal in the legislative decision-making process. We assess the impact of
committees on the GATT bill in terms of partisanship, personal ideology and
constituent interests of committee members. Better data, a more precise research
design, and introduction of committees allows a better assessment of this
paradox of congressional voting.
DAVID SOHERR-HADWIGER
Military Construction Policy: A Test of Competing Explanations of Universalism
in Congress
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXIII:57-78
Theories of universalism are based upon questionable assumptions that
distributive benefits tend to be allocated universally, and that this pattern of
allocation leads to near-unanimous floor support for many distributive benefit
programs. I offer an alternative, general (or collective) benefit explanation to
interpret patterns of allocation of distributive benefits and the size of floor
coalitions supporting these programs. The case study of military construction
policy is used to test the relative effect of general benefit and distributive
benefit considerations on the size of floor support coalitions in the U.S. House
of Representatives. The findings suggest important modifications of extant
universalism theories.
BERNARD GROFMAN, THOMAS L. BRUNELL, AND WILLIAM KOETZLE
Why Gain in the Senate But Midterm Loss in the House? Evidence from a Natural
Experiment
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXIII:79-89
In this note we use the Senate's six-year election cycle to explain why the
"iron law of midterm loss" that applies so consistently to the House
works with less certainty in the Senate; in fact, since 1946 there have been
three instances (1962, 1970, and 1982) where the Senate has experienced no
midterm loss. To explain the differing nature of midterm seat change in the
Senate, we employ a natural experiment in which Senate midterm elections
(1946-1994) are categorized in the following way: (1) The same party controlled
the White House two and six years prior to the midterm; or (2) a different party
held the presidency six years as compared to two years before the midterm. We
hypothesize that, in the first situation, midterm loss forces are mutually
reinforcing; thus, the Senate experiences large and unidirectional seat changes
against the party that holds the White House. In the later situation, however,
the electoral cycle effects (t-2 and t-6) run counter to one another and,
therefore, seat change is not unidirectional, midterm loss is lessened, and
there is even the potential for midterm gain. In fact, all of the midterm gains
in the Senate in the 20th century occur in this situation.
KEVIN J. O'BRIEN AND LAURA M. LUEHRMANN
Institutionalizing Chinese Legislatures: Trade-offs Between Autonomy and
Capacity
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXIII:91-108
Some leaders of Chinese local people's congresses emphasize autonomy in
order to promote decentralization and enhance representation. Other legislative
insiders favor sacrificing autonomy in order to strengthen capacity and improve
oversight. Tight coupling between congresses appeals to local legislators
because it offers opportunities to mobilize supporters, obtain resources, and
expand jurisdiction, while representatives of higher congresses often oppose
closer ties in order to preserve local initiative, safeguard elections, and
reduce conflict with Party committees. In a reforming communist state, single
legislatures may not be the right unit of analysis for assessing autonomy.
Established boundaries, in the early stages of institutionalization, may apply
to the legislative system as a whole rather than to its parts. And softening
boundaries between congresses at different levels can harden boundaries against
other bureaucracies.
RICHARD E. MATLAND
Women's Representation in National Legislatures: Developed and Developing
Countries
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXIII:109-125
This note expands research on representation of women in national
legislatures. Existing models are tested on newer data in advanced
industrialized democracies, and these models are then applied to a sample of
democracies in developing countries. There are striking differences across the
two samples. While a proportional representation electoral system, women's
participation in the labor force, the cultural standing of women, and the
country's level of development all have positive effects on female
representation in OECD democracies, none of these variables have a statistically
significant and positive effect in less developed countries. These findings
strongly suggest the existence of a threshold. Only after that threshold is
passed do proportional representation, labor force participation, and cultural
standing exert positive influences on the representation of women.
KAARE STRØM
Institutions and Strategy in Parliamentary Democracy: A Review Article
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXIII:127-143b
Books Reviewed:
John D. Huber, Rationalizing Parliament: Legislative Institutions and
Party Politics in France. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. xii
+215 pp.
Michael Laver and Kenneth A. Shepsle, Making and Breaking Governments:
Cabinets and Legislatures in Parliamentary Democracies. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1996. xi +301 pp.
BRIAN J. GAINES
The Impersonal Vote? Constituency Service and Incumbency Advantage in British
Elections, 1950-92
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXIII:167-95
British elections are traditionally understood to be dominated by parties
and leaders. Local candidates are taken to be mere ciphers, whose impact on the
outcome is negligible. Recently, however, several works have documented a change
in MP behavior. Today's members do more constituency service than did their
predecessors, in the belief that this will create a personal vote. If the MPs
are succeeding, incumbency advantage should now be evident, as it is in American
elections. In fact, incumbency advantage does not seem to have changed over the
postwar period: for the major parties, it remains small and sporadic.
FORREST MALTZMAN
Maintaining Congressional Committees: Sources of Member Support
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXIII:197-218
Within the U.S. House of Representatives, standing committee recommendations
are usually accepted by the full chamber. Although considerable attention has
been paid to the extent that committee recommendations are ratified by the full
chamber, relatively little research has addressed the sources of committee
success. Committees usually win on the floor, but it is unclear why members of
Congress support committee recommendations, or how we should account for
variation in such support. One explanation for committee success is that members
derive power from the committee system, and thus are reluctant to challenge
committee recommendations. A second explanation is that committees themselves
are partisan institutions, and thus members support committee recommendations
out of partisan loyalty. A third explanation is that members support committees
because committees recommend policies that are consistent with members' policy
preferences. Unlike previous studies that have relied primarily on single-vote
case studies, I use roll-call data from the 98th through the 100th Congresses
(1983-88) to construct an aggregate measure of committee support and to test
these three competing explanations of the sources of committee support. I
conclude that with few exceptions, policy and partisan motivations have a
stronger influence on member support for committee recommendations than do
incentives stemming from members' institutional positions.
KATHLEEN BAWN
Congressional Party Leadership: Utilitarian versus Majoritarian Incentives
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXIII:219-43
By making procedural decisions about how individual bills are referred,
scheduled, subjected to amendments, and sent to conference, majority party
leaders exert important influence on legislative outcomes. In this paper, I use
a sequence of formal models to analyze regularities in the preferences of party
leaders, regularities that determine how procedural decisions are made. I find
that the goal of maintaining party strength causes leaders to make procedural
decisions based on the preference intensity of the rank and file. Leaders will
make procedural decisions in ways that benefit intense minorities within the
party whenever the party minority's stake in the bill is greater than that of
the less-intense party majority. The desire to keep a leadership position,
however, creates an incentive to please a party majority. I show, however, that
this majoritarian incentive will generally have only limited influence on
procedural decisions. Its impact is limited in particular by shifting coalitions
within the majority party and by backbenchers' preferences for party
maintenance.
M.V. HOOD AND IRWIN L. MORRIS
Boll Weevils and Roll-Call Voting: A Study in Time and Space
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXIII:245-69
Using a pooled time-series analysis of southern congressional districts from
1983 to 1992, we evaluate theories associating constituency and institutional
factors with recent shifts in the voting patterns of southern Democrats. While
we find that Democrats serving areas with larger minority populations and more
progressive white populations tend to be more liberal, the greatest portion of
the aggregate liberalization of voting patterns is attributable to cohort
change. Voting records of southern Democrats elected prior to 1982 remained
relatively constant, and we find no evidence of any general trend in the recent
voting patterns of southern Democrats when controlling for other factors.
JOHN M. CAREY, RICHARD G. NIEMI, AND LYNDA W. POWELL
The Effects of Term Limits on State Legislatures
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXIII:271-300
Legislative theory suggests that anticipatory effects of term limits would
first affect the types of individuals elected to office and only later influence
the legislature itself. Our results, based on a 1995 survey of nearly 3000 state
legislators nationwide, indicate otherwise. There are no systematic differences
between term limit and non-term limit states in the composition of the
legislature (e.g., professional backgrounds). Yet with respect to legislative
behavior, term limits decrease the time legislators devote to securing pork, and
heighten the priority they place on the needs of the state and on the demands of
conscience relative to district interests. At the same time, with respect to the
legislature as an institution, term limits appear to be redistributing power
away from majority party leaders and toward governors and possibly legislative
staffers.
PAUL V. WARWICK
Policy Distance and Parliamentary Government
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXIII:319-45
The policy-distance assumption stipulates that a party's incentive to join a
parliamentary coalition government decreases with the distance between its
policies and those of the government. Based on this assumption, recent formal
work has posited a connection between the size and relative ideological
centrality of the formateur party and the formation of smaller, especially
minority, governments. Under these models, policy distance affects government
composition in two ways: by influencing how large the government will be, and by
influencing which parties will participate in it. This paper tests for these
effects at both the government and party levels, using data sets covering West
European parliamentary democracies in the 1945-89 era and incorporating two
different measures of ideological positions. The findings support both effects,
and in addition, show that the emergence of external support parties is
influenced by considerations of policy distance. Although the formal models are
not wholly sustained, the evidence strongly indicates that policy distance is
critical to parliamentary government.
ERIC M. USLANER
Let the Chits Fall Where They May? Executive and Constituency Influences on
Congressional Voting on NAFTA
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXIII:347-71
The approval of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) by the House
of Representatives in November, 1993 depended heavily on lobbying by President
Clinton. I show that this lobbying power does not inhere in the presidency, but
was strategic. Clinton concentrated his lobbying on members who were either
undecided or leaning against NAFTA in September, as well as members who received
large contributions from business and from districts where the president did
well. I use estimates of lobbying efforts derived from probit analysis to
predict the NAFTA vote. This endogenous measure of contacting had the third
greatest effect for Democratic House members voting on NAFTA (behind only
presidential support) and labor political action committee contributions. But
for Republicans, contact seemed to have a perverse negative effect.
ANDREW J. TAYLOR
Domestic Agenda Setting, 1947–1994
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXIII:373-97
This article examines domestic agenda setting in Washington between 1947 and
1994. It finds that House and Senate majority leaders have, over time, set
increasingly more of this agenda. I examine the role of presidents and
congressional committee chairs in domestic agenda setting, and evaluate the
success of presidential and congressional proposals within the legislative
process. Recent changes in agenda-setting patterns seem to be the product of a
number of factors, including more frequent and polarized divided government, as
well as changes in the formal rules of Congress and the ideological composition
of the legislative parties.
THOMAS P. KIM
Clarence Thomas and the Politicization of Candidate Gender in the 1992 Senate
Elections
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXIII:399-418
The Clarence Thomas confirmation battle was a highly politicized, controversial,
and symbolic event that clearly affected the 1992 Senate elections. Various
hypotheses attempting to explain the controversy's impact on election results
have focused on mass voting behavior based on group self-interest, negative
voting against incumbent Senators, or on the symbolic impact of the confirmation
vote. I focus instead on the actions of strategic political elites,
hypothesizing that female elite behavior successfully politicized candidate,
rather than voter, gender into an electoral asset in the 1992 Senate elections.
As usual, strategic elites translated national political tides into local
outcomes, but in the process, female candidate exploitation of the Thomas
controversy led to several interesting and unusual implications.
SEAN M. THERIAULT
Moving Up or Moving Out: Career Ceilings and Congressional Retirement
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXIII:419-33
This research note presents a theory of congressional retirement and tests
it with data from the 102d Congress. The results bridge the gap between the
1970's macro retirement studies and the more recent micro-centered approaches by
highlighting the importance of career ceilings. Defined as the interaction
between formal position and years of service, the career ceilings variable can
be interpreted as the degree to which the member's career in the House has
stagnated. This variable dominates the traditional causes of retirement in the
quantitative analysis. In light of the convergence of the unique 1992 retirement
causing factors, its power is especially surprising. Not only was 1992 the first
election after redistricting and the House bank scandal, but it was also the
last chance for members to convert excess campaign cash to personal income.
Nevertheless, career ceilings predict retirement much better than any of the
1992-specific variables.
MICHELE SWERS
Are Women More Likely to Vote for Women's Issue Bills Than Their Male
Colleagues?
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXIII:435-48
Many hypothesize that the election of more women to the U.S. Congress is more
than simply an issue of equity, but will make a substantive policy difference. I
test this hypothesis by analyzing the voting records of all representatives in
the 103d Congress on a set of women's issues. It is my premise that women will
not necessarily exhibit a more liberal ideology than their male counterparts on
all issues; however, the more directly an issue affects women, the more likely
it is that women will vote together across party lines. The results of
regression analysis on the composite score of women's issue votes indicate that
gender exerts a significant and independent effect on voting for women's issues
in the face of controls for other major influences on congressional voting.
These influences include constituency factors, party, personal characteristics,
and ideology. Interaction terms for gender by party indicate that much of the
impact of gender is due to the influence of Republican women. Logit analysis of
the individual votes demonstrates that the gender of the representative was most
significant on votes that dealt with abortion and women's health. The influence
of gender was overwhelmed by other factors such as party, ideology, and
constituency concerns on votes that were less directly related to women, such as
education.
MICHAEL F. THIES
When Will Pork Leave the Farm? Institutional Bias in Japan and the United States
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXIII:467-92
All industrialized countries have seen their populations
"urbanize" over time. In democracies, this demographic trend ought to
have ramifications for politics and policy. In this paper, I examine the effects
of urbanization on agricultural subsidy programs in Japan and the United States.
I show that even after malapportionment was dealt with, rural retrenchment was
delayed by the balance of power within the majority party in each country. In
Japan, once urban members constituted a majority within the ruling party in the
House of Representatives, government policy changed quickly and dramatically. In
the U.S., powerful House committees and permanent rural over-representation in
the U.S. Senate delayed policy change much longer than was true in Japan, which
has no similar institutional impediments.
JEFFERY A. JENKINS
Property Rights and the Emergence of Standing Committee Dominance in the
Nineteenth-Century House
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXIII:493-519
Between 1810 and 1825, the bill-referral process in the House of
Representatives changed dramatically, from a system that channeled a majority of
legislation through select committees to a system that was dominated almost
exclusively by standing committees. At the heart of this change, I contend, were
grants of new rights to both standing committees and individual committee
members. To explain this dispensation of new rights, I follow a new
institutionalist approach and use a political theory of property-right
origination, developed by Riker and Sened (1991), as a theoretical guide. I find
that all necessary and sufficient conditions for right emergence, in the form of
new bill-referral powers and seat-assignment privileges, are met by the actual
macro-level and micro-level events of the early nineteenth century.
Specifically, the greater heterogeneity of the Jeffersonian coalition and the
self-interested machinations of the House Speaker, Henry Clay, combined to
produce an institutional change that served the needs of all major parties in
the House.
VINCENT L. HUTCHINGS
Issue Salience and Support for Civil Rights Legislation among Southern Democrats
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXIII:521-44
Does the size of their black constituency influence support for civil rights
legislation among southern Democrats? Previous research on the subject
has produced mixed results. I argue that part of the reason for this is that the
voting indices typically used to measure constituency influence are invariably
made up of both salient and more obscure roll calls. To illustrate this point I
examine scores from the 1990 Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), along
with two roll calls of similar impact yet markedly different levels of
salience—the final vote on the 1990 Civil Rights Act and a less publicized
amendment. I show that the size of the black constituency, as well as other
district-level factors, was an important determinant of how southern Democratic
House members voted on the 1990 Civil Rights Act, but not on the more obscure
amendment or the overall LCCR scores.
SARAH BINDER, FORREST MALTZMAN, AND LEE SIGELMAN
Senators’ Home-State Reputations: Why Do Constituents Love a Bill Cohen
So Much More Than an Al D’Amato?
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXIII:545-60
Prior analyses of the bases of legislators’ popular support have provided
a mixed set of findings. In this note, we lay out a series of hypotheses about
the determinants of legislators’ home-state reputations, and test these
expectations using a 1996 survey in which 40 thousand constituents in all 50
states rated their senators’ job performance. We find that ideological
congruence, state demographics, and electoral factors best explain variation in
senators’ reputations. Parochial attention, partisanship, and legislative
activism do little to boost senators’ approval ratings.
WILLIAM KOETZLE
The Impact of Constituency Diversity upon the Competitiveness of U.S. House
Elections, 1962–96
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXIII:561-73
There are many good reasons to expect that the diversity of a constituency
should impact electoral competitiveness. However, in the face of these strong
expectations, the empirical record that has sought to quantify this relationship
is at best mixed. The work by Bond (1983) is an excellent example. Using a
measure of diversity (the Sullivan Index) common to other researchers, Bond’s
investigation of House races in the 1970s revealed no relationship between
district diversity and competitiveness. The principle finding of this study is
that much of the confusion in the literature is caused by the measure of
diversity used: the Sullivan Index measures the absolute, not political,
diversity of a constituency. Thus, I develop and examine a measure of diversity
that assumes constituency characteristics have differential partisan impact. Use
of this measure clearly demonstrates that for House elections held between 1962
and 1996, diverse House districts experienced significantly more electoral
competition than did relatively less diverse House districts.
ROY A. DAWES AND A. HUNTER BACOT
Electoral Career Patterns and Incumbency Advantage in the U.S. House of
Representatives
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXIII:575-83
John Alford and John Hibbing (1981) questioned the thesis of generational
replacement that explains the improved incumbency advantage in the U.S. House of
Representatives. They presented evidence that improved incumbent performance was
uniform across all levels of tenure between 1966 and 1978. Alford and Hibbing
found an almost monotonic increase in non-southern incumbent vote percentage
across all levels of tenure, increasing as tenure increased. Our purpose in this
study is to update and elaborate upon the Alford and Hibbing research by
examining electoral margins of House incumbents from 1980 to 1996. Unlike Alford
and Hibbing, we examine all House members’ (including southern members) vote
percentages to detect whether these patterns maintain throughout the 1980s and
1990s. We update the data on incumbency advantage through the 1996 elections and
compare changes in the South and the non-South. Members from both regions earn
large victory margins early in their careers, but the victories of Southern
members are markedly more decisive.
E. SCOTT ALDER, CHARITI E. GENT, AND CARY B. OVERMEYER
The Home Style Homepage: Legislator Use of the World Wide Web for Constituency
Contact
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXIII:585-95
The Internet not only provides a low cost and increasingly popular medium
for legislators to interact with constituents, but also an opportunity for
researchers to test established theories of "home style" using a much
larger group of elected officials. Examining the Web sites of members of the
House of Representatives during the Internet’s introduction into Congress
(June through August of 1997), we address two questions: (1) What factors
influence members to invest scarce resources in an official congressional
homepage? (2) Of those who go "online," why do some members emphasize
constituent casework while others do not? Our findings confirm that legislators
use the World Wide Web much as they do other means of constituent contact.
Republicans, younger legislators and representatives of more affluent
populations are more likely to have homepages. Of those who have a homepage,
Democrats and members from electorally marginal districts are more likely to use
that Web site to solicit casework.
MICHAEL LAVER
Divided Parties, Divided Government
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXIV:5-29
The U.S. phenomenon of divided government has its counterpart in a
parliamentary system as a result of the politics of coalition. One legislative
coalition may put the executive in place, a different legislative coalition may
sustain it in a vote of confidence, while yet another legislative coalition
enacts measures that thwart its day-to-day business. I explain such division
between executive and legislature by relaxing the party-as-unitary-actor
assumption and recognise that executive and legislative elements of the same
party may pursue different strategies. Party leaders may enter into commitments
to coalition partners that involve implicit or explicit obligations to impose
intraparty discipline. Leaders may do this with greater or lesser enthusiasm,
and the required discipline may or may not be forthcoming. Thus, governments may
be defeated in legislative votes because the legislature fails to honour
obligations entered into by the executive. This paper sets out a simple model of
this process, begins to analyse it, and elaborates a recent real-world example
of the phenomenon.
KEITH KREHBIEL
Paradoxes of Parties in Congress
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXIV:31-64
This paper identifies four paradoxes of parties. These paradoxes illustrate not
only substantive problems in their own right but also diverse ways that formal
models can help to define and address problems in legislative research. Models
are shown to clarify key concepts (such as majority party strength), to sharpen
the definition of important problems of inference (observational equivalence of
theories), to evaluate widely used measures (party voting), and to derive and
test competing hypotheses (majoritarian versus majority-party determinants of
legislative organization).
NOELLE H. NORTON
Uncovering the Dimensionality of Gender Voting in Congress
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXIV:65-86
A unidimensional liberal-conservative voting model is generally accepted as
the pattern that structures Congressional voting. Empirical research on mass and
elite gender consciousness, case studies on congressional handling of women’s
issues, and feminist theory all imply, however, that more than one dimension
should be used to explain voting for legislation that affects women. Using
exploratory factor analysis, I provide evidence of a gender-related dimension in
a set of voting indexes and a set of roll-call votes made by both male and
female members of the 101st, 102d, and 103d Congresses.
THOMAS L. BRUNELL, WILLIAM KOETZLE, JOHN DINARDO,
BERNARD GROFMAN, AND SCOTT L. FELD
The R2 = .93: Where Then Do They Differ?
Comparing Liberal and Conservative Interest Group Ratings
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXIV:87-101
Interest group ratings have long been used by social scientists to
distinguish between liberal and conservative members of Congress. It is also
well known that ratings by different groups are highly correlated with one
another. Here, rather than focusing on the similarities between such measures,
we focus on the differences between them. Although the relationship between
measures is nearly linear, we find systematic robust differences between
Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) and American Conservative Union (ACU)
scores. Using a variety of techniques, we show that interest groups are most
interested in distinguishing among their ideological friends and tend to group
their ideological enemies near the bottom of the scale. Because of this, using
any single interest group score to explain political phenomena (i.e., party
loyalty) is likely to produce an inconsistent estimate of the impact of ideology
on such phenomena. Finally, we propose and test a method that corrects for this
bias.
RONALD KEITH GADDIE, CHARLES S. BULLOCK III, AND SCOTT E. BUCHANAN
What is So Special About Special Elections?
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXIV:103-112
Some political scientists have regarded special elections as referenda on
the approval of presidents—and therefore as products of national
forces—while explaining regularly scheduled elections as the product of not
only national political forces, but also constituency and candidate attributes
specific to particular districts. In this paper we examine whether outcomes in
special elections and their nearest counterpart, open-seat elections, are driven
by similar or different forces. We used district-level data on U.S. House
special elections and open-seat elections from 1973 to 1997 to test a model that
integrates constituency, candidate, and presidential approval variables. The
results of this analysis indicate that special elections are a subset of
open-seat elections, with both types of contests strongly impacted by candidate
and constituency influences. We found no evidence of a substantial
presidential-approval effect in special elections. The absence of such a
relationship underscores the importance of candidates and constituent
preferences in structuring elections and indicates the inappropriateness of
drawing national implications from special House contests.
ANTHONY J. NOWNES
Solicited Advice and Lobbyist Power: Evidence from Three American States
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXIV:113-124
The work of William P. Browne and Won K. Paik (1993) suggests that
legislators act as "unrestrained entrepreneurs" in an unstructured
legislative environment. As a result, legislators rely heavily upon lobbyists
for information and advice. Using data from a survey of 595 lobbyists in three
American states, this paper asks: What determines whether or not and how often a
lobbyist is approached for advice by policymakers? My findings suggest that
full-time, experienced lobbyists have the largest "advice advantage."
However, female lobbyists, as well as those who work for governmental bodies,
also appear to have an advice advantage. Ultimately, these findings provide
insight into what makes some lobbyists more influential than others.
JOHN R. HIBBING
Legislative Careers: Why and How We Should Study Them
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXIV:149-171
Legislative careers can provide extremely useful information on political
institutions, but only if used wisely. For example, we cannot assume that the
amount of membership turnover in a legislature is an indication of the degree to
which it is institutionalized. The real variable of interest is the
(unfortunately much more difficult to quantify) consequences of that
turnover. And even if we can determine that the consequences of legislative
turnover are minimal, we cannot conclude that the legislature is
institutionalized since what appears to be legislative institutionalization may
actually be the institutionalization of political parties. More accurate
indications of institutionalization would be the tendency of members to want to
stay in the body (regardless of whether or not they do), and the length of
service in the body required before leadership positions become a real
possibility.
GARY F. MONCRIEF
Recruitment and Retention in U.S. Legislatures
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXIV:173-208
Questions of recruitment and retention of legislators are central to our
understanding of the nature of representative democracy. This essay traces the
dominant perspectives and issues involved in the study of legislative candidates
and legislative careers in the United States. A central theme of this essay is
that congressional and state legislative scholars have tended to ignore each
other’s work. This is largely due to a difference in the unit of analysis,
wherein congressional scholars concentrate on the individual while state
legislative scholars concentrate on the institution. But two recent events in
state legislatures have the potential to provide linkages between congressional
and legislative research. The first is the increase in careerism among state
legislators. The second is the effect of term limits.
FABIANO SANTOS
Recruitment and Retention of Legislators in Brazil
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXIV:209-37
This article discusses the recruitment and retention of legislators in Brazil
since World War II and identifies the main theoretical challenges for developing
comparative research on such an issue. It argues that a comparative analysis on
this subject cannot make theoretical headway without an understanding of the
reasons by which different countries display different modes of interaction
between the legislative branch and the broader political system. The conclusion
is that more historical research (and not just more comparative-static analysis
and measures of institutionalization) is needed for the investigation concerning
the cause of the emergence of different career patterns.
WERNER J. PATZELT
Recruitment and Retention in Western European Parliaments
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXIV:239-279
This article reviews and evaluates recent research on parliamentary
recruitment in Western Europe. It illuminates the particular difficulties of
doing comparative legislative research in Europe and summarizes several
important studies and their methodologies. Next, it presents a
country-by-country overview of comparative and case studies on legislative
recruitment. Included are the Mediterranean countries (Italy, Spain, Portugal,
Greece), France, the United Kingdom and Ireland, the Scandinavian countries
(Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden), Belgium and the Netherlands, the
German-speaking countries (Germany, Austria, Switzerland), and the European
Parliament. Additionally, studies on gender effects in legislative recruitment
are reviewed. A final section evaluates several major substantive and
methodological issues. These include the strengths and shortcomings of European
recruitment research; the types of data collected and research questions
answered; the common research methods and their limits; the theoretical
frameworks applied; and the neglect of normative research.
JEFFREY M. STONECASH
Political Cleavage in U.S. State Legislative Houses
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXIV:281–302
Does the income of state legislative districts affect the election of
Republicans and Democrats? If such a relationship exists, is it uniform across
states, or do states retain some uniqueness in their party cleavages? This paper
assesses the relationship of district income to partisan outcomes across states,
using district data from The Almanac of State Legislatures and a file of
winners of legislative elections compiled by the National Conference of State
Legislatures. The results indicate that the association between district income
and partisan outcomes varies significantly across the states. The varying
partisan cleavages across the states are not just a product of state conditions
such as the diversity within states. States have unique patterns of partisan
cleavages that we need to explain and incorporate into analyses.
HOLLY BRASHER, DAVID LOWERY, AND VIRGINIA GRAY
State Lobby Registration Data: The Anomalous Case of Florida (and Minnesota
too!)
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXIV:303-314
Florida’s lobbying community was anomalously large in 1990, a problem that
threatens to undermine more general interpretations of the density of state
interest systems. We use time series and cross-sectional data to better
understand just what happened in Florida. Two explanations are examined, one
focusing on changes in lobbying regulations, and the other based on a population
ecology interpretation of Florida’s battle over the sales tax on services and
what should replace it. The data provide circumstantial support for the latter
account, which suggests that Florida is anomalous only in the extremity of the
conditions governing the size of its interest community in the late 1980s, not
the conditions themselves.
DAVID T. CANON
Electoral Systems and the Representation of Minority Interests in Legislatures
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXIV:331–85
The rules and institutions used to translate preferences into electoral
outcomes have a profound impact on the nature of representation provided in a
political system. This is especially true when it comes to representing
divergent racial and ethnic group interests. This essay examines the range of
alternatives that nations have used to address this fundamental problem, with a
focus on the representation of minority interests within U.S. legislatures.
After a brief review of related issues, I examine the following questions: how should
representation be provided to minorities within a majority rule system (the
normative literature); how can representation be provided (the legal
literature); and, how are minority interests represented (the partisan
implications of racial redistricting and the broader empirical literature on
representation).The rules and institutions used to translate preferences into
electoral outcomes have a profound impact on the nature of representation
provided in a political system. This is especially true when it comes to
representing divergent racial and ethnic group interests. This essay examines
the range of alternatives that nations have used to address this fundamental
problem, with a focus on the representation of minority interests within U.S.
legislatures. After a brief review of related issues, I examine the following
questions: how should representation be provided to minorities within a
majority rule system (the normative literature); how can representation
be provided (the legal literature); and, how are minority interests
represented (the partisan implications of racial redistricting and the broader
empirical literature on representation).
GARY W. COX
Electoral Rules and the Calculus of Mobilization
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXIV:387–419
In this essay, I consider how electoral laws affect parties’
mobilizational incentives and, hence, turnout. The strategy is to look
systematically at how differing electoral rules affect the translations from
effort-to-votes, votes-to-seats, and seats-to-portfolios, and hence, parties’
incentives to mobilize. Considering each of these steps in turn leads us to many
of the most important extant claims about how electoral institutions affect
turnout. Such an approach also underscores that, even by a purely instrumental
calculus, both social structure and political context are directly relevant to
explaining mobilization (hence, turnout).
BARBARA SINCLAIR
Transformational Leader or Faithful Agent? Principal-Agent Theory and House
Majority Party Leadership
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXIV:421-49
Newt Gingrich’s phenomenal successes in the 104th Congress led many
political scientists to question the discipline’s prevalent conception of
congressional leadership. Most see congressional leaders as agents who must
satisfy members’ expectations to get reelected. Those expectations arise from
members’ goals and from the political and institutional context in which they
attempt to advance them. The change in the political context between the 104th
and 105th Congresses provides something of a natural experiment. A comparison of
party leadership in the 104th with leadership before the 104th as well as in the
105th allows us to assess the adequacy of principal-agent theory for making
sense of a complicated, even exceptional, case. I assess continuity and change
in the rate and type of House majority party leadership activity and in
leadership strategies. Compared with the Democratic leaderships of the late
1980s and early 1990s, Gingrich’s leadership in the 104th Congress shows
considerable continuity but also some distinctive features. The considerable
changes in Republican leadership from the 104th to the 105th can be explained by
changes in context that altered members’ expectations.
WILLIAM T. BIANCO
Party Campaign Committees and the Distribution of Tally Program Funds
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXIV:451–69
This paper uses data supplied by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign
Committee to examine the relationship between candidate tallying and party
allocations in the 1992 and 1994 elections and, in doing so, to provide a new
test of hypotheses concerning the role and powers of the party-in-government in
the post-war Congress. The focus is on two hypotheses: a recycling hypothesis
(allocations were driven by candidate tallies), and an electioneering hypothesis
(allocations were driven by the goal of winning elections). Analysis of the data
provides no support for the recycling hypothesis. Rather, consistent with the
electioneering hypotheses, DSCC allocations are strongly influenced by political
variables, such as the closeness of a race, a candidate’s success at
fundraising, state population, and the cost of campaigning. These findings
confirm a strong redistributive role for the contemporary party-in-government in
the electoral process.
DAVID BRADY, KARA BUCKLEY, AND DOUGLAS RIVERS
The Roots of Careerism in the U.S. House of Representatives
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXIV:489–510
In this paper we reexamine the rise of careerism in the United States House
of Representatives. Following the insights of Gilmour and Rothstein (1993) and
Kiewiet and Zeng (1993), we model careerism as a combination of the desire of
incumbents to serve in the House for long periods and the ability to be
reelected. The focus in this paper is on the probability that incumbents seek
reelection, and conditional on their decision to seek reelection, the
probability they will be elected. The results of our analysis show that
different factors influence electoral safety and the desire to continue holding
office. Namely, institutional innovations such as the Australian ballot and
primaries slightly decreased the probability of seeking reelection. In addition,
bringing pork home and a strong partisan advantage in the district increased the
probability of renomination. In regard to seat safety, incumbent party
advantage, especially post-1896, increased the probability of winning
reelection, as did economic prosperity.
JANET M. BOX-STEFFENSMEIER AND J. TOBIN GRANT
All in a Day's Work: The Financial Rewards of Legislative Effectiveness
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXIV:511–23
The investment theory of campaign finance posits that political action
committees invest campaign funds in members who provide services at a low cost.
We build on and directly test this theory, hypothesizing that PACs give to
members who are effective legislators. Using data collected from the 103d and
104th Congresses and a direct measure of effectiveness, we find that
contributions flow to members who are successful in getting a large percentage
of their sponsored bills enacted into law. Being an effective legislator is one
way a member can purchase time for his or her Washington work.
MICHAEL C. HERRON
Artificial Extremism in Interest Group Ratings and the Preferences versus Party
Debate
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXIV:525-42
Congressional voting studies often use interest group ratings as proxies for
legislator policy preferences. This paper investigates the extent to which
artificial extremism in interest group ratings affects the ability of such
studies to estimate accurately the impact of legislator preferences and party
membership on roll-call votes. Using a sequence of Monte Carlo experiments, I
find that artificial extremism does not have serious implications for
understanding whether policy preferences impact legislator voting behavior.
However, in many cases artificial extremism can cause analyses of roll-call
votes to draw improper conclusions regarding the direction and magnitude of the
impact of party membership on roll-call voting decisions.
RICK K. WILSON
Transitional Governance in the United States: Lessons from the First Federal
Congress
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXIV:543–68
This paper details the transition from a confederated to a federal
legislative system in the United States. Covering the period 1782 through 1792,
I examine how political elites fundamentally reshaped their legislative
institutions. This period in American history was extremely important. The newly
created nation faced enormous problems reconstituting itself from a loose
aggregation of independent and sovereign states into a unified nation. Almost
every commentator from the period noted the fragile nature of newfound
democratic rights and the importance of this national experiment. The concluding
sections of the paper draw lessons from this period of American transition to
contemporary legislatures in democratizing systems. While few of these lessons
directly apply to current transitional systems, they shed light on the kinds of
issues that scholars should raise while studying democratizing systems.
JOHN M. CAREY, FRANTISEK FORMANEK, AND EWA KARPOWICZ
Legislative Autonomy in New Regimes: The Czech and Polish Cases
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXIV:569–603
The recent wave of democratization worldwide has focused attention on the
evolution of legislatures in new democracies. In regimes where potent
executives—either presidential, parliamentary, or hybrid—exist alongside new
legislatures, it is necessary to distinguish the idea of legislative autonomy
from that of effectiveness. We emphasize the centrality of the second concept to
understanding representative institutions in recent transitions. We provide case
studies of the lower legislative chambers in Poland and the Czech Republic
during the past decade, describing the evolution of the party and committee
systems, the structure of legislative leadership, and its relationship to the
executive. Finally, we examine the role of the legislature in drafting and
overseeing the execution of policy, paying particular attention to budget bills
as bellwethers of legislative autonomy and the cohesiveness of parties and
coalitions. We conclude that both the Polish Sejm and the Czech Parliament have
developed much of the internal institutional framework to support legislative
autonomy, and that in the Czech case in particular, recent experiences with
minority government are contributing to this trend.
C. LAWRENCE EVANS
Legislative Structure: Rules, Precedents, and Jurisdictions
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXIV:605–42
In this essay, I review and critique the scholarly literature about rules
and other structural arrangements in Congress. My focus is on empirical research
that has been informed by rational choice theory. I emphasize three categories
of rules—committee jurisdictions, leadership prerogatives, and floor
procedure. An implication is that the forces shaping procedural politics vary
depending on the aspect of congressional structure under consideration.
Structural features within Congress also reflect different levels of
institutionalization; procedures often begin as informal practice, gradually
become precedent, and eventually are codified as formal rules. Finally, many
important aspects of structural development in Congress exhibit significant path
dependencies.
BJØRN
ERIK RASCH
Parliamentary Floor Voting Procedures and Agenda Setting in Europe
Legislative
Studies Quarterly
XXV:3-23
Which voting methods do European parliaments use when they make choices between multiple, mutually exclusive alternatives? To what extent are legislative outcomes affected by differences in floor voting procedures at the final stage of legislative processes? In the first part of the analysis, I describe the parliamentary voting procedures applied in Western and East-Central Europe. It turns out that only two approaches occur: the amendment (elimination) procedure, and the successive procedure. In the second part of the paper, I outline and discuss some normative properties and political consequences of the two parliamentary voting procedures, focusing in particular, on principles of agenda formation.
JOhn D. Huber AND Charles R. Shipan
The Costs of Control: Legislators,
Agencies, and Transaction Costs
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXV:25-52
Political scientists have long studied the relationship between legislatures and agencies—in particular, between Congress and the bureaucracy in the United States. In the past two decades, however, there has been a renewed interest in this topic along with a variety of new theoretical contributions and insights. We review these relatively recent contributions and examine how transaction cost and principal-agent approaches have provided many of them with a theoretical underpinning. Specifically, we examine a series of basic concepts from these literatures and discuss how these concepts can be used both to provide theoretical advances and to suggest empirical tests about the relationship between legislatures and agencies.
PATRICIA A. HURLEY AND BRINCK KERR
The Effects of Party Advantage on the Partisan Support
of
New U.S. House Members
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXV:53-73
We argue that the partisan voting patterns of new members of the House of Representatives are affected by national political conditions. New members of a party advantaged by national forces should exhibit distinctively partisan voting patterns, while new members of the disadvantaged party should not. We use a comparative statics research design to examine eight congresses with large numbers of new members that were also characterized by different national forces. Multivariate OLS models of party support are used to isolate the effects of first-term status while controlling for other factors that might influence a member’s willingness to support his or her party. We find that national forces have the expected general effect on the partisan support of new members of the advantaged party, and that the size of that effect varies with the particular character of the national forces.
Gregory
L. Hager and Jeffery C. Talbert
Look for the Party Label: Party Influences on Voting in the
U.S. House
Legislative
Studies Quarterly XXV:75-99
Since party is so highly correlated with ideology, party-line voting in the U.S. House may indicate members voting their own preferences. If, however, the reputation of a member’s party is valuable as a cue for voters and other party supporters, then legislators should be willing to vote against their own preferences and for those of their party, at least sometimes. To investigate whether and how often this does occur, we use roll-call data from the House from the 1950s to 1990s to perform cross-sectional and other tests that isolate the effects of parties, including analyses of members who switch parties. Our regression results indicate that party influence on voting has varied, but that there is an effect, even when controlling for ideology.
Jeffery
A. Jenkins AND timothy P. Nokken
The Institutional Origins of the Republican Party: Spatial
Voting
and the
House Speakership Election of 1855–56
Legislative
Studies Quarterly
XXV:101-130
This study explores the Republican Party’s origins at the institutional level, specifically in the 34th House of Representatives. We focus on an especially critical event, the House speakership election of 1855–56, which resulted in the first major victory for the new party. We conduct our analysis by applying the spatial theory of voting to the House balloting for Speaker, using a scaling technique developed by Poole (1998). Results from our spatial model suggest that slavery was the overriding determinant of vote choice throughout the two-month speakership battle. Its effects were considerable from the outset, even in multiple candidate rounds, and proved to be more influential as the balloting progressed. We also find that the issue of nativism, which was so important in the previous congressional elections and would continue to affect the Republicans’ electoral fortunes for several more years, had no impact on members’ votes for speaker. Once elected, the new Republican speaker, Nathaniel Banks, organized the House around anti-slavery tenets, stacking both committees and chairs with anti-slavery advocates. Overall, these results suggest that while the Republicans would struggle for an electoral identity deep into the 1850s—balancing the competing interests of slavery and nativism to win office—they emerged as a single-issue, anti-slavery coalition at the institutional level as early as 1855.
PEverill
Squire
Uncontested Seats in State Legislative Elections
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXV:131-146
Uncontested seats are far more common in U.S. state legislative elections than in U.S. House elections. But the incidence of uncontested seats varies across the states. In this paper, I attempt to explain that variance. Using pooled data on state legislative elections from 1992 to 1996, I test relationships suggested by the literature on uncontested seats in U.S. House elections. In addition, I also look at important differences among the state legislatures, such as level of professionalization, the competitiveness of the state’s electoral system, the use of multimember districts, and the institution of term limits. I find that the value of a seat, measured either by professionalization level or member pay, and the competitiveness of the state’s electoral system are powerful variables in explaining the incidence of uncontested seats across the states. Region also is important, with state legislatures in the South suffering a higher percentage of uncontested seats than state legislatures in the North.
GARY W. COX
On the Effects of Legislative Rules
Legislative Studies Quarterly XXV:169-92
In this essay, I consider how a legislature’s rules of procedure can
affect both the process and the outcome of legislation. I begin by asking
whether or not rules of procedure should have any effects at all, given that
they can often be changed by simple majorities of legislators. The second part
of the essay classifies the effects that rules have. Rules can change the set of
bills that plenary sessions of the legislature consider; they can change the
menu of amendments to any given bill considered in the plenary; they can affect
how members vote; and—putting the first three effects together—they can
affect which bills pass. I review evidence that rules do in fact have the
suspected effects.
STEVEN S. SMITH
Positive Theories of Congressional Parties
Legislative Studies Quarterly, XXV:193-215
In recent years, positive theories of congressional parties have been
elaborated to encompass a variety of institutional features. The seasoning of
the field is reflected in its contrasting theoretical accounts of the existence
of parties and their effects, and the return to empirical evidence in a set of
insightful studies of modern congressional decision making. This paper provides
a critical review of this recent literature and suggests some unfinished tasks
in the development of this field.
JOHN R. WRIGHT
Interest Groups, Congressional Reform, and Party Government in the United States
Legislative Studies Quarterly, XXV:217-35
The generally accepted explanation for the congressional reforms of the
1970s is that Northern Democrats sought greater control over the legislative
process in order to enact a liberal policy agenda. Party leaders, according to
this explanation, then acted forcefully and cohesively to satisfy these
ideological policy demands. I argue instead that congressional reforms were
motivated by the need for House Democrats to raise money for reelection, and
that the subsequent policies enacted by party leaders were designed to satisfy
important interest group constituencies that supply campaign money. The former
argument suggests that interest groups reconcile their policy demands to the
ideological policy objectives of the party. My explanation suggests that
political parties adjust their policy agendas to satisfy interest group
constituencies.
Barry
C. Burden, Gregory A. Caldeira, and Tim Groseclose
Measuring the Ideologies of U.S.
Senators: The Song Remains the Same
Legislative Studies Quarterly, XXV:237-58
This research note discusses and compares nine measures of senator
ideology. It is motivated by the newest measure of legislator ideology offered
by Hill, Hanna, and Shafqat (1997), which seeks to improve on existing measures,
particularly those based on roll-call votes. We gather and compare nine
different ideological measures from a wide variety of sources. After evaluating
them theoretically and empirically, we conclude that existing indicators
operationalize ideology as least as well as the newer alternatives.
alison b. alter and
leslie moscow mcgranahan
Reexamining the Filibuster
and Proposal Powers in the Senate
Legislative Studies Quarterly, XXV:259-84
Conventional wisdom views the Senate filibuster as a protection of minority
rights. In this paper we challenge this intuition by showing that this common
belief always holds true only for specific assumptions about Senate procedures.
We show that under an open rule, while the filibuster option may advantage the
minority, it is also true that the filibuster option may benefit the proposer at
the expense of the minority. Whether the filibuster under an open rule
advantages or disadvantages the minority, the majority, or the proposer, is a
function of the proposer’s preferred policy, the status quo, and the costs
faced by potential filibusterers.
william
howell, scott adler, charles cameron,
and charles riemann
Divided Government and the
Legislative Productivity of Congress, 1945–94
Legislative Studies Quarterly, XXV:285-312
This paper contributes to the literature on divided government and
legislative productivity. We begin by reexamining Mayhew’s data on landmark
enactments. We show that Mayhew’s claim that divided government does not
affect legislative productivity is a consequence of aggregating time series that
exhibit different behavior. We then extend Mayhew’s analysis by broadening
the concept of significance and creating a new four-category measure that
encompasses all 17,663 public laws enacted in the period of 1945–94. Using
appropriate time-series techniques, we demonstrate that periods of divided
government depress the production of landmark legislation by about 30%, at least
when productivity is measured on the basis of contemporaneous perceptions of
legislative significance. Divided government, however, has no substantive effect
on the production of important, albeit not landmark, legislation and actually
has a positive effect on the passage of trivial laws.
DENA
LEVY AND PEVERILL SQUIRE
Television Markets and the Competitiveness of U.S. House Elections
Legislative Studies
Quarterly, XXV:313-25
JAMES
D. KING
Changes in Professionalism in U.S. State Legislatures
Legislative Studies Quarterly, XXV:327-43
State legislatures in the United States have changed in many ways since the
drive for reform began in the 1960s. Using a modification of Squire’s
legislative professional index, this analysis demonstrates that a higher degree
of professionalism is a general, but not a universal, trait of state
legislatures. Disparities among state legislatures have increased, with some
being no more professional today than they were 30 years ago. On the other hand,
states that have removed legal restrictions on legislative sessions, whose
populations have grown larger, and whose neighbors have more institutionally
advanced assemblies have developed more professional legislatures.
RICHARD BORN
Congressional Incumbency and the Rise of
Split-Ticket Voting
Legislative Studies Quarterly, XXV:365-87
Despite the general recognition that incumbency has influenced voters’
decisions to split their ballots for president and the House, past research has
not focused on the specific magnitude of this effect and its responsibility for
growing ticket-splitting in the United States. In this study, I find that
incumbency was a powerful determinant of the step jump in ticket-splitting that
occurred from the 1956–68 to 1972–92 periods. This is in contrast to the
weak expansive force exerted by declining partisan intensity in the electorate.
Incumbency’s impact, however, was confined to districts where members of the
losing presidential party run for reelection; in districts with campaigning
incumbents of the winning presidential party, it made for only about the level
of ticket-splitting that could be expected in open seats.
Benjamin G. Bishin
Constituency Influence in
Congress: Does Subconstituency Matter?
Legislative Studies Q