scholarly journals The Statistical Analysis of Roll Call Data

2004 ◽  
Vol 98 (2) ◽  
pp. 355-370 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOSHUA CLINTON ◽  
SIMON JACKMAN ◽  
DOUGLAS RIVERS
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Models ◽  
Legislative Behavior ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Bayesian Procedure ◽  
Party Discipline ◽  
Statistical Framework ◽  
Test Models ◽  
Legislative Agenda ◽  
Sincere Voting

We develop a Bayesian procedure for estimation and inference for spatial models of roll call voting. This approach is extremely flexible, applicable to any legislative setting, irrespective of size, the extremism of the legislators' voting histories, or the number of roll calls available for analysis. The model is easily extended to let other sources of information inform the analysis of roll call data, such as the number and nature of the underlying dimensions, the presence of party whipping, the determinants of legislator preferences, and the evolution of the legislative agenda; this is especially helpful since generally it is inappropriate to use estimates of extant methods (usually generated under assumptions of sincere voting) to test models embodying alternate assumptions (e.g., log-rolling, party discipline). A Bayesian approach also provides a coherent framework for estimation and inference with roll call data that eludes extant methods; moreover, via Bayesian simulation methods, it is straightforward to generate uncertainty assessments or hypothesis tests concerning any auxiliary quantity of interest or to formally compare models. In a series of examples we show how our method is easily extended to accommodate theoretically interesting models of legislative behavior. Our goal is to provide a statistical framework for combining the measurement of legislative preferences with tests of models of legislative behavior.

Incremental Polarization

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin Buchler
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Spatial Model ◽  
Spatial Models ◽  
Divided Government ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Roll Call Voting ◽  
Policy Goals ◽  
Conventional Models ◽  
Sincere Voting

This book provides a unified spatial model of legislative elections, parties, and roll call voting to address three primary questions: why do legislators adopt extreme positions, how do they win given their extremism, and what role do parties play in promoting polarization? The book links spatial models of elections to spatial models of roll call voting in the legislature, and suggests that the key to understanding polarization is to reverse the order of conventional models and place the legislative session before the election because legislators adopt positions in the policy space, extreme or otherwise, through the incremental process of casting roll call votes. Linking a spatial model of an election to a model of roll call voting, the book derives the following. When a legislative caucus is ideologically homogeneous, electorally diverse, and policy motivated, it will empower party leaders to solve the collective action problem of sincere voting by counterbalancing members’ electoral pressure to vote as centrists. The result is that the caucus achieves policy goals at the cost of some electoral security, but agenda paradoxes minimize the electoral damage done, so most incumbents win re-election anyway at only slightly diminished margins. This model explains the development of polarization in the House of Representatives throughout the post–World War II period, and key votes on legislation such as the Affordable Care Act. Moreover, even the unusual politics within the Republican Party during the divided government period from 2011 through 2016 follow naturally from extensions of the model.

scholarly journals ADAPTING LEGISLATIVE AGENDA SETTINGMODELS TO PARLIAMENTARY REGIMES: EVIDENCE FROM THE POLISH PARLIAMENT

2017 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 181-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monika Nalepa
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Legislative Behavior ◽  
Agenda Control ◽  
Control Data ◽  
Party Discipline ◽  
Legislative Voting ◽  
Legislative Agenda ◽  
Parliamentary Regimes ◽  
The One

Abstract This paper draws on Cox and McCubbins’ comparison of floor and cartel agenda models and adapts it to the context of multi-party parliamentary regimes with the goal of clarifying some important differences between the legislative consequences of cohesion and discipline, on the one hand, and the effects of agenda setting, on the other. Internal party discipline and/or preference cohesion receives the bulk of emphasis in comparative studies of empirical patterns of legislative behavior, generally without considering the role of the agenda. In a series of stylized models, this paper highlights important differences between having more unified parties and/or coalitions as a result of discipline and/or cohesion and the successful use of agenda control. We show that cohesion or discipline - understood as the ability to achieve voting unity - does not produce the same patterns of legislative behavior as negative agenda control. Data on legislative voting in the Polish Sejm are used to illustrate some points.

A Unified Spatial Model of Congress

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin Buchler
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Spatial Model ◽  
Party Leader ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Legislative Elections ◽  
Collective Action Problem ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Legislative Session ◽  
Disciplinary System ◽  
Sincere Voting

This chapter presents a unified model of legislative elections, parties, and roll call voting, built around a party leadership election. First, a legislative caucus selects a party leader who campaigns based on a platform of a disciplinary system. Once elected, that leader runs the legislative session, in which roll call votes occur. Then elections occur, and incumbents face re-election with the positions they incrementally adopted. When the caucus is ideologically homogeneous, electorally diverse, and policy motivated, members will elect a leader who solves the collective action problem of sincere voting with “preference-preserving influence.” That leader will threaten to punish legislators who bow to electoral pressure to vote as centrists. Consequently, legislators vote sincerely as extremists and get slightly lower vote shares, but they offset that lost utility with policy gains that they couldn’t have gotten without party influence. Party leaders will rarely pressure legislators to vote insincerely.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin Buchler
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Model ◽  
Spatial Models ◽  
Spatial Theory ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Policy Space ◽  
Policy Decisions ◽  
Roll Call Voting ◽  
Legislative Session ◽  
History Of ◽  
Conventional Models

Spatial theory is divided between models of elections and models of roll call voting, neither of which alone can explain congressional polarization. This chapter discusses the history of spatial theory, why it is important to link the two strands of spatial models, and the value of reversing the order of conventional models. Conventional models place an election before policy decisions are made. This chapter proposes a unified spatial model of Congress in which the conventional order is reversed. First, there is a legislative session, then an election in which voters respond retrospectively, not to the locations candidates claim to hold, but to the bundles of roll call votes that incumbents cast to incrementally adopt their locations in the policy space. Such a model is best suited to explaining three puzzles: why do legislators adopt extreme positions, how do they win, and what role do parties play in the process?

scholarly journals Roll-Call Vote Selection: Implications for the Study of Legislative Politics

2020 ◽  
Vol 114 (3) ◽  
pp. 691-706
Author(s):  
CAITLIN AINSLEY ◽  
CLIFFORD J. CARRUBBA ◽  
BRIAN F. CRISP ◽  
BETUL DEMIRKAYA ◽  
MATTHEW J. GABEL ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Formal Model ◽  
Legislative Behavior ◽  
Legislative Politics ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Roll Call Vote ◽  
Voting Procedures ◽  
Strategic Incentives ◽  
Theoretical Results ◽  
Representative Samples ◽  
Quantities Of Interest

Roll-call votes provide scholars with the opportunity to measure many quantities of interest. However, the usefulness of the roll-call sample depends on the population it is intended to represent. After laying out why understanding the sample properties of the roll-call record is important, we catalogue voting procedures for 145 legislative chambers, finding that roll calls are typically discretionary. We then consider two arguments for discounting the potential problem: (a) roll calls are ubiquitous, especially where the threshold for invoking them is low or (b) the strategic incentives behind requests are sufficiently benign so as to generate representative samples. We address the first defense with novel empirical evidence regarding roll-call prevalence and the second with an original formal model of the position-taking argument for roll-call vote requests. Both our empirical and theoretical results confirm that inattention to vote method selection should broadly be considered an issue for the study of legislative behavior.

A House Divided

2005 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 282-303 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank C. Thames
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Electoral Systems ◽  
Proportional Representation ◽  
Representation Election ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Limited Evidence ◽  
Roll Call Voting ◽  
Party Discipline ◽  
National Assembly ◽  
Empirical Results

Mixed-member electoral systems embrace two views of representation by electing some legislators in single-member district elections and others in a proportional representation election. This can potentially create a “mandate divide” in legislatures, because single-member district legislators have an incentive to embrace parochial issues and proportional representation legislators have an incentive to center on national issues. Previous studies of this question have only found limited evidence of its existence. The author argues that the level of party system institutionalization will fundamentally determine whether a mandate divide will exist in a mixed-member legislature. Using roll-call voting data from the Hungarian National Assembly, the Russian Duma, and the Ukrainian Rada, the author analyzes patterns of party discipline in each legislature. The empirical results show that a mandate divide only existed in the legislature with the most weakly institutionalized party system, the Russian Duma.

Party Competition and Coalitional Stability: Evidence from American Local Government

2020 ◽  
Vol 114 (4) ◽  
pp. 1055-1070
Author(s):  
PETER BUCCHIANERI
Keyword(s):  
Local Government ◽  
Party System ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Legislative Behavior ◽  
Democratic Accountability ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Electoral Accountability ◽  
One Dimensional ◽  
Party Organizations ◽  
Responsible Party

For decades, political scientists have argued that competition is a fundamental component of a responsible party system, such that when one party dominates politics, legislative coalitions destabilize and democratic accountability suffers. In this paper, I evaluate these predictions in an important but largely unexplored legislative environment: American local government. Using an original collection of roll-call records from 151 municipal councils, I show that legislative behavior is more one-dimensional when elections are partisan and the electorate is evenly balanced between the parties. When either of these features is absent, however, elite behavior remains unstructured, with coalitions shifting over time and across issues. These differences across institutional and competitive contexts suggest that partisan elections—and the party organizations that nearly always come with them—are critical for translating electoral insecurity into organized government, raising questions about the capacity for electoral accountability in a growing set of one-party dominant governments across the country.

scholarly journals What Happens When Extremists Win Primaries?

2015 ◽  
Vol 109 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANDREW B. HALL
Keyword(s):  
Regression Discontinuity ◽  
General Election ◽  
Primary Elections ◽  
Legislative Behavior ◽  
Regression Discontinuity Design ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Primary Election ◽  
Percentage Points ◽  
General Elections ◽  
The U.S

This article studies the interplay of U.S. primary and general elections. I examine how the nomination of an extremist changes general-election outcomes and legislative behavior in the U.S. House, 1980–2010, using a regression discontinuity design in primary elections. When an extremist—as measured by primary-election campaign receipt patterns—wins a “coin-flip” election over a more moderate candidate, the party’s general-election vote share decreases on average by approximately 9–13 percentage points, and the probability that the party wins the seat decreases by 35–54 percentage points. This electoral penalty is so large that nominating the more extreme primary candidate causes the district’s subsequent roll-call representation to reverse, on average, becoming more liberal when an extreme Republican is nominated and more conservative when an extreme Democrat is nominated. Overall, the findings show how general-election voters act as a moderating filter in response to primary nominations.

The Budget Process and Legislative Behavior: Individual Amendments, Support for the Executive and Government Programs

2007 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fernando Limongi ◽  
Argelina Figueiredo
Keyword(s):  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Explanatory Variable ◽  
Budget Process ◽  
Legislative Behavior ◽  
Party Affiliation ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Government Programs ◽  
House Floor

The article challenges the contention that individual amendments are crucial for a system of exchanging favors with the Administration by members of Congress interested in distributive policies as a way of guaranteeing their reelection. By analyzing funds allocated through Congressional amendments, their distribution in different government programs, and roll-call votes in the Brazilian House of Representatives from 1996 to 2001, the authors show that: individual amendments are not prioritized either by Congress in the budget's approval or by the Administration in its implementation; there are no differences between the agenda dictated by the Administration and that of the legislators; and party affiliation explains both House floor votes and the implementation of individual amendments and is thus an explanatory variable in the Executive-Legislative relationship.

Legislative Coalitions in Presidential Systems: The Case of Uruguay

2013 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cesar Zucco
Keyword(s):  
Legislative Behavior ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
Presidential Systems

AbstractThe article analyzes executive-legislative relations in Uruguay between 1985 and 2005. It demonstrates that even after controlling for ideological affinity and acknowledging that ideology affects presence in the cabinet, legislators whose factions hold ministerial positions behave in a more progovernment way than their ideology would predict. This result not only shows that coalitions “work” but suggests that they work because the presidents use resources under their control to attract support from legislators. This article presents a systematic analysis of executive-legislative relations in multiparty settings that builds on the finding that nonideologically contiguous coalitions often form to separate the ideological from the strategic determinants of legislative behavior. It also contributes to the literature by presenting a new set of roll call data and, more generally, highlights the risks of attempting to infer ideology directly from legislative behavior in presidential multiparty settings.

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