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?

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.

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.

The Geometry of Multidimensional Quadratic Utility in Models of Parliamentary Roll Call Voting

2001 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 211-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith T. Poole
Keyword(s):  
Utility Function ◽  
Spatial Model ◽  
Geometric Interpretation ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Choice Data ◽  
Roll Call Voting ◽  
Quadratic Utility ◽  
Likelihood Model ◽  
Ideal Points ◽  
The Difference

The purpose of this paper is to show how the geometry of the quadratic utility function in the standard spatial model of choice can be exploited to estimate a model of parliamentary roll call voting. In a standard spatial model of parliamentary roll call voting, the legislator votes for the policy outcome corresponding to Yea if her utility for Yea is greater than her utility for Nay. The voting decision of the legislator is modeled as a function of the difference between these two utilities. With quadratic utility, this difference has a simple geometric interpretation that can be exploited to estimate legislator ideal points and roll call parameters in a standard framework where the stochastic portion of the utility function is normally distributed. The geometry is almost identical to that used by Poole (2000) to develop a nonparametric unfolding of binary choice data and the algorithms developed by Poole (2000) can be easily modified to implement the standard maximum-likelihood model.

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