Explaining Party Cohesion in Congress: The Case of Shared Policy Attitudes

1976 ◽  
Vol 70 (4) ◽  
pp. 1156-1171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helmut Norpoth
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Communication Process ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Legislative Voting ◽  
Policy Attitudes ◽  
Policy Goals ◽  
The Mean ◽  
Party Cohesion ◽  
Voting Decisions ◽  
Party Voting

Partisanship has often been noted as one of the most conspicuous factors in legislative voting in the U.S. Congress. This paper attempts to trace party voting to shared policy goals. After the mean attitudes of congressmen belonging to the same party were ascertained for a number of policy domains, the effect of mean party attitudes on roll-call voting was estimated by regression analysis, taking into account the deviation of individual congressmen from their respective mean party attitudes. The results demonstrate that in all three policy domains examined, i.e., social welfare, civil rights, and foreign policy, shared party attitudes leave a strong imprint on individual roll-call decisions. The voting decisions of congressmen, in fact, are found to owe more to the shared party attitudes than to their own individual attitudes. The paper also explores the communication process through which shared policy attitudes are translated within Congress into partisan roll-call votes and points to a way of reconciling the “predispositional” and the “interactional” approach to legislative decision making.

scholarly journals Congressional Decision Making and the Separation of Powers

2001 ◽  
Vol 95 (2) ◽  
pp. 361-378 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew D. Martin
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Separation Of Powers ◽  
Formal Model ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Decision Context ◽  
Policy Goals ◽  
Strategic Model

To what extent does the separation of powers affect congressional roll call voting behavior? To answer this question, I offer a strategic model of congressional decision making that asserts members of Congress pursue public policy goals when casting roll call votes. From the equilibrium predictions of a formal model, I generate testable hypotheses by computing the expected net amount of sophisticated (nonsincere) congressional behavior given changes in decision context. I test the predictions of the theoretical model with data from all civil rights roll call votes from the 83d to the 102d Congress. The results demonstrate that both the other legislative chamber and the Supreme Court profoundly constrain House members and senators when casting roll call votes. This is strong evidence of the importance of policy outcomes to members of Congress when voting on the floor.

Public Goods, Private Interests, and Representation

1989 ◽  
Vol 83 (4) ◽  
pp. 1143-1164 ◽  
Author(s):  
John E. Jackson ◽  
David C. King
Keyword(s):  
Roll Call ◽  
Concerted Effort ◽  
Tax Reforms ◽  
Economic Interests ◽  
Private Interests ◽  
Preferences For Redistribution ◽  
The Difference ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
Voting Decisions ◽  
Party Voting

We estimate a model of House members' roll call voting decisions embodying some hypotheses about representation, including estimates of the influence of district opinion on broad collective issues relative to personal economic interests, of the effect of electoral security on constituency responsiveness, and of the difference in constituency and party voting among Republicans and Democrats. This model is estimated with votes taken during deliberations on the 1978 Tax Reform Act, important because it was a significant change from the tax reforms passed in the late 1960s and 1970s, marked the first appearance of the Kemp-Roth proposed tax cut, and represented a concerted effort by Republicans to make tax policy a broad national issue. Findings indicate that constituent preferences for redistribution are important influences on representatives' decisions and that Republicans exhibited a greater degree of party voting than the Democrats while the Democrats better represented their constituent's preferences.

Changes in the US Gender Gap in Wages in the 1960s

2021 ◽  
Vol 111 ◽  
pp. 143-148
Author(s):  
Martha J. Bailey ◽  
Thomas Helgerman ◽  
Bryan A. Stuart
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Gender Gap ◽  
Labor Standards ◽  
Equal Pay ◽  
The Us ◽  
Fair Labor Standards Act ◽  
Women's Wages ◽  
The Mean ◽  
Equal Pay Act ◽  
The 1960S

The 1960s witnessed landmark legislation that aimed to increase women's wages, including the Equal Pay Act of 1963, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, and the 1966 amendments to the Fair Labor Standards Act. Although the gender gap in pay changed little at the mean/median during the decade, our distributional analysis shows that women's wages converged sharply on men's below but diverged above the median. However, the bulk of women's relative pay gains are not explained by changes in observed attributes. Our findings suggest an important role for legislation in narrowing the gender gap in the 1960s.

Off the Record: Unrecorded Legislative Votes, Selection Bias and Roll-Call Vote Analysis

2006 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 691-704 ◽  
Author(s):  
CLIFFORD J. CARRUBBA ◽  
MATTHEW GABEL ◽  
LACEY MURRAH ◽  
RYAN CLOUGH ◽  
ELIZABETH MONTGOMERY ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Random Sample ◽  
Selection Bias ◽  
European Parliament ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
General Study ◽  
Roll Call Vote ◽  
Legislative Voting ◽  
Sampling Problem ◽  
The Universe

Scholars often use roll-call votes to study legislative behaviour. However, many legislatures only conclude a minority of decisions by roll call. Thus, if these votes are not a random sample of the universe of votes cast, scholars may be drawing misleading inferences. In fact, theories over why roll-call votes are requested would predict selection bias based on exactly the characteristics of legislative voting that scholars have most heavily studied. This article demonstrates the character and severity of this sampling problem empirically by examining European Parliament vote data for a whole year. Given that many legislatures decided only a fraction of their legislation by roll call, these findings have potentially important implications for the general study of legislative behaviour.

Party Cohesion in Westminster Systems: Inducements, Replacement and Discipline in the House of Commons, 1836–1910

2014 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 567-589 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew C. Eggers ◽  
Arthur Spirling
Keyword(s):  
Panel Data ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Central Tendency ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
New Members ◽  
Left Tail ◽  
Party Cohesion ◽  
Party Voting ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Member Of Parliament

This article considers the historical development of a characteristic crucial for the functioning and normative appeal of Westminster systems: cohesive legislative parties. It gathers the universe of the 20,000 parliamentary divisions that took place between 1836 and 1910 in the British House of Commons, construct a voting record for every Member of Parliament (MP) serving during this time, and conducts analysis that aims to both describe and explain the development of cohesive party voting. In line with previous work, it shows that – with the exception of a chaotic period in the 1840s and 1850s – median discipline was always high and increased throughout the century. The study uses novel methods to demonstrate that much of the rise in cohesion results from the elimination of a rebellious ‘left tail’ from the 1860s onwards, rather than central tendency shifts. In explaining the aggregate trends, the article uses panel data techniques and notes that there is scant evidence for ‘replacement’ explanations that involve new members behaving in more disciplined ways than those leaving the chamber. It offers evidence that more loyal MPs were more likely to obtain ministerial posts, and speculates that this and other ‘inducement’-based accounts offer more promising explanations of increasingly cohesive parties.

The Linkage between Constituency Attitudes and Congressional Voting Behavior: A Causal Model

1966 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles F. Cnudde ◽  
Donald J. McCrone
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Main Body ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Congressional Voting ◽  
Theoretical Question ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Policy Agreement

Warren E. Miller and Donald E. Stokes' publication in 1963 of a preliminary report on the Survey Research Center's representation study is an important landmark in the development of empirical political theory. That report addressed itself to the crucial theoretical question of the linkage between mass political opinions and governmental policy-making. More specifically, the report found considerable policy agreement between Congressional roll call votes and the attitudes of the individual Congressman's constituency. This policy agreement was then interpreted through several causal paths and the Congressman's perception of his constituency's attitudes was found to be the main path by which the local district ultimately influenced Congressional outputs.The main body of the report dealt with the broad civil rights issue dimension, and, by specifying the perceptual path by which constituency influence is brought to bear, documented the effect of political issues despite the generally low level of political information held at the mass level. Thus, the Congressmen, through their broad cognitive evaluations, were aware of how far they could proceed in determining their civil rights roll call votes on the basis of their own attitudes before risking the displeasure of their constituents.Beyond such major substantive contributions the representation study introduced to political science a variance-apportioning technique similar to that developed by Sewall Wright, in 1921. Through this variance-apportioning technique, the importance of the perceptual link was isolated and evaluated. This study, then, symbolizes the growing recognition in political science of the importance of more sophisticated methodological tools in the process of theory building.

scholarly journals Unity in Diversity? The Development of Political Parties in the Parliament of Canada, 1867–2011

2015 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 545-569 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-François Godbout ◽  
Bjørn Høyland
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
The United States ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Agenda Control ◽  
Party Discipline ◽  
Electoral Incentives ◽  
Unity In Diversity ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
Party Cohesion ◽  
Party Voting

What explains the development of legislative party voting unity? Evidence from the United States and Britain indicate that partisan sorting, cohort replacement effects, electoral incentives, and agenda control contributed to enhancing party cohesion during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Here, these mechanisms are evaluated by analysing a dataset containing all the recorded votes from the Canadian House of Commons, 1867–2011. Overall, we find that partisan sorting and the government’s ability to control the agenda are central to the consolidation of parties over time. Our results underscore the need to integrate institutional rules and legislative agendas into models of parliamentary voting behaviour and suggest that strict party discipline can lead to the development of a multi-party system in the legislative arena.

The U. S. Senate and Civil Rights Roll-Call Votes

1991 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 971 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Alice Nye
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Roll Call

scholarly journals Power to the Parties: Cohesion and Competition in the European Parliament, 1979–2001

2005 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
SIMON HIX ◽  
ABDUL NOURY ◽  
GÉRARD ROLAND
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Total Population ◽  
European Parliament ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Party Cohesion ◽  
The Impact

How cohesive are political parties in the European Parliament? What coalitions form and why? The answers to these questions are central for understanding the impact of the European Parliament on European Union policies. These questions are also central in the study of legislative behaviour in general. We collected the total population of roll-call votes in the European Parliament, from the first elections in 1979 to the end of 2001 (over 11,500 votes). The data show growing party cohesion despite growing internal national and ideological diversity within the European party groups. We also find that the distance between parties on the left-right dimension is the strongest predictor of coalition patterns. We conclude that increased power of the European Parliament has meant increased power for the transnational parties, via increased internal party cohesion and inter-party competition.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document