The impact of party-constituent relationships on executive and legislative influence over policymaking

In this analysis, we examine the effect of party-voter linkages on executive and legislative influence over policymaking in democracies throughout the world. We expect committees in legislatures with programmatic parties to have more power over the public policymaking process than committees in legislatures with clientelistic parties do. We also expect executives in countries with programmatic parties to have less power over the public policymaking process than executives in countries with clientelistic parties do. Using data from the Varieties of Democracy Dataset and controlling for relevant factors, we find support for our expectations. The results of this paper shed light on how party linkages to constituents can affect executive and legislative influence over policymaking.

Allocating Unlimited Money: What Explains Super PAC Spending in Congressional Elections?

How do Super PACs allocate their resources? The question is both timely and relevant, particularly as we reflect on the ten-year anniversary of the Citizens United ruling. Super PACs now outspend – sometimes by huge margins, as in the 2016 presidential election – all other groups’ independent expenditures including those of parties, unions, and 501(c) organizations. The issue is especially important in congressional politics, where Super PACs have an opportunity to shape the institution every two years through congressional elections. Utilizing outside spending data from the Center for Responsive Politics, we analyze four U.S. House election cycles since the Supreme Court’s landmark 2010 Citizens United ruling (2012–2018). The likelihood that Super PACs invest in a race is strongly determined by the electoral context, even after controlling for the legislative influence of the incumbent member of Congress.

Minority Party Capacity in Congress

When, and under what circumstances, are congressional minority parties capable of influencing legislative outcomes? We argue that the capacity of the minority party to exert legislative influence is a function of three factors: constraints on the majority party, which create opportunities for the minority party; minority party cohesion on the issue at hand; and sufficient motivation for the minority to engage in legislating rather than electioneering. Drawing on data on every bill considered in the House of Representatives between 1985 and 2006 and case examples of notable lawmaking efforts during the same period, we show that our theory helps predict which bills are considered on the House floor, which bills become law, and the substance of policy-making outcomes. Our findings have important implications for theories of congressional party power and our understanding of minority party influence on Capitol Hill.

Using Committee Hearings to Place Lobbyists, Experts and Other Outside Agents into Legislative Preference Space

Theoretical expectations regarding the legislative influence of outside agents, such as lobbyists, agency officials or policy experts, often depend on the relationship between legislators' and agents' preferences. Non-elected agents, however, typically will have preferences defined on a dimension that is different from that of elected legislators. I develop a bridging method that accommodates when the agent preference space shifts and rotates relative to the legislator roll-call preference space, and that identifies distances across the two dimensions in meaningful units necessary to test institutional hypotheses. In my application to Medicare hearings, I show that the agent preference space has an orthogonal rotation anchored by a quality-cost latent dimension, and that legislators heavily condition their questioning of agents on preference distance in a way consistent with informational models of lobbying.

A Parliament for the People? – The European Parliament’s Activism in the Area of Social Policy From the Early 1970s to the Single European Act

The formal powers of the European Parliament (EP) prior to the Single European Act (SEA, 1986) were marginal. However, this limited formal role did not correspond to the perception of the early Members of the EP (MEPs) as to what role the EP should play in Community policy-making. Predominantly driven by pro-integrationist ideas of ever-closer union - and of an ever-stronger Parliament - MEPs became activists for deeper political as well as institutional integration from the institution’s beginnings in the 1950s. This article studies the EP’s emerging legislative influence through the lens of Community social policy, a policy area with a particularly strong ideational dimension. Perceiving a lack of public support for and identification with the Community project, MEPs invested considerable time and effort prior to the SEA into attempts of creating a broad Community social policy. In so doing, the delegates hoped to convince the member states’ citizens of the added value of closer European integration whilst simultaneously enhancing their own institution’s position. Based on an extensive collection of EP archival documents, this article contributes to a deeper understanding of the EP’s gradual empowerment at a time when the Treaties foresaw little more than a consultative assembly.

A nonpartisan legislative chamber: The influence of the Canadian Senate

Measuring relative legislative influence is notoriously difficult, particularly in bicameral systems where two chambers have similar formal powers. Recent changes to the Canadian legislature offer a unique opportunity to understand how an upper house liberated from party constraints impacts that houses’ legislative influence. I leverage an original panel data set matching lobbyist activity to parliamentarian characteristics and responsibilities and, using a difference-in-differences design, compare Members of Parliament to Senators, both independent and partisan. I find that independent Senators receive disproportionately more attention from lobbyists both after the changes and as the independent composition of the Senate grows. This article offers a time-variant measure by which perceived influence can be evaluated and contributes to the extant literature on intercameral relationships, partisanship, the legislative process, and party discipline and cohesion.

Power and transparency in political negotiations

Who gains legislative influence in early agreement negotiations (trilogues) between the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union? Practitioners from both institutions suspect that it is the other side. Meanwhile, critics point at trilogues’ lack of transparency. This article proposes that legislative power and institutional transparency are inversely related: Opacity makes an actor more influential in political negotiations. The argument is tested on a matched sample of legislative files from the 1999–2009 period. The findings suggest that the European Parliament became more influential in early agreement negotiations – where it became opaque vis-à-vis the Council. In such negotiations, the relative influence of the European Parliament substantially increased; by contrast, the European Parliament did not gain influence in negotiations where it remained transparent.