Gerrymandering Roll Calls in Congress, 1879–2000

We argue that the standard toolbox used in electoral studies to assess the bias and responsiveness of electoral systems can also be used to assess the bias and responsiveness of legislative systems. We consider which items in the toolbox are the most appropriate for use in the legislative setting, then apply them to estimate levels of bias in the U.S. House from 1879 to 2000. Our results indicate a systematic bias in favor of the majority party over this period, with the strongest bias arising during the period of "czar rule" (51st–60th Congresses, 1889–1910) and during the post-packing era (87th–106th Congresses, 1961–2000). This finding is consistent with the majority party possessing a significant advantage, either in "buying" vote options, in setting the agenda, or both.     

Testing the Predictions of the Multidimensional Spatial Voting Model with Roll Call Data

e-mail: gjeong{at}artsci.wustl.edu This paper develops a procedure for locating proposals and legislatorsin a multidimensional policy space by applying agenda-constrainedideal point estimation. Placing proposals and legislators onthe same scale allows an empirical test of the predictions ofthe spatial voting model. I illustrate this procedure by testingthe predictive power of the uncovered set—a solution conceptof the multidimensional spatial voting model—using rollcall data from the U.S. Senate. Since empirical tests of thepredictive power of the uncovered set have been limited to experimentaldata, this is the first empirical test of the concept's predictivepower using real-world data. Author's note: An earlier version of this paper was presentedat the 2006 Annual Meeting of Political Methodology Society.I am grateful to Andrew Martin, Gary Miller, Dan O'Neill, DavidPark, Robert Walker, and three anonymous reviewers for theirhelpful comments. I am especially indebted to Gary Miller forhis insights and advice. All remaining errors are my own.     

Patrimonial Economic Voting: Legislative Elections in France

Patrimonial economic voting has been neglected in favour of classical economic voting studies. This assertion holds less, however, with French election investigations, where the neglect is relative rather than absolute. Whereas classical economic voting holds the economy to be a valence issue, patrimonial economic voting regards the economy as a positional issue. Voters who own more property, in particular high-risk assets, are held to be more right-wing in their political preferences. This patrimonial effect shows itself to be statistically and substantively strong in one of the few election data-sets with sufficient measures available – surveys on the National Assembly contests of 1978, 1988, 2002. The electoral effect exceeds that from the traditional ‘heavy variables’ of class and income. Moreover, further work might show its impact comparable to that of classic sociotropic retrospective evaluations of the national economy. Certainly a case can be made for further study of patrimonial economic voting, as compared to classical economic voting.     

Integrating Voting Theory and Roll Call Analysis: A Framework

Scholars of legislative studies typically use ideal point estimatesfrom scaling procedures to test theories of legislative politics.We contend that theory and methods may be better integratedby directly incorporating maintained and to be tested hypothesesin the statistical model used to estimate legislator preferences.In this view of theory and estimation, formal modeling (1) providesauxiliary assumptions that serve as constraints in the estimationprocess, and (2) generates testable predictions. The estimationand hypothesis testing procedure uses roll call data to evaluatethe validity of theoretically derived to be tested hypothesesin a world where maintained hypotheses are presumed true. Wearticulate the approach using the language of statistical inference(both frequentist and Bayesian). The approach is demonstratedin analyses of the well-studied Powell amendment to the federalaid-to-education bill in the 84th House and the Compromise of1790 in the 1st House.     

The Electoral Consequences of Roll Call Voting: Health Care and the 2018 Election

Political Behavior - For years, Republicans in Congress promised to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act. The results of the 2016 elections put them in position to take action...     

The Executive Divided Against Itself: Cohabitation in France, 1986–1988

From March 1986 to May 1988 France was headed by a leftist President and a rightist Prime Minister. The background to this unusual situation is presented, and the experience itself — referred to as cohabitation — is discussed in detail.
The complex game that the two executive leaders played during the period was regulated by the constitutional rules, conditioned by the electoral calendar and the narrowness of the prime minister's coalition majority, and moderated by public approval and the existence of a bipartisan foreign and defense policy.
The 1986–1988 experience did not overtax the constitutional system, but cohabitation under different conditions could be destabilizing. Cohabitation is like the possibility of the US president being selected by the House of Representatives: not highly probable but possible, not necessarily dangerous but possibly so, and something that arouses little enthusiasm.     

Mobilization Around New Convenience Voting Methods: A Field Experiment to Encourage Voting by Mail with a Downloadable Ballot and Early Voting

Political Behavior - Election reform has allowed citizens in many states to choose among convenience voting methods. We report on a field experiment that tests messages derived from theories about...     

The Future of Four Wheels: Government and the Automobile Industry in France and West Germany, 1971–1985

The concept of a "policy community" is useful in understanding the joint efforts of national governments and domestic business interests to secure industrial competitiveness in world markets. The definitional debate accompanying the increased use of the term in political studies, on the other hand, is of marginal value in appreciating the substance of government-industry collaboration. An analytic account of the actions of two national governments grappling with the needs of industries subject to similar circumstance, as in a sectoral crisis, provides the opportunity to apply the term in a practical manner. Policy communities are no more than the institutionalized expressions of long-established relationships between private and public interests, subject to national idiosyncracies and accumulated experience. They are not the product of a deliberate and coherent design for the attainment of specific industrial goals. This point can be illustrated by reconstructing the actions of two national policy communities in crisis, that is in situations where established relationships come under greater strain than found under "normal" circumstances and, indeed, might be expected to break down entirely. A comparison of government intervention in the automobile industries of West Germany and France, 1971–1985, demonstrates the resilience of industrial policy communities. The maintenance of established relationships is shown to be part and parcel of the emerging industrial solution. Institutions and organizations involved in crisis resolution in the French and German motor industries are revealed to have dissimilar, overarching political objectives beyond the specific and immediate needs they seek to address. The imposition of such political factors onto industrial problems is not necessarily a disservice to an industry's long-term vitality.     

The Primacy of Race in the Geography of Income‐Based Voting: New Evidence from Public Voting Records

Why does the relationship between income and partisanship vary across U.S. regions? Some answers to this question have focused on economic context (in poorer environments, economics is more salient), whereas others have focused on racial context (in racially diverse areas, richer voters oppose the party favoring redistribution). Using 73 million geocoded registration records and 185,000 geocoded precinct returns, we examine income‐based voting across local areas. We show that the political geography of income‐based voting is inextricably tied to racial context, and only marginally explained by economic context. Within homogeneously nonblack localities, contextual income has minimal bearing on the income‐party relationship. The correlation between income and partisanship is strong in heavily black areas of the Old South and other areas with a history of racialized poverty, but weaker elsewhere, including in urbanized areas of the South. The results demonstrate that the geography of income‐based voting is inseparable from racial context.     

Careless with Our Democracy: Group Think and Voting Reform

The Representation of the People Act 2000 introduced what has come to be known as 'voting on demand'. In the process it paved the way for an absentee ballot system in Britain that would, in the words of the judge who heard two extraordinary electoral fraud cases in Birmingham in February and March 2005, disgrace a banana republic. Flaws in the policy making process that preceded the largely uncritical acceptance of universal access to postal votes were also exposed by failures to respond quickly to allegations of fraud and to detailed Electoral Commission recommendations aimed at improving ballot security. These failures raise serious questions about the prevalence of 'group think' in Whitehall and Westminster. The narrowness of Labour's General Election victory in votes, though not in seats, means that doubts about the integrity of Britain's voting arrangements threaten to reinforce a general loss of confidence in British politics.     

Defensive versus Offensive Approaches to Administrative Reform in France (1988–1997): The Leadership Dilemmas of French Prime Ministers

From 1988 to 1997, all French prime ministers launched administrative reform programs with numerous concerns for increasing efficiency, strengthening responsiveness, or redesigning political and administrative roles within the state. However, these initiatives have never led to radical and disruptive changes. The institutional legacy seems to have strongly constrained the politics of administration. What, then, is the meaning of launching administrative reforms within the French political power configuration, and how does it “fit” with the way leaders try to establish their political authority? This article provides two empirical studies of different prime ministers (Michel Rocard under the Mitterrand presidency and Alain Jupp under the Chirac presidency) that can explain the nature of the French governments' commitments to these issues. It argues that understanding administrative reforms requires a mixture of institutional and actor‐centered explanations, because these policies are really leadership challenges to the preexisting institutional order. As such, they are reflexively shaped or constrained by what they try to control and define. This paper shows that for a French prime minister to define the administration as a problem while building his own leadership can jeopardize the resources he will get from that same bureaucratic administrative system. This “power‐reform dilemma” may explain why administrative reforms have proven more politically effective as an instrument of order‐affirming impulses rather than as a disruptive strategy.     

Procedural Contexts, Party Strategy, and Conditional Party Voting in the U.S. House of Representatives, 1971–2000

In this article, we provide a critical review of the evidence and arguments about party polarization in the House of Representatives during the late 20th century. We show that inferences about party polarization are significantly affected by voting reform in the early 1970s. We observe that a decomposed roll-call record alters our view of the timing of changes in party polarization and therefore requires that we reconsider explanations of the trend. We revisit explanations of party polarization and establish a strong case for placing substantial emphasis on party strategies in explanations of party polarization in floor behavior during the 1980s and 1990s.     

The Influence of EU Membership on Methods and Processes of Budgeting in Britain and France, 1970–1995

This article explores the impact European Union (EU) integration has had on methods and processes of budgeting in France and Britain from 1970 to 1995. It assesses whether convergence of budgetary institutions occurs and, if so, whether it is promoted by an obligation of compliance or by an hybridization effect. Compliance refers to changes in national budgetary institutions made compulsory by membership in the EU. Hybridization emphasizes that national and EU budgetary processes are increasingly interwoven and indivisible. Public budgeting is no longer purely national because part of the decision-making on national expenditure is made at the EU level and because the national budget is closely linked to the EU budget in financial and policy terms. Based on an institutional analysis, combined with elite interviewing, the article suggests that hybridization is a significant factor contributing to a convergence of budgetary practices in Britain and France. Underlying the argument is the fact that an increasingly important function of departmental actors involves negotiating with their EU counterparts at the EU level, in addition to the conventional budgetary game at the domestic level. Regarding compliance, there is an influence as testified by significant formal institutional convergence. However, compliance seems a less effective factor in influencing convergence than hybridization because it conveys a "negative" approach to convergence, based on enforcement and sanctions. The article suggests that the convergence of administrative systems is promoted by the growing similarity of administrative practices more than by the harmonization of rules.     

Issues,the Spatial Theory of Voting,and British General Elections: A Comparison of Proximity and Directional Models

Competing spatial models of voter choiceare compared in the context ofparliamentary representatives selectedthrough single-member district, pluralityelections where party platforms areemphasized over individual candidates.Respondents of the 1987, 1992, and 1997British general election surveys ratepolitical parties on a series of issuescales. Ordered logistic regressions ofparty evaluations under proximity,directional, and mixed models reveal thatthe classic spatial model and thedirectional model perform equally well.Differences center on perceptions of thestatus quo, as voters appear to evaluatethe incumbent party (here, theConservatives) slightly differently thanminority parties (Labour and the LiberalDemocrats). The proximity model worksbetter for voter evaluations of governingparties while the directional model workswell for opposition parties.