Comparing Legislators and Legislatures: The Dynamics of Legislative Gridlock Reconsidered

Lawrence S. Rothenberg Department of Political Science, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627 e-mail: lrot{at}mail.rochester.edu (corresponding author) Although political methodologists are well aware of measurementissues and the problems that can be created, such concerns arenot always front and center when we are doing substantive research.Here, we show how choices in measuring legislative preferenceshave influenced our understanding of what determines legislativeoutputs. Specifically, we replicate and extend Binder's highlyinfluential analysis (Binder, Sarah A. 1999. The dynamics oflegislative gridlock, 1947–96. American Political ScienceReview 93:519–33; see also Binder, Sarah A. 2003. Stalemate:Causes and consequences of legislative gridlock. Washington,DC: Brookings Institution) of legislative gridlock, which emphasizeshow partisan, electoral, and institutional characteristics generatemajor legislative initiatives. Binder purports to show thatexamining the proportion, rather than the absolute number, ofkey policy proposals passed leads to the inference that thesefeatures, rather than divided government, are crucial for explaininggridlock. However, we demonstrate that this finding is underminedby flaws in preference measurement. Binder's results are a functionof using W-NOMINATE scores never designed for comparing Senateto House members or for analyzing multiple Congresses jointly.When preferences are more appropriately measured with commonspace scores (Poole, Keith T. 1998. Recovering a basic spacefrom a set of issue scales. American Journal of Political Science42:964–93), there is no evidence that the factors thatshe highlights matter. Authors' note: Thanks to Sarah Binder and Keith Poole for furnishingdata used in our analysis and to Chris Achen and Kevin Clarkefor advice. All errors remain our own. Online appendix is availableon the Political Analysis Web site.     

Testing Explanations of Strategic Voting in Legislatures: A Reexamination of the Compromise of 1790

A difficult yet prevalent problem in legislative politics is how to assess explanations when observable actions may not represent true (and unobserved) legislator preferences. We present a method for analyzing the validity of theoretical/historical accounts that unifies theory, history, and measurement. We argue that approaches to testing accounts of legislative behavior which are theoretically and historically agnostic are not always best and present an approach which: (1) forms an explicit explanation of behavior (here a simple dynamic voting game) that yields estimable parameter constraints, and (2) tests these constraints using a customized empirical model that is as consistent as possible with the explanation. We demonstrate the method using legislative voting data from the first Congress (1789–1791). Using the idea of sophisticated equivalents from voting theory we subject the traditional account of the “Compromise of 1790” to a statistical test and find that there is reason to doubt the claim that legislators of the time believed the specified log roll was taking place. The results suggest that the capital location and assumption issues were resolved independently.     

Strategic Interaction and Candidate Competition in U.S. House Elections: Empirical Applications of Probit and Strategic Probit Models

In recent work, Signorino (American Political Science Review93:279–297, 1999; International Interactions 28:93–115,2002) has sought to test statistical models derived from extensive-formgames in the context of international relations research focusingon conflict and interstate bargaining. When two or more actorsinteract with one another under conditions of uncertainty, Signorinodemonstrates that it is necessary to incorporate such strategicinteraction into the underlying model to avoid potential threatsto statistical inference. Outside the realm of internationalrelations research, however, there have been limited applicationsof Signorino's strategic probit model in understanding strategicinteraction. In this article, I present an empirical comparisonof probit and strategic probit models in the context of candidatecompetition in House elections during the 1990s. I show thatincumbent spending deters challenger entry and factors suchas minority party affiliation and redistricting significantlyaffect incumbent career decisions, findings that run counterto those reported in the nonstrategic model. Overall, the resultsillustrate that failing to account for strategic interactioncan lead to biased and inaccurate estimates related to challengerand incumbent entry decisions.     

The Search for Comparability: Response to Binder

Lawrence S. Rothenberg Department of Political Science, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627 e-mail: lrot{at}mail.rochester.edu (corresponding author) Binder (n.d., Taking the measure of Congress: Reply to Chiouand Rothenberg. Political Analysis. Forthcoming) highlightsareas of agreement and disagreement with our discussion of preferencemeasurement and legislative gridlock. We now both agree thatW-NOMINATE scores—employed in Binder (1999, The dynamicsof legislative gridlock. American Political Science Review 9:519–33)to measure key independent variables, including bicameral differences—shouldnot be used when examining multichamber legislatures over time.We continue to disagree over whether Common Space scores orBinder's conference vote measure is superior. In this response,we show that, although several of the theoretical and statisticalobjections that Binder (n.d.) raises to our Common Space measuredo not apply, they are all relevant for her conference voteanalog. Additionally, we detail how, despite protests to thecontrary, the conference vote measure is plagued by insufficientdata. Finally, we demonstrate how new efforts to show that Binder's (1999)results continue to hold are not robust.     

Valuing Policy Alternatives: A Generalization

Those interested in political phenomena such as voting havefound random utility models, originally developed for decisionssuch as transportation choice, especially attractive, as theunderlying model can yield a statistical model with a few simple,realistic assumptions. Unfortunately, such models have provendifficult to apply to situations with more than two votes andthree alternatives or an unknown cutpoint. Additionally, aswe show, standard applications of such models to voting, whileproducing consistent parameter estimates, yield standard errorsthat are too small and, due to a failure to employ all relevanttheoretical information, biased ideal point estimates. We specifya general model applicable to any number of votes and alternatives,with correct standard errors and unbiased ideal point estimates.We apply this model to a number of cases studied by previousscholars involving legislative voting over the minimum wage:(1) when there are two votes and two known cutpoints (K. Krehbieland D. Rivers, American Journal of Political Science, 1988,32, 1151–1174); (2) when there are three votes and threeknown cutpoints (J. Wilkerson, American Journal of PoliticalScience, 1991, 35, 613–623); and (3) when there are threevotes but where one cutpoint is unknown given a lack of knowledgeabout the impact of a policy (J. Wilkerson, American Journalof Political Science, 1991, 35, 613–623) or the possibilityof sophisticated voting (C. Volden, Journal of Politics, 1998,60, 149–173). We show that in various contexts our analysisimproves on existing methods, yielding consistent and efficientideal point estimates and a better-fitting model with improvedpredictive accuracy.     

The Transfer of Power Hypothesis and the German Lander: In Need of Modification

Conventional wisdom ascribes to Land parliaments at best a supportingrole in German politics and a minor influence on public decisionmaking. Land parliaments are often dismissed as having few substantiallegislative or other functions. However, a closer analysis revealsa more complex picture. Even though the legislative functionof Land parliaments is limited, these regional bodies of representationare indispensable institutions for the German federal system.This article analyzes the legislative role, the elective function,and the participation of Land parliaments in coalition buildingas well as developments in the Land party systems. It is shownthat in these areas the Land level is more important than iscommonly thought. Recent changes indicate that Land parliamentsmay play an even more pronounced role in the future. The prevailingtheoretical approach that sees federalism dominating Germanconsensus democracy thus seems too general.     

UK OC OK? Interpreting Optimal Classification Scores for the U.K. House of Commons

Iain McLean Nuffield College, Oxford University, Oxford OX1 1NF, United Kingdom. e-mail: iain.mclean{at}nuffield.ox.ac.uk e-mail: spln{at}mail.rochester.edu (corresponding author) Poole's (2000, Non-parametric unfolding of binary choice data.Political Analysis 8:211–37) nonparametric Optimal Classificationprocedure for binary data produces misleading rank orderingswhen applied to the modern House of Commons. With simulationsand qualitative evidence, we show that the problem arises fromthe government-versus-opposition nature of British (Westminster)parliamentary politics and the strategic voting that is entailedtherein. We suggest that political scientists think seriouslyabout strategic voting in legislatures when interpreting resultsfrom such techniques.     

Dilatory or anticipatory? Voting on the Journal in the House of Representatives

In this paper, I examine a simple procedure in the United States House of Representatives, approving the Journal, and its implications for legislative business. In this paper, I examine the hypothesis that such votes are more than simply pro forma motions or dilatory tactics by the minority party. Considering the 102nd–107th Congresses, I show that votes on the Journal’s approval are just as frequently requested by the majority party as by members of the minority party. Furthermore, I find that votes recorded on days on which a vote was also recorded on the House Journal were more likely to be close and more likely to be party-line votes than those recorded on other days.     

Strategic Party Government: Party Influence in Congress, 1789–2000

Why does the influence of Congressional parties fluctuate over time? Building on prevailing answers, we develop a model, Strategic Party Government, which highlights the electoral motives of legislative parties and the strategic interaction between parties. We test this theory using the entire range of House and Senate party behavior from 1789 to 2000 and find that the strategic behavior of parties complements members' preferences as an explanation for variation in party influence. Specifically, the strongest predictors of one party's voting unity are the unity of the opposing party and the difference between the parties in the preceding year. Moreover, we find strong links between party behavior in Congress and electoral outcomes: an increase in partisan influence on legislative voting has adverse electoral costs, while winning contested votes has electoral benefits.     

Partisan Polarization and Congressional Accountability in House Elections

Early research led scholars to believe that institutional accountability in Congress is lacking because public evaluations of its collective performance do not affect the reelection of its members. However, a changed partisan environment along with new empirical evidence raises unanswered questions about the effect of congressional performance on incumbents' electoral outcomes over time. Analysis of House reelection races across the last several decades produces important findings: (1) low congressional approval ratings generally reduce the electoral margins of majority party incumbents and increase margins for minority party incumbents; (2) partisan polarization in the House increases the magnitude of this partisan differential, mainly through increased electoral accountability among majority party incumbents; (3) these electoral effects of congressional performance ratings hold largely irrespective of a member's individual party loyalty or seat safety. These findings carry significant implications for partisan theories of legislative organization and help explain salient features of recent Congresses.     

The Bundesrat

Federal systems typically have in their legislative bodies asecond house designed to secure regional participation in nationalaffairs. While the German Bundestrat is not a co-equal branchof the parliament, it is, next to the U.S. Senate, the mostpowerful second (not "upper") house in existence. Unlike theU.S. Senate, its membership represents the cabinets of the elevenLänder, and votes are cast a bloc for each Land. The Bundesrathas an absolute veto over all bills that effect the Länderand a suspensive veto over all other bills. It was not designedas a partisan body, but partisan politics do sometimes enterthe decisionmaking process. The Bundesrat has served traditionallyas an institutional means of securing Land rights from intrusionby the federal government. Today, however, it is confrontedby a new and potentially more dangerous threat to Land autonomy:the growing power of the European Community and the trend towardrelinquishing important aspects of national sovereignty to ECinstitutions.     

Federalism in the 101st Congress

This article identifies important congressional roll-call votes,calculates a federalism score similar to that reported previouslyin Publius, and through factor analysis, examines the underlyingdimensions offederalism voting. The resulting federalism indicatorsare analyzed to determine their relationship to partisan andideological variables. Finally, the federalism orientation ofthe 101st Senate is compared with that of the 101st House ofRepresentatives as well as that of the 97th Senate.     

Time Series Intervals and Statistical Inference: The Effects of Temporal Aggregation on Event Data Analysis

While many areas of research in political science draw inferencesfrom temporally aggregated data, rarely have researchers exploredhow temporal aggregation biases parameter estimates. With somenotable exceptions (Freeman 1989, Political Analysis 1:61–98;Alt et al. 2001, Political Analysis 9:21–44; Thomas 2002,"Event Data Analysis and Threats from Temporal Aggregation")political science studies largely ignore how temporal aggregationaffects our inferences. This article expands upon others' workon this issue by assessing the effect of temporal aggregationdecisions on vector autoregressive (VAR) parameter estimates,significance levels, Granger causality tests, and impulse responsefunctions. While the study is relevant to all fields in politicalscience, the results directly apply to event data studies ofconflict and cooperation. The findings imply that politicalscientists should be wary of the impact that temporal aggregationhas on statistical inference.     

Bayesian and Likelihood Inference for 2 x 2 Ecological Tables: An Incomplete-Data Approach

Ying Lu Department of Sociology, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309 e-mail: ying.lu{at}colorado.edu Aaron Strauss Department of Politics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544 e-mail: abstraus{at}princeton.edu e-mail: kimai{at}princeton.edu (corresponding author) Ecological inference is a statistical problem where aggregate-leveldata are used to make inferences about individual-level behavior.In this article, we conduct a theoretical and empirical studyof Bayesian and likelihood inference for 2 x 2 ecological tablesby applying the general statistical framework of incompletedata. We first show that the ecological inference problem canbe decomposed into three factors: distributional effects, whichaddress the possible misspecification of parametric modelingassumptions about the unknown distribution of missing data;contextual effects, which represent the possible correlationbetween missing data and observed variables; and aggregationeffects, which are directly related to the loss of informationcaused by data aggregation. We then examine how these threefactors affect inference and offer new statistical methods toaddress each of them. To deal with distributional effects, wepropose a nonparametric Bayesian model based on a Dirichletprocess prior, which relaxes common parametric assumptions.We also identify the statistical adjustments necessary to accountfor contextual effects. Finally, although little can be doneto cope with aggregation effects, we offer a method to quantifythe magnitude of such effects in order to formally assess itsseverity. We use simulated and real data sets to empiricallyinvestigate the consequences of these three factors and to evaluatethe performance of our proposed methods. C code, along withan easy-to-use R interface, is publicly available for implementingour proposed methods (Imai, Lu, and Strauss, forthcoming). Authors' note: This article is in the part based on two workingpapers by Imai and Lu, "Parametric and Nonparamateric BayesianModels for Ecological Inference in 2 x 2 Tables" and "QuantifyingMissing Information in Ecological Inference." Various versionsof these papers were presented at the 2004 Joint StatisticalMeetings, the Second Cape Cod Monte Carlo Workshop, the 2004Annual Political Methodology Summer Meeting, and the 2005 AnnualMeeting of the American Political Science Association. We thankanonymous referees, Larry Bartels, Wendy Tam Cho, Jianqing Fan,Gary King, Xiao-Li Meng, Kevin Quinn, Phil Shively, David vanDyk, Jon Wakefield, and seminar participants at New York University(the Northeast Political Methodology conference), at PrincetonUniversity (Economics Department and Office of Population Research),and at the University of Virginia (Statistics Department) forhelpful comments.     

Replication with Attention to Numerical Accuracy

Numerical issues matter in statistical analysis. Small errorsoccur when numbers are translated from paper and pencil intothe binary world of computers. Surprisingly, these errors maybe propagated and magnified through binary calculations, eventuallyproducing statistical estimates far from the truth. In thisreplication and extension article, we look at one method ofverifying the accuracy of statistical estimates by running thesesame data and models on multiple statistical packages. We findthat for two published articles, Nagler (1994, American Journalof Political Science 38:230–255) and Alvarez and Brehm(1995, American Journal of Political Science 39:1055–1089),results are dependent on the statistical package used. In thecourse of our replications, we uncover other pitfalls that mayprevent accurate replication, and make recommendations to ensurethe ability for future researchers to replicate results.     

Political Learning from Rare Events: Poisson Inference, Fiscal Constraints, and the Lifetime of Bureaus

David E. Lewis Woodrow Wilson School and Department of Politics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544 e-mail: delewis{at}princeton.edu How do political actors learn about their environment when the"data" provided by political processes are characterized byrare events and highly discontinuous variation? In such learningenvironments, what can theory predict about how learning actorswill take costly actions that are difficult to reverse (e.g.,eliminating programs, approving a risky new product, revisinga security policy, firing or recalling an appointed or electedofficial)? We develop a formal model for this problem and applyit to the termination of bureaucratic agencies. The conventionalwisdom that "the older a bureau is, the less likely it is todie" (Downs 1967, Inside Bureaucracy) persists but has neverbeen properly tested. This paper offers a learning-based stochasticoptimization model of agency termination that offers two counterintuitivepredictions. First, politicians terminate agencies only afterlearning about them, so the hazard of agencies should be nonmonotonic,contradicting Downs's prediction. Second, if terminating agenciesis costly, agencies are least likely to be terminated when politiciansare fiscally constrained or when the deficit is high. We assessthe model by developing a battery of tests for the shape ofthe hazard function and estimate these and other duration modelsusing data on U.S. federal government agencies created between1946 and 1997. Results show that the hazard rate of agency terminationis strongly nonmonotonic and that agencies are less likely tobe terminated under high deficits and divided government. Forthe first 50 years of the agency duration distribution, themodal termination hazard occurs at five years after agenciesare enabled. Methodologically, our approach ties the functionalform of a hazard model tightly to theory and presents an applied"agenda" for testing the shape of an empirical hazard function.With extensions, our model and empirical framework are applicableto a range of political phenomena.     

Ignoramus, Ignorabimus? On Uncertainty in Ecological Inference

Thomas Gschwend Center for Doctoral Studies in Social and Behavioral Sciences, University of Mannheim, D7, 27, 68131 Mannheim, Germany e-mail: gschwend{at}uni-mannheim.de Ron J. Johnston School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1SS, UK e-mail: r.johnston{at}bristol.ac.uk e-mail: elff{at}sowi.uni-mannheim.de (corresponding author) Models of ecological inference (EI) have to rely on crucialassumptions about the individual-level data-generating process,which cannot be tested because of the unavailability of thesedata. However, these assumptions may be violated by the unknowndata and this may lead to serious bias of estimates and predictions.The amount of bias, however, cannot be assessed without informationthat is unavailable in typical applications of EI. We thereforeconstruct a model that at least approximately accounts for theadditional, nonsampling error that may result from possiblebias incurred by an EI procedure, a model that builds on thePrinciple of Maximum Entropy. By means of a systematic simulationexperiment, we examine the performance of prediction intervalsbased on this second-stage Maximum Entropy model. The resultsof this simulation study suggest that these prediction intervalsare at least approximately correct if all possible configurationsof the unknown data are taken into account. Finally, we applyour method to a real-world example, where we actually know thetrue values and are able to assess the performance of our method:the prediction of district-level percentages of split-ticketvoting in the 1996 General Election of New Zealand. It turnsout that in 95.5% of the New Zealand voting districts, the actualpercentage of split-ticket votes lies inside the 95% predictionintervals constructed by our method. Authors' note: We thank three anonymous reviewers for helpfulcomments and suggestions on earlier versions of this paper.An appendix giving some technical background information concerningour proposed method, as well as data, R code, and C code toreplicate analyses presented in this paper are available fromthe Political Analysis Web site. Later versions of the codewill be packaged into an R library and made publicly availableon CRAN (http://cran.r-project.org) and on the correspondingauthor's Web site.     

Q&A in legislative oversight: A framework for analysis

Parliamentary questions are an essential tool of legislative oversight. However, the extent to which they are effective in controlling the executive remains underspecified both theoretically and methodologically. This article advances a systematic framework for evaluating the effectiveness of parliamentary questions drawing on principal–agent theory, the public administration literature on accountability and communication research. The framework is called the ‘Q&A approach to legislative oversight’ based on the premise that the study of parliamentary questions (Q) needs to be linked to their respective answers (A) and examined together (Q&A) at the micro-level as an exchange of claims between legislative and executive actors. Methodologically, the Q&A approach to legislative oversight offers a step-by-step guide for qualitative content analysis of Q&A that can be applied to different legislative oversight contexts at different levels of governance. It is argued that the effectiveness of Q&A depends on the strength of the questions asked and the responsiveness of answers provided, which are correspondingly operationalised. To illustrate the merits of the approach, the article includes a systematic case study on the relationship between the European Parliament and the European Central Bank in banking supervision (2013–2018), showing the connection between specific institutional settings and the effectiveness of parliamentary questions.     

Out of the Hands of the Parties: Women's Legislative Recruitment at Westminster

At the next general election the percentage of women elected to the smaller House of Commons risks being lower than in the current parliament, where they constitute 22 percent of all MPs. The 2008–10 Speaker's Conference identified many of the barriers faced by women and other under‐represented groups and made a series of recommendations, only some of which have been introduced. The Government favours a voluntary approach to Recommendation 24, which calls for diversity data monitoring, whilst Recommendation 25 which calls for serious consideration of legislative quotas in the absence of a significant increase in the numbers of women in 2010, appears forgotten. A second Speaker's Conference should therefore be established; the issue of women's under‐representation should be taken up above the party level—with legislative quotas introduced to address the system level failure of democratic representation at Westminster.     

When Are Women More Effective Lawmakers Than Men?

Previous scholarship has demonstrated that female lawmakers differ from their male counterparts by engaging more fully in consensus‐building activities. We argue that this behavioral difference does not serve women equally well in all institutional settings. Contentious and partisan activities of male lawmakers may help them outperform women when in a polarized majority party. However, in the minority party, while men may choose to obstruct and delay, women continue to strive to build coalitions and bring about new policies. We find strong evidence that minority party women in the U.S. House of Representatives are better able to keep their sponsored bills alive through later stages of the legislative process than are minority party men, across the 93^rd–110^th Congresses (1973–2008). The opposite is true for majority party women, however, who counterbalance this lack of later success by introducing more legislation. Moreover, while the legislative style of minority party women has served them well consistently across the past four decades, majority party women have become less effective as Congress has become more polarized.