The ideological component of Senate voting: Different principles or different principals?

Evidence exists on both sides of the question of whether or not legislator-specific, ideologically-driven shirking of constituent interest occurs. In this paper, we use a well-known model of such shirking by senators as our point of departure and add measures of inter-state constituent interests, the role of campaign contributions and, hence, the importance of whether or not senators are up for reelection. We find some evidence that the model provides a stronger explanation for senators up for reelection than for those who are not and that campaign contributions help determine voting decisions by these legislators. Finally, accounting for inter-state constituent interests, shirking is not a significant variable in the voting decisions of senators facing reelection. Thus, it appears that the reelection interests of some senators have been mistaken for ideologically-driven shirking.     

How Do Interest Groups Seek Access to Committees?

Concerns that interest groups use their financial resources to distort the democratic process are long‐standing. Surprisingly, though, firms spend little money on political campaigns, and roughly 95% of publicly traded firms in the United States have never contributed to a political campaign. Do interest groups seek political access through their modest contributions, or are these contributions only a minor and forgettable part of the political process? In this article, we present comprehensive evidence that interest groups are extremely sophisticated in the way they make campaign contributions. We collect a new data set on U.S. state legislative committee assignments and legislator procedural powers from 1988 to 2014, merged with campaign finance data, in order to analyze over 440,000 candidate–committee observations across 99 legislatures. Using a series of difference‐in‐differences designs based on changes in individual legislators' positions in the legislature, we not only show that interest groups seek out committee members, but we also show that they value what we call indirect access. When a legislator gains procedural powers, interest groups reallocate considerable amounts of money to her. The results reveal how interest groups in a wide range of democratic settings seek to influence the policy process not only by seeking direct access to policy makers but by seeking indirect access to legislative procedure as well.     

The industrial structure of the California Assembly: Committee assignments,economic interests,and campaign contributions

This paper examines the provision of campaign contributions made by economic interests to incumbents seeking reelection in the 1984, 1986, and 1988 California Assembly elections. The study tests whether the distribution of campaign contributions by specific industrial sectors corresponds to legislator possession of the policy property rights associated with membership on relevant Assembly standing committees. A non-parametric statistical model compares the distribution of campaign contributions from groups within a given industrial sector to members of relevant policy committees with the distribution of contributions from all other contributor classes. The empirical analysis confirms that committee assignments significantly affect the allocation of special interest resources in Assembly elections, substantiating the importance of institutional considerations in influencing special interest activity.     

Legislative systems with absolute party discipline: Implications for the agency theory approach to the constituent-legislator link

This paper examines how the presence of absolute party discipline forces one to re-examine some of the issues surrounding the constituent-legislator link. With absolute party discipline, slack at the individual district level is determined by the policy choices of a political party, rather than by the choices of the individual legislator. This party discipline not only has implications for the representational effectiveness of individual legislators, but also results in the terms “slack” and “shirking” no longer necessarily being synonymous. The empirical work shows that Canadian political parties engaged in wide scale shirking on the 1988 U.S.–Canada Free Trade Agreement.     

Some talk: Money in politics. A (partial) review of the literature

The financing of political campaigns is an area of active scholarly study. I review some of the recent literature and discuss important methodological issues that arise in empirical research on campaign expenditures and campaign contributions. The effects of campaign expenditures and advertising on candidate and ballot-measure elections are summarized, as are the impacts of contributions on contributors’ welfare. Many states have changed their campaign finance laws in the past few years, and I describe work that exploits variations in these laws. A discussion of the strategies used by interest groups to allocate their campaign contributions provides insights into contributors’ motives.     

The Fates of Challengers in U.S. House Elections: The Role of Extended Party Networks in Supporting Candidates and Shaping Electoral Outcomes

Extended party network (EPN) theory characterizes political parties in the United States as dynamic networks of interest groups that collaboratively support favored candidates for office. Electoral predictions derived from EPN theory have yet to be tested on a large sample of races. We operationalize EPNs in the context of organized interest contributions to U.S. House campaigns. We deduce that support by a partisan community of interests signals the ideological credibility and appeal of a candidate. EPN integration overcomes voter ambiguity surrounding challengers’ ideological preferences, and resources provided by these coordinating interest groups promote a consistent message about the candidate. Using data from the 1994–2010 cycles, we apply network analysis to detect EPN support of challengers and find that EPN integration substantially improves the electoral prospects of challengers. The effect of EPN integration is distinct from that of campaign resources. The findings provide support for EPN theory, as applied to congressional elections.     

Studying Dynamics in Legislator Ideal Points: Scale Matters

Research designs that call for the estimation of time trendsin legislator ideal points must allow for changes in underlyingpolicy spaces. Simply put, a set of legislator ideal pointsfrom one such space cannot necessarily be compared with a setof ideal points from another. Rothenberg and Sanders's (2000,American Journal of Political Science 44:316–325) analysisof shirking in Congress does not internalize this point insofaras it assumes that legislator ideal points from adjoining congressionalsessions lie in a common space. While it may be the case thatmembers of Congress shirk ideologically when approaching retirement,the regression estimates at the heart of Rothenberg and Sandersneither support this possibility nor constitute evidence againstit.     

Opposition backlash and platform convergence in a spatial voting model with campaign contributions

This paper investigates the effects of campaign contributions on candidate behavior in elections. The particular focus is on how candidates choose their platforms when they know that the positions they take will influence the level of campaign contributions that they (and their opponents) receive from concerned interest groups. The analysis is carried out in the context of a simple one- dimensional spatial voting model with two candidates and two interest groups. Since the earliest Hotelling-Downs formulations, a central issue in the literature on spatial voting has been the degree to which, under various sets of assumptions, the candidates' platforms converge in equilibrium. This paper extends that literature by examining how the introduction of interest groups making campaign contributions affects the degree of platform convergence. The paper shows that when choosing their platforms, candidates face a trade-off between generataing increased support from opponents and provoking a backlash from the opposition. An example is developed to illustrate a surprising result that can occur because of the backlash effect: the introduction of two extremist interest groups may lead the candidates to moderate their platforms, resulting in a greater degree of platform convergence than would be observed in the absence of any campaign contributions.     

Ideology,voting, and shirking

Since we first raised the issue in 1979, scholars have addressed two questions regarding ideology and congressional voting. Does ideology have an impact on such voting? Do representatives shirk by voting their own ideology rather than their constituents' interests? For the first question, it appears that there is a consensus that ideology does matter, although we present some confirming evidence for 1980. The second question has been confused; some think that ideology and shirking are identical, although they are logically separate categories. We show that even if ideological shirking exists, it is relatively unimportant. We also show that self interested (non-ideological) shirking exists. We conclude that research efforts to untangle constituents' and representatives' separate ideologies have been misguided and that further efforts to examine the determinants of constituent ideology should be pursued.     

Political shirking and the last term problem: Evidence for a party-administered pension system

Studies of political shirking have disagreed both over whether the voting behavior of Members of Congress changes in their last term, and over the manner in which last term shirking can be controlled: through electoral sorting, or through a pension system. This paper presents evidence that Members of Congress who leave the House to run for statewide office do alter their voting behavior between the two sessions of their last House term, and that this change includes an ideological shift toward their state party delegations. The results suggest that a party-driven pension system influences the voting of House members who aspire to higher office, but that the pension system is not sufficient to control the last term shirking likely to occur if term limitations were imposed on House members.     

How a firm can induce legislators to adopt a bad policy

This paper shows why a majority of legislators may vote for a policy that benefits a firm but harms all legislators. The firm may induce legislators to support the policy by suggesting that it is more likely to invest in a district where voters or their representative support the policy. In equilibrium, no one vote may be decisive, so each legislator who seeks the firm’s investment votes for the policy, though all legislators would be better off if they all voted against the policy. And when votes reveal information about the district, the firm’s implicit promise or threat can be credible. Unlike influence mechanisms based on contributions or bribes, the behavior considered is time consistent and in line with the low campaign contributions by special interests.     

Legislators,organizations and ties: Understanding interest group recognition in the European Parliament

What explains Members of European Parliament's (MEPs’) decisions to recognize some interest groups as relevant policy actors? Addressing this question is fundamental for understanding the role of political elites in shaping patterns of interest representation and interest groups’ role in legislative decision making. Building on theories of legislative behaviour and informational theories of legislative lobbying, we argue that MEPs give recognition to those organizations that are instrumental for achieving key political goals: re-election, career-progression and policy influence. The pursuit of these goals generates different patterns of MEP recognition of interest groups. We contribute to the literature in three ways. Conceptually, we propose interest group recognition as a key concept for understanding interactions and links between legislative and non-legislative actors. We illustrate the high conceptual relevance of recognition for interest groups research while noting its conspicuous neglect in the literature. We address this gap and place the concept central stage in understanding legislators’ attention to and behaviour towards interest organizations. Theoretically, we build on a classic framework explaining legislators’ behaviour and refine it through the lenses of informational theories of legislative lobbying. We argue and show that legislators recognize organizations that enhance electoral prospects in their home Member States, and that legislator–group ideological proximity and an interest group's prominence in a specific policy field affect MEPs’ decisions to recognize some organizations as relevant actors. Our argument acknowledges the importance of the broader context in which MEPs operate and pays attention to how they react to and interact with it. Empirically, we propose an original and innovative research design to identify and measure recognition with the help of social media data. Our measurement strategy constitutes a significant improvement insofar that it reduces the challenges of measurement bias usually associated with self-reported data generated through interviews, surveys, or the textual analysis of newspaper articles and official documents. Our research design allows using fine-grained measures of key dependent and explanatory variables and offers the very first analysis of MEP interest group recognition that holds across decision-making events and policy areas. We test our argument on a new dataset with 4 million observations recording the recognition of more than 7,000 organizations by 80 per cent of MEPs serving in EP8. We find that MEPs are more likely to recognize organizations from their Member State, particularly under flexible- and open-list electoral institutions. MEPs are also more likely to recognize organizations that share their ideological affinities and are prominent actors in policy areas legislators specialize in.     

Political Shirking,Opponent Quality,and Electoral Support

Several recent papers in the public choice literaturesuggest that legislators shirk, or vote in a mannercontrary to constituent interest. This paper exploresthe relationship between senatorial shirking andelectoral consequences. I model political shirking,opponent quality and election outcomes assimultaneous, and find significant evidence of arelationship between shirking over the senatorial termand electoral outcomes. However, I find that voterspunish recent shirking much more than they punishearly-term shirking, and that senators apparently actconsistently with this relationship.     

When Are Agenda Setters Valuable?

Why do industries donate money to legislative campaigns when roll‐call votes suggest that donors gain nothing in return? I argue that corporate donors may shape policy outcomes by influencing powerful agenda setters in the early stages of lawmaking. On the basis of a new data set of more than 45,000 individual state legislator sessions (1988–2012), I document how agenda control is deemed valuable to legislators and groups seeking influence on policy. Employing a difference‐in‐differences design, I assess the revealed price, as measured by campaign contributions, that firms are willing to pay for access to committee and party leaders and document how this price varies across industries and institutions. The results indicate that industries systematically funnel money to the legislative agenda setters by whom they are regulated, and to those endowed with important procedural powers. I document that the value of agenda‐setter positions has increased dramatically in recent years. Finally, exploiting changes in state laws, I show that relaxing contribution limits significantly benefits committee chairs and party leaders more so than it does other legislators, suggesting that agenda setters have strong incentives to obstruct restrictive campaign finance reforms.     

Check bouncing and fiscal irresponsibility: Evidence of nonideological shirking by legislators

Kalt and Zupan have measured ideological shirking by legislators. Here we present evidence concerning nonideological shirking. We demonstrate that representatives with more overdrawn checks tend to be more fiscally irresponsible, with fiscal irresponsibility measured by National Taxpayer Union ratings and by representatives' voting behavior on the recent House balanced budget amendment vote.     

A simple way of estimating interest group ideology

Political scientists have developed accepted numerical estimates of political ideology for legislators, candidates, parties and even nations, but interest groups lack such scores. This absence puts interest group research at a disadvantage compared to other subfields. I generate ideology scores for 72 groups across 10 years by combining groups’ evaluations of Members of Congress with Poole and Rosenthal’s estimates of Members’ ideologies. Alternative methods are explored, and the validity of the scores is demonstrated. Examinations of the scores focus on the relative distribution of groups and Members of Congress and the link between a group’s ideology and its campaign contributions.     

Individual campaign contributions and candidate ideology

Individual citizens are the largest source of contributions for congressional candidates in the United States. This paper investigates if and how fundraising from this source is related to the ideological positions of candidates. Specifically, we ask whether the amount of contributions depends on: (1) the extremity of candidate ideology; and (2) the level of candidate divergence in the same race. These results have important implications for candidate positioning strategies, as well as for evaluating the effects of recent campaign finance reforms.     

Candidate Valence and Ideological Positions in U.S. House Elections

We examine the relationship between the valence qualities of candidates and the ideological positions they take in U.S. House elections based on a study of the 2006 midterm elections. Our design enables us to distinguish between campaign and character dimensions of candidate valence and to place candidates and districts on the same ideological scale. Incumbents with a personal‐character advantage are closer ideologically to their district preferences, while disadvantaged challengers take more extreme policy positions. Contrary to conventional wisdom, challengers can reap electoral rewards by taking more extreme positions relative to their districts. We explore a possible mechanism for this extremism effect by demonstrating that challengers closer to the extreme received greater financial contributions, which enhanced their chances of victory. Our results bear on theories of representation that include policy and valence, although the interactions between these two dimensions may be complex and counterintuitive.     

Elections and Deceptions: An Experimental Study on the Behavioral Effects of Democracy

Traditionally, the virtue of democratic elections has been seen in their role as means of screening and sanctioning shirking public officials. This article proposes a novel rationale for elections and political campaigns considering that candidates incur psychological costs of lying, in particular from breaking campaign promises. These nonpecuniary costs imply that campaigns influence subsequent behavior, even in the absence of reputational or image concerns. Our lab experiments reveal that promises are more than cheap talk. They influence the behavior of both voters and their representatives. We observe that the electorate is better off when their leaders are elected democratically rather than being appointed exogenously—but only in the presence of electoral campaigns. In addition, we find that representatives are more likely to serve the public interest when their approval rates are high. Altogether, our results suggest that elections and campaigns confer important benefits beyond their screening and sanctioning functions.     

Interest groups,campaign contributions,and probabilistic voting

This essay develops a simple model to analyze the impact of campaign contributions on electoral-policy decisions of candidates for office. Interest groups here are firms that select contributions under the assumption that candidates' policies and opposing groups' donations remain unaltered. Candidates, however, recognize that their policy choices affect contributions. Campaign contributions are used by candidates to affect policy-oriented voters' perceptions of candidates' positions. In this framework the introduction of campaign contributions may affect candidates' electoral policies, and if they do then they benefit surely exactly one of the two interest groups.