Institutional features of congressional decisions: The fight to prohibit smoking on airlines

A pervasive theme of the congressional politics literature is that the committee system is fundamental in determining the policy status quo. Such an assertion hinges crucially upon committees controlling their jurisdictions; congressional delegation is undermined if a committee can assert authority over any issue domain at any time. Yet, representatives may possess an incentive to support a policy proposal that would change the status quo, even if it entails disregarding procedures. Indeed, standard conceptualizations of how members of Congress make their voting choices assume that only the benefits and costs associated with a policy matter, and they do not consider institutional factors such as whether a bill emerged from the correct committee.This analysis examines whether representatives will sacrifice policy interests to preserve institutional features of the legislature. The effort in 1987 to curb smoking on airplanes — which became embroiled in a difficult-to-resolve jurisdictional dispute — serves as a vehicle to analyze how sensitive members are to such features. The results demonstrate that a sizable number put aside their [generally moderate] policy preferences and voted against limits on smoking for institutional reasons. These findings have important implications both for specifying the determinants of policy change and for understanding institutional stability.     

Voters and roll call voting: The effect on congressional elections

The subject of this research is whether ideological preferences play a major role in explaining voters' refusal to reelect some members of the U.S. House of Representatives. If ideological control is important, one would expect to find a large difference between the voting record of a rejected incumbent and his or her replacement. In distinction, whenever voters must replace a congressman or congresswoman because that person had died in office or chose to run for higher office, the hypothesis of ideological tracking implies that the newly elected member of Congress will resemble his or her predecessor. The data confirm these hypotheses and show, as well, that ideological control exists within parties and not only between them; that the degree of voters' ideological control is as great over senior congressmen and congresswomen as over junior ones; and that voters' concern about ideology has increased over the last two decades.     

Committee jurisdiction, congressional behavior and policy outcomes

The literature on congressional committees has largely overlooked the impact of jurisdictional fights on policy proposals and outcomes. This paper develops a theory of how legislators balance the benefits of expanded committee jurisdiction against preferred policy outcomes. It shows why (a) senior members, and junior members in safe seats, are most likely to challenge a committee’s jurisdiction; (b) policy proposals may be initiated off the proposer’s ideal point for jurisdictional gains; (c) policy outcomes will generally be more moderate with jurisdictional fights than without these turf wars. We empirically investigate these results examining proposed Internet intellectual property protection legislation in the 106th Congress.     

The economic organization of legislatures and how it affects congressional voting

Congress confronts two major organizational problems that affect the behavior of legislators, party leaders, and groups doing business with congressional committees: The costly nature of monitoring and the absence of explicit mechanisms for upholding agreements. The problem of monitoring implies that party leaders will have a difficult time influencing decisions made in decision-making arenas where the actions of legislators are less visible, as in congressional committees. While legislators can evade leadership monitoring of their actions within committees, once an issue leaves a committee, the costs of monitoring decline, and leadership influence increases. The absence of mechanisms for assuring that legislators keep their bargains means that groups will place an emphasis on dealing with reliable legislators — those who can be counted upon to uphold their end of a bargain. Thus, party leaders are more effective in influencing floor voting because of their better ability to monitor legislator behavior; however, obligations to important interest groups will be more immune to leadership influence because of the incentives for committee members to adhere to their bargains.     

How to vote,whether to vote: Strategies for voting and abstaining on congressional roll calls

This paper develops and tests a theory of voting and abstaining on Congressional roll calls. The theoretical model assumes that the voting behavior of legislators is oriented toward reelection, and that constituents vote retrospectively. Among the predictions of the theory are that supporters of a program are more likely to abstain than opponents, that conflicted legislators are more likely to vote on the losing side (but will abstain when the vote is very close), and that indifferent legislators will abstain when votes are not close but trade their votes when the outcome is uncertain. The empirical test is based on a series of votes on appropriations for the Clinch River Breeder Reactor from 1975 to 1982. We estimate a nested logit model of, first, the probability of voting for Clinch River, and second, the probability of abstaining from the vote, conditional on preferences regarding the program. All of the empirical results are consistent with the theoretical predictions, and most are statistically significant by conventional standards. The implication is that the abstention decision, as well as yes or no votes, can be purposive, and that the pattern of abstentions is not random among supporters and opponents.The authors gratefully acknowledge research support from the Brookings Institution and the University of Michigan School of Law, and useful comments on an earlier draft by Randall Calvert, Morris Fiorina, Rodney Fort, Amihai Glazer, Keith Krehbiel, Thomas Romer, Kenneth Shepsle, Rodney Smith, Barry Weingast, the UCI Public Choice Study Group, and the Hoover Workshop on Collective Choice.     

Looking beyond reelection: Revising assumptions about the factors motivating congressional behavior

This paper challenges the assumption inherent in most models of legislative behavior — namely that congressmen are driven by the desire for reelection. I offer an alternative perspective: incumbents seek to maximize their discretionary investments and the income generated by the job. The only constraint on this behavior is that legislators provide a satisfactory level of constituency service — a product that I suggest entails slight opportunity, and few manufacturing, costs for congressmen, and one that is unlikely to lose its value with increased production. I also demonstrate that increases in salary and discretionary investments have lengthened congressional careers.     

Political Action Committee Spending and Senate roll call voting

This paper addresses how PAC spending affects the roll call voting behavior of U.S. Senators. Using a theoretical framework which draws broadly on the voting literature, we develop models that explain Senatorial voting behavior in a pre-PAC and post-PAC world. Testing both models we find weak support for a Downs-Black view of voting participation in the first model. The second model supports the alteration of voting incentives resulting from PAC spending. We find that PACs have a positive effect on voting participation. The conjecture remains whether PACs change voting outcomes, but it is clear that they buy voting participation.     

Ideology and interests in congressional voting: The politics of abortion in the U.S. Senate

Many studies suggest that personal ideology accounts for much more of congressional voting behavior than does attention to the desires of the electorate. There are two main explanations given for this seemingly robust conclusion: 1) poor measures of constituency preferences compared to those for ideology or behavior, and 2) representatives “shirk” on an inattentive electorate. We argue that existing studies have been biased against the “interest” explanation by ignoring the structure of American Congressional elections, in particular the party primary process. Correcting for the party primary effect, we show, within the context of abortion politics, that constituency interests possess greater explanatory power than previous models would suggest.     

Looking to the future: Prospective economic voting in 2008 Presidential Elections

Despite the economic turmoil of the time, a typical study of vote choice in the 2008 US Presidential Election would (falsely) find little evidence that voters’ opinions about the future state of the economy affected their vote choice. We argue that this misleading conclusion results from serious measurement error in the standard prospective economic evaluations survey question. Relying instead on a revised question, included for the first time in the 2008 American National Election Study, we find that most respondents condition their prospective economic evaluations on potential election outcomes, and that these evaluations are an important determinant of vote choice. A replication in a very different political context – the 2008 Ghanaian election – yields similar results.     

Advising congressional decision-makers: Guidelines for economists

Economists have less influence on congressional decision-making than they might because they do not make a sufficient effort to learn how issues look from the politicians' point of view. Politics and economics are inextricably connected in congressional decision-making. For those economists who are willing to try to bridge the gap between economists and Politicians, the article suggests ten guidelines: (1) learn about the history of the issue; (2) find out who will be making the decision, (3) timing is critical; (4) learn everyone's interests and arguments; (5) it's OK to think like an economist, but don't write like one; (6) keep it simple; (7) congressmen care more about distribution than efficiency; (8) take implementation and administration into account; (9) emphasize a few crucial and striking numbers; and (10) read the newspapers.     

Being a voter: developing a survey instrument for expressive voting

It has been argued that expressive motivations are a crucial element in persuading people to vote, overcoming the “paradox of voting” and it has been demonstrated that in experimental situations, subjects behave in a manner consistent with expressive voting. However, there have been limited attempts at operationalizing expressive voting in a survey context and these have been unable to successfully separate the influence of outcome related benefits (instrumental pay-offs) from expressive pay-offs. In this paper, we use a web survey experiment to first identify citizens with a propensity to behave expressively and then assess the validity of the instrument.