Much Ado About Very Little: Reply to Herron

Mitchell S. SandersDepartment of Political Science, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556 e-mail: msander1{at}nd.edu While Herron (2004, Political Analysis 12:182–190) iscorrect that sensitivity to changes in underlying scale andhow they affect estimates and inferences is generally important,our assumption inRothenberg and Sanders (2000, American Journalof Political Science 44:310–319) that W-NOMINATE scalescan be directly compared from one Congress to another to studylegislative shirking is quite defensible because scale variabilityis not a substantial problem. Not only are the assumptions inour original analysis regarding variability very reasonable,because any variability is quite small, but effects on consistencyare marginal and, to the degree that they are relevant, indicatethat our test of the shirking hypothesis is conservative. Furthermore,even generous estimates of variability in W-NOMINATE betweenone immediate Congress and another have little impact on results.In addition, Herron's analysis includes an unaddressed censoringproblem that again, while unlikely to have much substantiverelevance, indicates that Rothenberg and Sanders have workedagainst themselves in trying to find shirking. In conclusion,the issues that Herron highlights are of marginal consequencefor the original analysis and, to the extent they matter, onlybuttress the findings generated and the inferences drawn.