Shirking in the Contemporary Congress: A Reappraisal

2004 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 176-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jamie L. Carson ◽  
Michael H. Crespin ◽  
Jeffery A. Jenkins ◽  
Ryan J. Vander Wielen
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Research Design ◽  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Fixed Effects ◽  
Electoral Connection ◽  
New Research ◽  
The U.S

This paper replicates the findings that appeared in the article “Severing the Electoral Connection: Shirking in the Contemporary Congress,” published in theAmerican Journal of Political Science(44:316–325), in which Lawrence Rothenberg and Mitchell Sanders incorporated a new research design and, contrary to all previous studies, found evidence of ideological shirking in the U.S. House of Representatives. We investigate the robustness of their results by reestimating their model with Congress-specific fixed effects and find that their results no longer hold.

A Further Look at Universalism and Partisanship in Congressional Roll Call Voting

2000 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 399-399 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian J. Gaines ◽  
Brian R. Sala
Keyword(s):  
Time Series ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Negative Correlation ◽  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Inverse Relationship ◽  
Time Span ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Roll Call Voting ◽  
Legislative Activity ◽  
The U.S

This note extends Melissa P. Collie's “Universalism and the Parties in the U.S. House of Representatives, 1921–80,” American Journal of Political Science 32, 4 (November 1988): 865–883. Detecting a strongly negative correlation between the time series of universalism and partisanship in roll call votes for the 67th through 96th U.S. Houses, Collie concluded that consensus and partisanship are alternative, rival means of organizing legislative activity. If robust, this finding ought not to be time- or chamber-specific: it should be in evidence over the whole (partisan) histories of both House and Senate, session by session. Moreover, the inverse relationship should persist under alternative operationalizations of both partisanship and universalism. Using several measures of partisanship and universalism, mostly based on roll call votes tabulated for sessions of Congress, we reassess this relationship for the 43rd through 105th Congresses. Collie's core finding persists for both chambers over the longer time span provided that one uses her measures. But results are weaker when sessions of Congress rather than Congresses are used as units of observation, and alternative operationalizations of partisanship and universalism do not strongly replicate the original finding.

scholarly journals Exploring Responsiveness in the U.S. House of Representatives

2018 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 58-85
Author(s):  
Philip D. Waggoner
Keyword(s):  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Legislative Behavior ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Roll Call Voting ◽  
Majority Party ◽  
Electoral Connection ◽  
Bill Sponsorship ◽  
The Voice ◽  
The U.S

Legislators are elected to be the voice of their constituents in government. Implicit in this electoral connection is the responsiveness of legislators to the preferences of constituents. Many past approaches only examine successful legislative behavior blessed by the majority party, not all legislative behavior, thereby limiting inference generalizability. I seek to overcome this limitation by considering bill sponsorship as an outlet in which all members are free to engage. Testing expectations on bill sponsorship in the 109th and 110th Congresses, I find that legislators are responsive, though only on “safely-owned” issues. I compare these findings to roll call voting on the same issues in the same Congresses and find a different pattern, suggesting legislators leverage bill sponsorship differently than roll call voting as they signal legislative priorities.

The 2011 Debt-Ceiling Controversy and the 2012 US House Elections

2015 ◽  
Vol 48 (03) ◽  
pp. 420-424 ◽  
Author(s):  
James E. Monogan
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Research Design ◽  
House Of Representatives ◽  
General Election ◽  
Percentage Points ◽  
The Us ◽  
Federal Debt ◽  
Debt Ceiling ◽  
Legislative Vote

ABSTRACTThis article considers how a key legislative vote—that is, the August 2011 vote to raise the federal debt ceiling—influenced the 2012 elections for the US House of Representatives. Two outcomes are analyzed: (1) the incumbents’ ability to retain their seats through the 2012 general election, and (2) their share of the two-party vote for members who faced a general-election competitor. In developing this study, the research design was registered and released publicly before the votes were counted in 2012. Therefore, this article also illustrates how study preregistration can work in practice for political science. The findings show that seat retention did not vary with the treatment; however, incumbents who voted against raising the debt ceiling earned an additional 2.4 percentage points of the two-party vote.

Explaining Seat Changes in the U.S. House of Representatives, 1950–98

2002 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 383-405
Author(s):  
Brian Newman ◽  
Charles Ostrom
Keyword(s):  
House Of Representatives ◽  
The U.S
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