No abstract

No abstract

Voters in multicandidate contests may confront circumstances under which it is in their interest to vote for a second- or even lower-ranked candidate. The U.S. electoral system, typically offering a choice between only two major contenders, rarely presents opportunities for this “sophisticated” voting. In presidential primaries, however, many plausible candidates may compete. We investigate the presence of sophisticated voting in the 1988 presidential primaries, using data from the National Election Study's Super Tuesday survey. We examine patterns of voting types based on ordinal measures of preferences among candidates and assessments of their chances of winning their party's nomination and estimate several models of choice, testing the multicandidate calculus of voting. Among both Republicans and Democrats, respondents' choices were consistent with the calculus of voting and thus with sophisticated voting.

This study applies the theory of "conditional party government" to the interaction between the Republican party and the Appropriations Committee in the 104th House, seen in the context of developments since the 96th Congress. As expected by the theory, we find that the relatively homogenous preferences of the Republican contingent in the House led them to adopt new institutional arrangements to enhance the powers of their leaders, which in turn were used to advance the party's policy goals. Given that the leadership decided to use Appropriations as one of the vehicles of major policy change, they and the Conference sought to monitor the committee's actions, and to influence it to behave as they wanted. The leaders used their enhanced powers over incentives and with regard to the agenda to advance the party cause. Both leaders and the Conference sought to block policy shifts away from what they wanted, but facilitated changes in the desired direction. Finally, we expected to see evidence of the increasing applicability of the theory over time, culminating in the developments of the 104th Congress, and this expectation was borne out. This analysis is part of an ongoing effort to understand the nature of institutional politics and of policy selection in legislative institutions, particularly in the U.S. House of Representatives. The project's focus is on the relationship between party structures in the House and the committee system, over time and especially in the 104th House after the Republicans took majority control for the first time in 40 years. The subject of this analysis is the interaction between the Republican party and the Appropriations Committee in the 104th House, seen in the context of developments since the 96th Congress.

No abstract