Ideological Change in the U. S. Senate: Time and Electoral Responsiveness

Elling, Richard C.

doi:10.2307/439692

Cited by 103 publications

(66 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Step Monitoring Intensity Function: There is minimal monitoring of member behavior until the period immediately preceding election (Kuklinski 1978;Wlezien and Erikson 1996;Canes-Wrone and Shotts 2004;Elling 1982;Wright and Berkman 1986). Figure 1 illustrates possible representations of the above functional forms, in which we constrain time and monitoring intensity to the unit interval for presentation's sake.…”

Section: Constant Monitoring Intensity Functionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Timely shirking: time-dependent monitoring and its effects on legislative behavior in the U.S. Senate

Lindstädt

Wielen

2010

Public Choice

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Section: Constant Monitoring Intensity Functionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Timely shirking: time-dependent monitoring and its effects on legislative behavior in the U.S. Senate

Lindstädt

Wielen

2010

Public Choice

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“…they might also consider recent votes a more reliable measure of a member's future behavior than more removed activity. While variation in legislative behavior that reflects a sensitivity to elections has been documented in the Senate (e.g., Elling, 1982), comparatively little research of this variety has studied the House because of the much shorter terms (but see Tien, 2001). Yet, we can study this phenomenon in the House by moving away from the traditional focus on congressional terms as the unit of analysis and towards a more refined temporal analysis.…”

Section: Dynamic Partisanshipmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dynamic Elite Partisanship: Party Loyalty and Agenda Setting in the US House

Lindstädt¹,

Wielen²

2013

Brit. J. Polit. Sci.

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Legislators and legislative parties must strike a balance between collective and member-level goals. While there are legislative and reputational returns to coordinated behavior, party loyalty has a detrimental effect on members' electoral success. We argue that members and parties navigate these competing forces by pursuing partisan legislation when the threat of electoral repercussions is relatively low -when elections are distant. We test our theory by examining House members' likelihood of casting a party vote over the election cycle, assessing whether members strategically alter their levels of party loyalty as elections approach. We also explore whether majority parties strategically structure the agenda according to variation in members' electoral constraints. Our approach allows elite partisanship to follow a dynamic process, which we term dynamic partisanship. We find that with increasing election proximity, members are less likely to cast party votes and parties are less inclined to schedule votes that divide the parties. * Please send all correspondence to Ryan J. Vander Wielen.

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“…For instance, presidents are found to be responsive to previous public preferences when an election is imminent or when a policy position is seen to be favorable in terms of leadership image Shotts 2004;Rottinghaus 2006). Scholars have also found these patterns when exploring legislative behavior (generally in the U.S. Senate since the unit of analysis is greater), specifically that Members of Congress more closely adhere to known median voter preferences when elections are coming soon (Kuklinski 1978;Elling 1982;Thomas 1985).…”

Section: Electionsmentioning

confidence: 96%

Expanding the Measure of Congruency: Presidential Anticipation of Public Preferences, 1953-2001

Rottinghaus¹

2009

ARP

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Several important studies have examined congruency between presidential policy position taking and public opinion. Much of this policy-public opinion scholarship, however, explores reflexive responsive pathways between representative and represented, where presidents read public opinion and respond to the opinions of the known public. A less explored aspect of presidential responsiveness to public opinion is the idea of presidential anticipation of future public opinion similar to Key’s (1964) concept of latent opinion. In this article, we offer a simple measure of anticipatory public opinion. Confirming what Key speculated about latent opinion, we find that presidents are more likely to successfully anticipate public preferences when the issue is salient and when elections are approaching, whereas popularity matters very little. Based upon these findings, presidents tend to look outward at the future political environment they face rather than inward (at current popularity) in anticipating reactions to new policy agendas.

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Ideological Change in the U. S. Senate: Time and Electoral Responsiveness

Cited by 103 publications

References 18 publications

Timely shirking: time-dependent monitoring and its effects on legislative behavior in the U.S. Senate

Timely shirking: time-dependent monitoring and its effects on legislative behavior in the U.S. Senate

Dynamic Elite Partisanship: Party Loyalty and Agenda Setting in the US House

Expanding the Measure of Congruency: Presidential Anticipation of Public Preferences, 1953-2001

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