Legislator voting and shirking: A critical review of the literature

Bender, Bruce; Lott, John R.

doi:10.1007/bf00151730

Cited by 147 publications

(109 citation statements)

References 90 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

105

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…This measure has been used most prominently to analyze MP behavior in the Italian 8 See Poole and Rosenthal (1996) for another example where politician's deviation from voters' interests is in terms of ideology. For a review of this literature, see Bender and Lott JR (1996).…”

Section: Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Do politicians shirk when reelection is certain? Evidence from the German parliament

Bernecker

2014

European Journal of Political Economy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Section: Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Do politicians shirk when reelection is certain? Evidence from the German parliament

Bernecker

2014

European Journal of Political Economy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…3,4 It is closely monitored by many prominent 1 Bender and Lott (1996) provide a survey of the principal-agent literature in political markets. 2 We follow Gilligan and Matsusaka (1995) in assuming that state fiscal policy is reflected in both state and local tax revenues, rather than just state tax revenues.…”

Section: Specification Data and Estimation Issuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Democrats, republicans, and taxes: Evidence that political parties matter

Reed

2006

Journal of Public Economics

153

109

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

I estimate the influence of political parties on state Tax Burdens over a forty-year period . Holding constant a large number of state and voter characteristic variables, I find that: (i) Tax Burdens are higher when Democrats control the state legislature compared to when Republicans are in control. (ii) The political party of the governor has little effect after controlling for partisan influences in the state legislature. I explain how both findings are consistent with median voter theory. My results suggest that after five years of Democratic control of the legislature, state government would be approximately 3 to 5 percent larger than if Republicans controlled the legislature during that same period, with the better specifications producing estimates in the higher end of this range.

show abstract

“…So, how much do retiring legislators change their voting patterns? Not much (Bender and Lott 1996;Lott 1987;Lott and Davis 1992;Poole and Romer 1993;Rothenberg and Sanders 2000). The most generous estimates for the magnitude of the retirement effect are around one to three percent of roll call votes, from Rothenberg and Sanders (2000).…”

Section: Candidates Have Policy Preferencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Redistricting Reform Will Not Solve California's Budget Crisis

Buchler¹

2009

CJPP

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Jarvis (2009) argues that ideological polarization in California's state legislature creates unique problems for the state because of the interaction between polarization and the requirement that the budget pass with a two-thirds supermajority. Thus, Jarvis argues that California should adopt a system of redistricting that produces more competitive elections in order to reduce polarization. However, that is the wrong solution. Increasing the number of competitive districts would have a minimal effect on polarization because polarization has other causes. Instead, the solution is to abandon the two-thirds budget requirement since polarization cannot be solved through redistricting, and increasing the number of competitive districts simply reduces representation. In several previous papers (Buchler 2005(Buchler , 2007a(Buchler , 2007b, I argued that promoting competitive elections makes elected officials less representative of their constituents' preferences and interests. Jarvis (2009) acknowledges that minimizing the number of competitive elections promotes representation, but argues that there are more important concerns than representation in California. In order for a budget to be approved by the state legislature, each chamber must pass the budget with a two-thirds supermajority rather than a simple majority. When two ideologically polarized parties must somehow cobble together a two-thirds supermajority in order to pass a budget, problems inevitably ensue. Hence, Jarvis argues that California should sacrifice representation in order to reduce polarization because the interaction between an ideologically polarized legislature, a two-thirds supermajority requirement, and several other factors causes too many problems. KEYWORDS: competition, redistricting, polarization, budget Journal ofIn order to reduce polarization, Jarvis (2009) argues that California should adopt a system of redistricting that creates more competitive districts. The premise of that argument is a common one. The post-2000 census round of redistricting in California was a classic example of a bipartisan gerrymander. In a bipartisan gerrymander, voters of each party are packed into relatively homogenous districts, thus guaranteeing each party a fixed number of safe seats, and eliminating any seats that might potentially be competitive in the general election. In the 2000 presidential election, 15 of California's 52 U.S. House districts had Bush and Gore separated by less than 10 points in the two-party vote. In the 2004 presidential election, only five of California's 53 House districts had Bush and Kerry separated by less than 10 points. Patterns were similar in both the Assembly and state Senate districts. Competitive districts were eliminated, and voters were packed into relatively homogenous districts that would be safe for either the Democrats or Republicans.Conventional wisdom holds that such bipartisan gerrymanders are responsible for ideological polarization in the legislature. After all, if legislators have no need to worry...

show abstract

Legislator voting and shirking: A critical review of the literature

Cited by 147 publications

References 90 publications

Do politicians shirk when reelection is certain? Evidence from the German parliament

Do politicians shirk when reelection is certain? Evidence from the German parliament

Democrats, republicans, and taxes: Evidence that political parties matter

Redistricting Reform Will Not Solve California's Budget Crisis

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About