2021
DOI: 10.1017/s0003055421000381
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Minority Party Capacity in Congress

Abstract: When, and under what circumstances, are congressional minority parties capable of influencing legislative outcomes? We argue that the capacity of the minority party to exert legislative influence is a function of three factors: constraints on the majority party, which create opportunities for the minority party; minority party cohesion on the issue at hand; and sufficient motivation for the minority to engage in legislating rather than electioneering. Drawing on data on every bill considered in the House of Re… Show more

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Cited by 6 publications
(5 citation statements)
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“…11 Critically, this assumption implies that minority votesand thus minority leveragewill be valuable on some bills but not all or even most bills. This feature is different than (and complements) the approach taken in Ballard and Curry (2021), which considers every bill and joint resolution in the House, and fits nicely with the canonical view that the minority, much of the time, simply stands by and watches the process. Yet where minority-party leaders can credibly threaten to prevent their moderate members from supporting majority-party proposals, they can generate leverage to bargain with the majority over access to the agenda.…”
Section: The Source Of Minority-party Leveragementioning
confidence: 70%
See 1 more Smart Citation
“…11 Critically, this assumption implies that minority votesand thus minority leveragewill be valuable on some bills but not all or even most bills. This feature is different than (and complements) the approach taken in Ballard and Curry (2021), which considers every bill and joint resolution in the House, and fits nicely with the canonical view that the minority, much of the time, simply stands by and watches the process. Yet where minority-party leaders can credibly threaten to prevent their moderate members from supporting majority-party proposals, they can generate leverage to bargain with the majority over access to the agenda.…”
Section: The Source Of Minority-party Leveragementioning
confidence: 70%
“…Gailmard and Jenkins (2008), Green (2015), and Egar (2016) look at a range of voting and extra-legislative data that suggest an underappreciated role for the minority party. 7 Ballard and Curry (2021) argue that the confluence of three factorsconstraints on the majority party, minority party cohesion on the issue at hand, and the minority party's motivation to engage in legislating rather than electioneeringinfluences minority party capacity on finalpassage votes. Krehbiel et al (2015) offer a formal theory of partisan lawmaking, wherein both majority and minority parties are able to offer amendments and use transferable resources to assemble winning or blocking coalitions, which lead to more moderate policy outcomes.…”
mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Majority-Party Heterogeneity is the standard deviation of ideological ideal points among majority-party members. Minority-Party Heterogeneity is a similar metric among minority-party members, included to allow for the possibility that minority-party cohesion enhances that party's influence (e.g., Ballard and Curry 2021). The conditional party government hypothesis predicts a positive coefficient on Polarization and a negative coefficient on Majority-Party Heterogeneity, consistent with cohesive but polarized parties leading to greater majority-party influence in legislatures.…”
Section: Study 1: the Power Of The Majority Partymentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Members of the minority party have strong incentive to harshly criticize opposition leaders/the majority who hold legislative power, as there can be substantial electoral gains to opposition (Ballard, & Curry, 2021). For example, Republicans campaigned passionately against the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in the 2010 midterms to great effect: having voted for the ACA is estimated to have cost Democrats 6 percentage points in 2010, on average (Nyhan et al, 2012).…”
Section: Background and Theorymentioning
confidence: 99%