On the (mis)measurement of legislator ideology and shirking

Beyond the Median: Voter Preferences, District Heterogeneity, and Political Representation

“…Kalt and Zupan (1990) find that the residuals from a model of senators' scores on rating scales of the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) are larger (in absolute value) for senators from states with greater voter heterogeneity (measured as less consistently liberal than the national average). Goff and Grier (1993) find that differences in same-state senators' voting records can be largely explained by heterogeneity in the state's income distribution, ethnic makeup, and workforce composition. Bailey and Brady (1998) find that state population heterogeneity, as measured by an index of state socioeconomic and cultural diversity, significantly affects senators' votes on trade legislation.…”

“…Since Key (1964), political scientists have long distinguished between the dual roles of political parties as components of legislative institutions (i.e., party in the legislature) and as organizing factors in electoral politics (i.e., party in the electorate). In terms of its impact on legislator behavior, works such as Fiorina (1974), Fenno (1978, Peltzman (1985), Goff and Grier (1993), Swain (1993), Jung, Kenny, andLott (1994), Brady and Schwartz (1995), Levitt (1996), Stratmann (1996), and others emphasize the role of partisan electoral constituencies on legislator behavior, that is, of the party in the electorate. This view of representation posits that legislators respond to core constituencies, especially voters from the same party, as opposed to their districtwide median voter.…”

“…In response to this evidence, scholars have developed a body of alternative theoretical models that suggest that weight be applied to voters at nonmedian positions (Hinich 1977); to legislators' own ideal points (Wittman 1977;Calvert 1985;Alesina and Rosenthal 1996); to the ideal points of campaign contributors (Stratmann 1995); to members of their parties and socalled reelection constituencies (Fiorina 1974;Aldrich 1983;Peltzman 1984); to legislative leaders (Rohde 1991;Cox and McCubbins 1993;Aldrich 1995); or to voters in other districts (Austen-Smith and Banks 1988;Snyder 1994). See Goff and Grier (1993) and Bender and Lott (1996) for recent reviews of this literature.…”

Out of Step, Out of Office: Electoral Accountability and House Members' Voting

“…For example, political economics research on members' ideological "shirking" from 1960 through 1990 has produced inconsistent findings. In studies that estimate shirking as the absolute difference between interest-group voting scores and the predicted values from these scores regressed on constituency characteristics, some evidence has suggested that shirking is correlated with electoral defeat (e.g., Wright 1993), while other evidence has suggested that the factors are uncorrelated (e.g., Goff and Grier 1993). One possible reason for the discrepancy is that these studies equate shirking with noise that could result from omitted variables; to the extent that the constituency characteristics included in a particular analysis do not fully capture district preferences, shirking is overestimated and the effects of it underestimated.…”

Interest groups: A survey of empirical models that try to assess their influence

“…53 Studies that are particular focused on this point are, among others, Bender (1994), Fort et al (1993), Goff andGrier (1993), Jung et al (1994), Krehbiel (1993), Peltzman (1984), Richardson and Munger (1990) and Stratmann (1994). influencing public policy and is likely to underestimate the influence of special interest groups. 54 As argued, the pattern of constituents' preference representation is important for the relative influence of interest groups on the political process.…”