Partisanship, the Electoral Connection, and Lame-Duck Sessions of Congress, 1877–2006

Abstract

We disentangle constituent and partisan influences in Congress by taking advantage of a largely unexamined institutional setting-lame-duck sessions. Lame-duck sessions of Congress are comprised of exiting members, who are freed from both constituency and party constraints, and returning members, who face a significantly reduced constituency constraint but a still strong party constraint. Comparing exiting and returning House members thus provides meaningful leverage in assessing the constraining influence of party. In the regularly occurring lame-duck sessions between 1877 and 1933, exiting House members exhibited greater movement away from the median party position than did returning members, consistent with expectations regarding party influence. In addition, party leaders' ability to apply pressure was significantly reduced in lame-duck sessions due to the presence of a large group of exiting members. Finally, majority-party leaders were able to exercise negative agenda control in lame-duck sessions when their party maintained control of the next Congress, but they often acted to roll their own party members (an occurrence we dub a ''strategic roll'') when their party lost control of the next Congress, as a way to minimize policy loss. In the post-1933 era, after the passage of the 20th Amendment, lame-duck sessions (those portions of the second session that stretch beyond the November elections) are more accurately characterized as extensions of regular sessions, with party leaders' ability to pressure members and exercise negative agenda control remaining virtually constant across sessions. Lower levels of turnover in the modern era appear to contribute to an enhanced ability of majority-party leaders to wield influence.

A Natural Experiment in Proposal Power and Electoral Success

“…A variety of studies have sought to leverage quasi‐experiments to parse out the effect of these intertwined explanations. However, these approaches—such as studying differences in roll‐call voting in lame duck sessions of Congress (Jenkins and Nokken )—have generally been more successful in isolating the effects of party influence as opposed to isolating the effects of constituency preferences (Binder, Lawrence, and Maltzman ; Cox and Poole ; Jenkins, Crespin, and Carson ; McCarty, Poole, and Rosenthal ; Snyder and Groseclose ).…”

Term Limits as a Boon to Legislative Scholarship: A Review

“…As a result, term limits yield many empirical implications that can be used to test theories that are based on this mechanism. Theories of representation (Maestas 2000;Jewell 1982;Wahlke et al 1962;Powell, Niemi, and Smith 2007), roll-call voting (Wright 2007;Jenkins and Nokken 2008;Nokken 2008), moral hazard and public behavior (Erler 2007), interest group relations (Kroszner and Stratmann 1998;Mooney 2007a;Mixon 1996;Hall and Deardorff 2006), political ambition (Herrick and Moore 1993;Maestas et al 2006), and almost every other type of legislative behavior can be tested using term limits. Some scholars have scrutinized retiring or defeated lawmakers to understand legislative behavior unconstrained by the reelection motive (Lawrence 2007;Rothenberg and Sanders 2000;Herrick, Moore, and Hibbing 1994;Jenkins and Nokken 2008;Nokken 2008).…”

Institutional Context and Party Power: Member Participation and Leadership Strategy in the Lame-Duck Congressional Era

“…Agency issues potentially affected party leaders as well, as departing members were freed not only from electoral constraints but party constraints as well, making them decidedly less responsive to leaders' arm-twisting efforts. As Jenkins and Nokken (2008a) show, the proportions of pressure votes varied predictably across sessions: A lower proportion of positive pressure votes and a higher proportion of negative pressure votes took place in lame-duck sessions compared to regular sessions. 2 In regular sessions, when members were largely beholden to them, party leaders actively turned the screws, which resulted in positive pressure.…”