Tarnishing Opponents, Polarizing Congress: The House Minority Party and the Construction of the Roll‐Call Record

Egar, William T.

doi:10.1111/lsq.12135

Cited by 17 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…Since it cannot dictate the floor agenda, minority members will engage in messaging strategies as a way to distinguish themselves from the majority (Lee, 2011). Additionally, as their chances to secure power increase, the minority pursues partisan votes that force majority party legislators to take unpopular positions (Egar, 2016). Indeed, Lee (2016: 3)…”

Section: Insecure Majorities and Partisan Conflictmentioning

confidence: 99%

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In pursuit of power: Competition for majority status and Senate partisanship

Gelman

2017

Party Politics

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During the 20th century, Congress experienced two main shifts in partisan conflict. Early decades were marked by a substantial decrease in party divisiveness, reaching a nadir by mid-century. Beginning in the 1970s, partisanship has increased to the point that Congress is viewed as “hyper-partisan.” Political scientists have thoroughly examined this more recent shift; however, few studies consider why party divisiveness has fluctuated during the past century and over time more generally. Lee’s recent work contends a main factor that drives legislative partisanship is the majority party’s prospects for retaining control of its chamber. Using data on every Senate roll call vote since 1915 and a novel measure of party competition, I test an extension of Lee’s argument and examine whether partisan voting is associated with insecure majority status. My results indicate that voting coalitions in the Senate become more partisan as the majority’s probability of remaining in power decreases.

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Section: Insecure Majorities and Partisan Conflictmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They show that changes in the floor agenda between congresses accounts for much of the party divisiveness in that chamber since the 1950s. Egar (2016) finds that minority parties contribute to a more polarizing roll call record by forcing votes on controversial issues.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

In pursuit of power: Competition for majority status and Senate partisanship

Gelman

2017

Party Politics

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“…2 Several empirical findings underscore the often unexpected influence of minority parties: Majorities frequently need minority party support to pass major legislation (Curry and Lee 2020) and minority party support for a bill in committee is predictive of its legislative success (Ryan 2020). House minority parties shape the issue attentions of the majority party (Hughes 2018) as well as the floor roll-call record (Egar 2016). Majority parties are often unable to control the House floor agenda (Ballard and Curry 2020), and there are virtually no differences between the negative agenda-setting powers exercised by House and Senate majority parties, despite far more favorable rules in the House (Ballard 2021;Gailmard and Jenkins 2007;.…”

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confidence: 99%

Minority Party Capacity in Congress

Ballard

Curry

2021

Am Polit Sci Rev

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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 Representatives between 1985 and 2006 and case examples of notable lawmaking efforts during the same period, we show that our theory helps predict which bills are considered on the House floor, which bills become law, and the substance of policy-making outcomes. Our findings have important implications for theories of congressional party power and our understanding of minority party influence on Capitol Hill.

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“…Consider that, despite research and ubiquitous journalistic accounts of increasing polarisation, bipartisanship still exists and is more widespread than many recognise (Adler and Wilkerson 2013;Curry and Lee 2019;Harbridge 2015). Some scholars have noted that a focus on roll calls tends to exaggerate the level of ideological polarisation (Carson et al 2010;Egar 2016). More generally, it is not clear that just because the parties have sorted into two voting blocs that they are equally polarised on all issues: the content of legislation may matter a great deal.…”

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confidence: 99%

Policy and the structure of roll call voting in the US house

2020

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Competition in the US Congress has been characterised along a single, left-right ideological dimension. We challenge this characterisation by showing that the content of legislation has far more predictive power than alternative measures, most notably legislators’ ideological positions derived from scaling roll call votes. Using a machine learning approach, we identify a topic model for final passage votes in the 111th through the 113th House of Representatives and conduct out-of-sample tests to evaluate the predictive power of bill topics relative to other measures. We find that bill topics and congressional committees are important for predicting roll call votes but that other variables, including member ideology, lack predictive power. These findings raise serious doubts about the claim that congressional politics can be boiled down to competition along a single left-right continuum and shed new light on the debate about levels of polarisation in Congress.

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Tarnishing Opponents, Polarizing Congress: The House Minority Party and the Construction of the Roll‐Call Record

Cited by 17 publications

References 39 publications

In pursuit of power: Competition for majority status and Senate partisanship

In pursuit of power: Competition for majority status and Senate partisanship

Minority Party Capacity in Congress

Policy and the structure of roll call voting in the US house

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