The Influence of Party: Evidence from the State Legislatures

Wright, Gerald C.; Schaffner, Brian F.

doi:10.1017/s0003055402000229

Cited by 170 publications

(124 citation statements)

References 42 publications

(52 reference statements)

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“…Somewhat surprisingly, the previous literature has not taken advantage of this unique research design, neglecting the effects of electoral institutions on particularism. Several recent works take advantage of the proliferation of online voting records and sophisticated webscraping techniques have reduced the costs of collecting comprehensive state-level data (Clark et al 2009;Shor et al 2010), but those focus on the effects of legislator demographic characteristics on bill initiation and policy success (Bratton and Haynie 1999;Whitby 2002) or the role of parties in state legislatures (Battista and Richman 2011;Jenkins 2008;Wright and Schaffner 2002). Examining a sample of 165,000 bills spanning 120 years in 13 different states, Gamm and Kousser (2010) identified a considerable amount of particularistic legislation and found that particularistic legislation was related to the level of party competition in the legislature, with one party dominance associated with more particularistic bills, and members' salaries (with higher compensation associated with more particularistic bills).…”

Section: Electoral Institutions and The Personal Votementioning

confidence: 99%

Electoral Rules and Legislative Particularism: Evidence from U.S. State Legislatures

Bagashka

Clark

2016

Am Polit Sci Rev

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We argue that state legislative politics is qualitatively different from national congressional politics in the extent to which it focuses on localized and geographically specific legislation salient to subconstituencies within a legislative district. Whereas congressional politics focuses on casework benefits for individual constituents, state legislative politics is more oriented to the delivery of localized benefits for groups of citizens in specific areas within a district, fostering a geographically specific group connection. A primary way to build such targeted geographical support is for members to introduce particularistic legislation designed to aid their specific targeted geographical area within the district. We argue that this is primarily a function of electoral rules. Using original sponsorship data from U.S. state houses, we demonstrate that greater district magnitude and more inclusive selection procedures such as open primaries are associated with more particularism. Our findings provide strong support for a voter-group alignment model of electoral politics distinct from the personal vote/electoral connection model that characterizes U.S. congressional politics and is more akin to patterns of geographically specific group-oriented electoral politics found in Europe and throughout the world.

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Section: Electoral Institutions and The Personal Votementioning

confidence: 99%

Electoral Rules and Legislative Particularism: Evidence from U.S. State Legislatures

Bagashka

Clark

2016

Am Polit Sci Rev

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“…Second, estimates from roll call analysis can be used to test theories of legislative behavior. For instance, roll call analysis has been used in studies of the U.S. Congress, both contemporary and historical (e.g., Canes-Wrone, Brady, and Cogan 2002;Jenkins 1999;Schickler 2000), state legislatures (e.g., Wright and Schaffner 2002), courts (Martin and Quinn 2001), comparative politics (Londregan 2000b), and international relations (Voeten 2000). In short, roll call analysis make conjectures about legislative behavior amenable to quantitative analysis, helping make the study of legislative politics an empirically grounded, cumulative body of scientific knowledge.…”

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confidence: 99%

The Statistical Analysis of Roll Call Data

2004

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Modern studies of legislative behavior focus upon the relationship among the policy preferences of legislators, institutional arrangements, and legislative outcomes. In spatial models of legislatures, policies are represented geometrically, as points in a low-dimensional Euclidean space. Each legislator has a most preferred policy or ideal point in this space and his or her utility for a policy declines with the distance of the policy from his or her ideal point; see Davis, Hinich, and Ordeshook (1970) for an early survey.The primary use of roll call data-the recorded votes of deliberative bodies 1 -is the estimation of ideal points. The appeal and importance of ideal point estimation arises in two ways. First, ideal point estimates let us describe legislators and legislatures. The distribution of ideal points estimates reveals how cleavages between legislators reflect partisan affiliation or region or become more polarized over time (e.g., McCarty, Poole, and Rosenthal 2001). Roll call data serve similar purposes for interest groups, such as Americans for Democratic Action, the National Taxpayers Union, and the Sierra Club, to produce "ratings" of legislators along different policy dimensions. Second, estimates from roll call analysis can be used to test theories of legislative behavior. For instance, roll call analysis has been used Joshua Clinton is Assistant Professor, Department of Politics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08540 (clinton@princeton.edu).Simon Jackman is Associate Professor (Voeten 2000). In short, roll call analysis make conjectures about legislative behavior amenable to quantitative analysis, helping make the study of legislative politics an empirically grounded, cumulative body of scientific knowledge.Current methods of estimating ideal points in political science suffer from both statistical and theoretical deficiencies. First, any method of ideal point estimation embodies an explicit or implicit model of legislative behavior. Generally, it is inappropriate to use ideal points estimated under one set of assumptions (such as sincere voting over a unidimensional policy space) to test a different behavioral model (such as log-rolling). Second, the computations required for estimating even the simplest roll call model are very difficult and extending these models to incorporate more realistic behavioral assumptions is nearly impossible with extant methods. Finally, the statistical basis of current methods for ideal point estimation is, to be polite, questionable. Roll call analysis involves very large numbers of parameters, since each legislator has an ideal point and each bill has a policy location that must be estimated. Popular methods of roll call analysis compute standard errors that are admittedly invalid (Poole and Rosenthal 1997, 246) and one cannot appeal to standard statistical theory to ensure the consistency and other properties of estimators (we revisit this point below).In this paper we develop and illustrate Bayesian methods for ideal point estimation and the analysis of...

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“…They may allow for candidates to run in multiple party primaries, as California did in the first half of the twentieth century. In many cases, these reforms have their desired effect; legislative partisanship is virtually nonexistent in Nebraska (Wright and Schaffner 2002) and was substantially reduced in the early-twentieth-century California legislature (Masket 2007). Sometimes, however, parties find ways around these obstacles.…”

Section: Parties In Hostile Environmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Circus That Wasn't: The Republican Party's Quest for Order in California's 2003 Gubernatorial Recall Election

Masket

2011

State Politics Policy Q.

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Contrary to media reports, California's 2003 recall election was anything but a circus. Despite the presence of 135 candidates, just 3 managed to split 94% of the vote, and the winner came close to achieving a majority. In this article, the author uses elite interviews and a social network analysis of campaign donations to study how the Republican Party sought to impose order on the potentially chaotic political environment. The author finds that a network of Republican donors, activists, and officeholders coordinated their efforts to advantage Arnold Schwarzenegger and pressure other Republicans out of the race.

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The Influence of Party: Evidence from the State Legislatures

Cited by 170 publications

References 42 publications

Electoral Rules and Legislative Particularism: Evidence from U.S. State Legislatures

Electoral Rules and Legislative Particularism: Evidence from U.S. State Legislatures

The Statistical Analysis of Roll Call Data

The Circus That Wasn't: The Republican Party's Quest for Order in California's 2003 Gubernatorial Recall Election

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