Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-x5gtn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-11T08:43:34.138Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Hunt for Party Discipline in Congress

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 January 2002

Nolan McCarty ,
Keith T. Poole  and
Howard Rosenthal
Nolan McCarty
Affiliation:
Princeton University
Keith T. Poole
Affiliation:
University of Houston
Howard Rosenthal
Affiliation:
Princeton University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We analyze party discipline in the House of Representatives between 1947 and 1998. The effects of party pressures can be represented in a spatial model by allowing each party to have its own cutting line on roll call votes. Adding a second cutting line makes, at best, a marginal improvement over the standard single-line model. Analysis of legislators who switch parties shows, however, that party discipline is manifest in the location of the legislator's ideal point. In contrast to our approach, we find that the Snyder-Groseclose method of estimating the influence of party discipline is biased toward exaggerating party effects.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 95 , Issue 3 , September 2001 , pp. 673 - 687
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2001

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aldrich, John H. 1995. Why Parties? The Origin and Transformation of Political Parties in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Aldrich, John H., Berger, Mark M., and Rohde, David W.. 1999. “The Historical Variability in Conditional Party Government, 1877– 1986.” Paper presented at the Conference of the History of Congress, Stanford University.Google Scholar
Cox, Gary, and McCubbins, Mathew. 1993. Legislative Leviathan. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Doberman, Matthew C. 1997. Congressional Responsiveness to Constituent Change. Bachelor of Arts Honors Thesis. Department of Government, Harvard College.Google Scholar
Fiorina, Morris P. 1999. “What Happened to the Median Voter?” Paper presented at MIT conference on Political Parties in Congress.Google Scholar
Heckman, James, and Snyder, James. 1997. “Linear Probability Models of the Demand for Attributes with an Empirical Application to Estimating the Preferences of Legislators.” Rand Journal of Economics. Special Issue: S142–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jenkins, Jeffrey. 1999. “Examining the Bonding Effects of Party: A Comparative Analysis of Roll Call Voting in the U.S. and Confederate Houses.” American Journal of Political Science 43 (4): 1144–65.Google Scholar
Lowry, William R., and Shipan, Charles R.. 2000. “The Causes of Party Ideological Differentiation in Congress.” Department of Political Science. University of Iowa. Typescript.Google Scholar
King, David C. 1998. “Party Competition and Polarization in American Politics.” Paper presented at the 1998 meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association.Google Scholar
Krehbiel, Keith. 1993. “Where's the Party?” British Journal of Political Science 23 (1): 235–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krehbiel, Keith. 1998. Pivotal Politics: A Theory of U.S. Lawmaking. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levitt, Steven D. 1996. “How Do Senators Vote? Disentangling the Role of Voter Preferences, Party Affiliation, and Senator Ideology.” American Economic Review 86 (3): 425–41.Google Scholar
McCarty, Nolan M., Poole, Keith T., and Rosenthal, Howard. 1997. Income Redistribution and the Realignment of American Politics. Washington: AEI Press.Google Scholar
McCarty, Nolan, Poole, Keith T., and Rosenthal, Howard. 2000. “The Hunt for Party Discipline in Congress” (with Technical Appendices), available at http://www.voteview.uh.edu.Google Scholar
Nokken, Timothy P. 2000. “Dynamics of Congressional Loyalty: Party Defection and Roll Call Behavior, 1947–1997.” Legislative Studies Quarterly 25 (3): 417–44.Google Scholar
Poole, Keith T. 2000. “A Non-Parametric Unfolding of Binary Choice Data.” Political Analysis 8 (3): 211–37.Google Scholar
Poole, Keith T., and Romer, Thomas. 1993. “Ideology, Shirking, and Representation.” Public Choice 77 (September): 185–96.Google Scholar
Poole, Keith T., and Rosenthal, Howard. 1984. “The Polarization of American Politics.” Journal of Politics 46 (4): 1061–79.Google Scholar
Poole, Keith T., and Rosenthal, Howard. 1991. “Patterns of Congressional Voting.” American Journal of Political Science 35 (2): 228–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poole, Keith T., and Rosenthal, Howard. 1997. Congress: A Political-Economic History of Roll Call Voting. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rohde, David W. 1991. Parties and Leaders in the Post-Reform House. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sinclair, Barbara. 1995. Legislators, Leaders, and Lawmakers: The U.S. House of Representatives in the Post-Reform Era. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Snyder, James and Groseclose, Timothy. 2000. “Estimating Party Influence in Congressional Roll-Call Voting.” American Journal of Political Science 44 (2): 193–211.Google Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.