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Research paper thumbnail of Can Congressional Caucuses Alleviate Partisan Polarization in the U.S. Congress

Social Science Research Network, 2014

Congress has been increasingly criticized as a broken, gridlocked, polarized, ineffective institu... more Congress has been increasingly criticized as a broken, gridlocked, polarized, ineffective institution. In this paper we seek to explore the consequences of polarization and whether legislators take steps to alleviate them. We hypothesize that participation in the voluntary, bipartisan, caucus system provides opportunities for legislators to build cross-partisan relationships and profit from shared information, which can alleviate some of the negative effects of polarization. We operationalize polarization using dyadic covoting and show that legislators are more likely to covote if they share more caucus connections, controlling for a variety of factors that predict voting. The data in this analysis spans 9 congresses (1993-2010) and includes multiple connections between legislators.

Research paper thumbnail of The Dynamics Of Deliberation And Coordination: An Agent-Based Approach

Research paper thumbnail of Multiplex Legislative Networks and the Power of Caucuses to Alleviate Partisan Polarization

Congress has been increasingly criticized as a broken, gridlocked, polarized, ineffective institu... more Congress has been increasingly criticized as a broken, gridlocked, polarized, ineffective institution. In this paper we seek to explore the consequences of polarization and whether legislators take steps to alleviate them. We hypothesize that participation in the voluntary, bipartisan, caucus system provides opportunities for legislators to build cross-partisan relationships and prot from shared information, which can alleviate some of the negative eects of polarization. We operationalize polarization using dyadic covoting and show that legislators are more likely to covote if they share more caucus connections, controlling for a variety of factors that predict voting. The data in this analysis spans 9 congresses (1993-2010) and includes multiple connections between legislators.

Research paper thumbnail of But what's in it for me? Characterizing uncertainty in bargaining

Research paper thumbnail of The Dynamics Of Deliberation And Coordination: An Agent-Based Approach

Research paper thumbnail of Incentive-Based Elicitation of Bayesian Priors from Experts

Abstract will be provided by author.

Research paper thumbnail of No News Is News: Nonignorable Nonresponse in Roll-Call Data Analysis

American Journal of Political Science, 2014

Roll-call votes are widely employed to infer the ideological proclivities of legislators. However... more Roll-call votes are widely employed to infer the ideological proclivities of legislators. However, many roll-call matrices are characterized by high levels of nonresponse. Under many circumstances, nonresponse cannot be assumed to be ignorable. We examine the consequences of violating the ignorability assumption that underlies current methods of roll-call analysis. We present a basic estimation framework to model nonresponse and vote choice concurrently, build a model that captures the logic of competing principals that underlies accounts of nonresponse in many legislatures, and illustrate the payoff of addressing nonignorable nonresponse through both simulated and real data. We conclude that modeling presumed patterns of nonignorable nonresponse can yield important inferential payoffs over current models that assume random missingness, but we also emphasize that the decision to model nonresponse should be based on theoretical grounds since one cannot rely on measures of goodness of fit for the purpose of model comparison. I deal points estimated from roll-call data constitute accurate reflections of the underlying policy preferences of individual legislators only under very stringent circumstances. Under conditions common in legislative settings-strategic voting, logrolling, nonindependence of vote choice within parties-ideal points are at best imperfect reflections of legislators' ideological profiles. The problem of missing values also affects inferences about ideal points derived from roll-call votes. This problem has two different manifestations: First, roll-call votes may be a nonrandom selection of all votes taken by a voting body. In such instances, we can conceive of roll-call votes as observed data and nonrecorded votes as missing data. The selection bias on inferred ideal points that follows from this manifestation of the missingness problem has been amply documented (Carrubba et al. 2006; Carrubba, Gabel, and Hug 2008; Crisp and Driscoll 2012). In this article, we explore the second manifesta

Research paper thumbnail of Can Congressional Caucuses Alleviate Partisan Polarization in the US Congress?

Congress has been increasingly criticized as a broken, gridlocked, polarized, ineffective institu... more Congress has been increasingly criticized as a broken, gridlocked, polarized, ineffective institution. In this paper we seek to explore the consequences of polarization and whether legislators take steps to alleviate them. We hypothesize that participation in the voluntary, bipartisan, caucus system provides opportunities for legislators to build cross-partisan relationships and profit from shared information, which can alleviate some of the negative effects of polarization. We operationalize polarization using dyadic covoting and show that legislators are more likely to covote if they share more caucus connections, controlling for a variety of factors that predict voting. The data in this analysis spans 9 congresses (1993-2010) and includes multiple connections between legislators.

Research paper thumbnail of Can Caucuses Alleviate Partisan Polarization in the US Congress?

Congress has been increasingly criticized as a broken, gridlocked, polarized, ineffective institu... more Congress has been increasingly criticized as a broken, gridlocked, polarized, ineffective institution. In this paper we seek to explore the consequences of polarization and whether existing institutions play any role in osetting ideological polarization. We hypothesize that participation in the voluntary, bipartisan, caucus system provides opportunities for legislators to build cross-partisan relationships and prot from shared information, which can alleviate some of the negative eects of polarization. We operationalize polarization using dyadic covoting and show that legislators are more likely to covote if they share more caucus connections, controlling for a variety of factors that predict voting. The data in this analysis spans 9 congresses (1993-2010) and includes multiple connections between legislators.

Research paper thumbnail of Multiplex legislative networks and the power of caucuses to alleviate partisan polarization

Congress has been increasingly criticized as a broken, gridlocked, polarized, ineffective institu... more Congress has been increasingly criticized as a broken, gridlocked, polarized, ineffective institution. In this paper we seek to explore the consequences of polarization and whether legislators take steps to alleviate them. We hypothesize that participation in the voluntary, bipartisan, caucus system provides opportunities for legislators to build cross-partisan relationships and prot from shared information, which can alleviate some of the negative eects of polarization. We operationalize polarization using dyadic covoting and show that legislators are more likely to covote if they share more caucus connections, controlling for a variety of factors that predict voting. The data in this analysis spans 9 congresses (1993-2010) and includes multiple connections between legislators.

Research paper thumbnail of The Dimensionality of Congressional Voting Reconsidered

American Politics Research, 2015

This article reports findings for a decomposition of the roll-call voting record of the U.S. Cong... more This article reports findings for a decomposition of the roll-call voting record of the U.S. Congress to determine the effect of the level of aggregation on the observed dimensionality of the policy space. In doing so, we identify some but certainly not all of the ways in which the aggregation of the voting record affects the observed dimensionality of the policy space. For the 1955 to 2008 period (84th-110th Congresses), we apply optimal classification (OC) to votes aggregated to the level of the individual bill and policy area to measure dimensionality. We examine the marginal proportional reduction in error (MPRE) across dimensions. Our results demonstrate that complexity in voting patterns of individual bill episodes is the norm, that aggregating to higher levels reduces the observed dimensionality, and that the liberal–conservative dimension appears more dominant in more highly aggregated analyses. These results call into question many of the conclusions from the theoretical an...

Research paper thumbnail of Can Congressional Caucuses Alleviate Partisan Polarization in the U.S. Congress

Social Science Research Network, 2014

Congress has been increasingly criticized as a broken, gridlocked, polarized, ineffective institu... more Congress has been increasingly criticized as a broken, gridlocked, polarized, ineffective institution. In this paper we seek to explore the consequences of polarization and whether legislators take steps to alleviate them. We hypothesize that participation in the voluntary, bipartisan, caucus system provides opportunities for legislators to build cross-partisan relationships and profit from shared information, which can alleviate some of the negative effects of polarization. We operationalize polarization using dyadic covoting and show that legislators are more likely to covote if they share more caucus connections, controlling for a variety of factors that predict voting. The data in this analysis spans 9 congresses (1993-2010) and includes multiple connections between legislators.

Research paper thumbnail of The Dynamics Of Deliberation And Coordination: An Agent-Based Approach

Research paper thumbnail of Multiplex Legislative Networks and the Power of Caucuses to Alleviate Partisan Polarization

Congress has been increasingly criticized as a broken, gridlocked, polarized, ineffective institu... more Congress has been increasingly criticized as a broken, gridlocked, polarized, ineffective institution. In this paper we seek to explore the consequences of polarization and whether legislators take steps to alleviate them. We hypothesize that participation in the voluntary, bipartisan, caucus system provides opportunities for legislators to build cross-partisan relationships and prot from shared information, which can alleviate some of the negative eects of polarization. We operationalize polarization using dyadic covoting and show that legislators are more likely to covote if they share more caucus connections, controlling for a variety of factors that predict voting. The data in this analysis spans 9 congresses (1993-2010) and includes multiple connections between legislators.

Research paper thumbnail of But what's in it for me? Characterizing uncertainty in bargaining

Research paper thumbnail of The Dynamics Of Deliberation And Coordination: An Agent-Based Approach

Research paper thumbnail of Incentive-Based Elicitation of Bayesian Priors from Experts

Abstract will be provided by author.

Research paper thumbnail of No News Is News: Nonignorable Nonresponse in Roll-Call Data Analysis

American Journal of Political Science, 2014

Roll-call votes are widely employed to infer the ideological proclivities of legislators. However... more Roll-call votes are widely employed to infer the ideological proclivities of legislators. However, many roll-call matrices are characterized by high levels of nonresponse. Under many circumstances, nonresponse cannot be assumed to be ignorable. We examine the consequences of violating the ignorability assumption that underlies current methods of roll-call analysis. We present a basic estimation framework to model nonresponse and vote choice concurrently, build a model that captures the logic of competing principals that underlies accounts of nonresponse in many legislatures, and illustrate the payoff of addressing nonignorable nonresponse through both simulated and real data. We conclude that modeling presumed patterns of nonignorable nonresponse can yield important inferential payoffs over current models that assume random missingness, but we also emphasize that the decision to model nonresponse should be based on theoretical grounds since one cannot rely on measures of goodness of fit for the purpose of model comparison. I deal points estimated from roll-call data constitute accurate reflections of the underlying policy preferences of individual legislators only under very stringent circumstances. Under conditions common in legislative settings-strategic voting, logrolling, nonindependence of vote choice within parties-ideal points are at best imperfect reflections of legislators' ideological profiles. The problem of missing values also affects inferences about ideal points derived from roll-call votes. This problem has two different manifestations: First, roll-call votes may be a nonrandom selection of all votes taken by a voting body. In such instances, we can conceive of roll-call votes as observed data and nonrecorded votes as missing data. The selection bias on inferred ideal points that follows from this manifestation of the missingness problem has been amply documented (Carrubba et al. 2006; Carrubba, Gabel, and Hug 2008; Crisp and Driscoll 2012). In this article, we explore the second manifesta

Research paper thumbnail of Can Congressional Caucuses Alleviate Partisan Polarization in the US Congress?

Congress has been increasingly criticized as a broken, gridlocked, polarized, ineffective institu... more Congress has been increasingly criticized as a broken, gridlocked, polarized, ineffective institution. In this paper we seek to explore the consequences of polarization and whether legislators take steps to alleviate them. We hypothesize that participation in the voluntary, bipartisan, caucus system provides opportunities for legislators to build cross-partisan relationships and profit from shared information, which can alleviate some of the negative effects of polarization. We operationalize polarization using dyadic covoting and show that legislators are more likely to covote if they share more caucus connections, controlling for a variety of factors that predict voting. The data in this analysis spans 9 congresses (1993-2010) and includes multiple connections between legislators.

Research paper thumbnail of Can Caucuses Alleviate Partisan Polarization in the US Congress?

Congress has been increasingly criticized as a broken, gridlocked, polarized, ineffective institu... more Congress has been increasingly criticized as a broken, gridlocked, polarized, ineffective institution. In this paper we seek to explore the consequences of polarization and whether existing institutions play any role in osetting ideological polarization. We hypothesize that participation in the voluntary, bipartisan, caucus system provides opportunities for legislators to build cross-partisan relationships and prot from shared information, which can alleviate some of the negative eects of polarization. We operationalize polarization using dyadic covoting and show that legislators are more likely to covote if they share more caucus connections, controlling for a variety of factors that predict voting. The data in this analysis spans 9 congresses (1993-2010) and includes multiple connections between legislators.

Research paper thumbnail of Multiplex legislative networks and the power of caucuses to alleviate partisan polarization

Congress has been increasingly criticized as a broken, gridlocked, polarized, ineffective institu... more Congress has been increasingly criticized as a broken, gridlocked, polarized, ineffective institution. In this paper we seek to explore the consequences of polarization and whether legislators take steps to alleviate them. We hypothesize that participation in the voluntary, bipartisan, caucus system provides opportunities for legislators to build cross-partisan relationships and prot from shared information, which can alleviate some of the negative eects of polarization. We operationalize polarization using dyadic covoting and show that legislators are more likely to covote if they share more caucus connections, controlling for a variety of factors that predict voting. The data in this analysis spans 9 congresses (1993-2010) and includes multiple connections between legislators.

Research paper thumbnail of The Dimensionality of Congressional Voting Reconsidered

American Politics Research, 2015

This article reports findings for a decomposition of the roll-call voting record of the U.S. Cong... more This article reports findings for a decomposition of the roll-call voting record of the U.S. Congress to determine the effect of the level of aggregation on the observed dimensionality of the policy space. In doing so, we identify some but certainly not all of the ways in which the aggregation of the voting record affects the observed dimensionality of the policy space. For the 1955 to 2008 period (84th-110th Congresses), we apply optimal classification (OC) to votes aggregated to the level of the individual bill and policy area to measure dimensionality. We examine the marginal proportional reduction in error (MPRE) across dimensions. Our results demonstrate that complexity in voting patterns of individual bill episodes is the norm, that aggregating to higher levels reduces the observed dimensionality, and that the liberal–conservative dimension appears more dominant in more highly aggregated analyses. These results call into question many of the conclusions from the theoretical an...