Policy Responsiveness to Shifting Majorities: US House Members Respond to Hard Times (original) (raw)
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It is reasonable to presume that House incumbents through their behaviors and resource allocations (e.g., trips home, staff, etc.) are responsible for their electoral success. The empirical case for the resource allocation hypothesis, however, rests primarily upon the support of a few experimental design studies. The remainder of the evidence from 25 years of tests of this hypothesis, at the district and individual-levels, is littered with null findings. Scholars suggest two methodological obstructions hinder alternative hypothesis findings: simultaneity bias (in district and individuallevel studies), and restricted variance on the allocation measures (in individual-level studies). In this investigation I apply methodological remedies for these hindrances-nonrecursive analyses on a pooled (1960)(1961)(1962)(1963)(1964)(1965)(1966)(1967)(1968)(1969)(1970)(1971)(1972)(1973)(1974)(1975)(1976)) NES elections data set. I uncover the strongest evidence yet that incumbents benefit electorally from their resource allocations (here: bills sponsored and cosponsored, staff, and district offices). In addition to this main result, I also discuss the influence generational replacement has on resource allocations and the vote.
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The extent to which representatives “represent” the preferences of their district in roll call voting is fundamental to the endeavor of understanding the nature of electoral institutions. Although a great deal of work is devoted to this problem, previous work suffers from both an inability to measure sub-constituencies of the type identified by Fenno (1978) and problems resulting from the usage of ideal point estimates. Using survey data from a random probability sample of 39,000 respondents and a hierarchical Markov Chain Monte ...
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Electoral Vulnerability and Presidential Support in the House of Representatives
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This article investigates whether electoral vulnerability affects how a member of Congress behaves on presidential support votes. It argues that electorally vulnerable members of the House will be more responsive to their constituents' views about the president. As a result, vulnerable members of Congress can be critical to the success or failure of the president's legislative efforts. I investigate presidential support scores from 1993 to 2016 and find that electoral vulnerability conditions how members of Congress vote when the president takes a position on a bill. Even in today's highly polarized and highly partisan Congress, the combination of electoral vulnerability and the pres-ident's standing in members' constituencies can cause members to cross party lines on presidential support votes.
Voting Power, Policy Representation, and Disparities in Voting’s Rewards
Reelection-minded officials have motivations to represent some of their constituents more than others when casting roll call votes. In particular, reelection seekers have incentives to appeal to those with greater "voting power" (Bartels 1998): those who are likely to vote, are not strongly predisposed to vote for one of the parties, and are members of large groups within a particular constituency. We present two novel findings stemming from these incentives. First, we find that those with greater voting power tend to enjoy better policy representation. Second, the rewards of voting are greater for those belonging to groups with more voting power. Since voting power varies across racial/ethnic and income lines, these findings hold significant normative implications.
Social Science Quarterly, 2003
Objective. Fenno (1978), Wright (1989), and other scholars suggest that legislators will be particularly responsive to various subgroups in their constituency, i.e., what might be termed the ''core constituency.'' We explore the degree to which Republican and Democrat House incumbents respond differently to changes in the racial composition of their districts brought about by redistricting. We speculate that (1) Democrat House incumbents will be more responsive in their roll-call behavior to changes in African-American racial composition, since African-American voters are typically a major component of the Democrat core constituency, while (2) Republicans will be less responsive, since African-American voters are typically not part of the Republican coalition. Methods. We utilize data on the roll-call behavior, member characteristics, and constituency characteristics of House members who served during both the 102nd (1991-1992) and 103rd (1993-1994) Congresses. We model roll-call liberalism in 1993 as a function of levels of and changes in district racial composition, along with control variables. To capture the different effects of racial core constituencies, we estimate our models separately for Democratic and Republican House members. Results. Our findings provide strong support for our hypothesis: Democrat incumbents respond strongly both to levels of and changes in the African-American population in their districts, while Republican incumbents respond only modestly to changes in African-American population brought on by redistricting and negatively to African-American population levels. Conclusions. Democrats and Republicans appear to respond differently to constituent groups, depending on whether the groups are part of their core constituency. Our findings suggest the importance of considering core constituencies in studying roll-call behavior and legislative responsiveness.