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Some congressional observers fear that unethical members are too insulated from electoral defeat. To estimate the security of unethical members, this article examines the survivability of members who have been accused of unethical behavior since 1977. Although most members who have been accused can survive one election cycle, most are unable to survive two election cycles. As a way of evaluating the ethics process, this article examines which members leave. If the current system removes unethical members, then members who have been found guilty of severe offenses should be more apt to leave than others. The severity of members' offenses did affect their ability to survive, but only significantly so in the long term. The findings show that electoral security plays the dominant role in members' survivability. Other factors affecting which members leave include institutional power, media coverage, the nature of the times, and a member's age.

Efforts to explain the underrepresentation of women in Congress, as well as other institutions, have failed to detect significant gender differences in the availability of campaign resources. Thus one may be tempted to conclude that the underrepresentation of women is unrelated to the availability of resources. However, implicit in this conclusion is an assumption that the effects of resources are gender neutral. If the value of a resource depends on the gender of the candidate, women may need more or less of a resource to do as well as men. On this note, the author tests that assumption by examining House races between 1988 and 1992. For challengers, the author finds that the value of campaign spending and party strength is greater for men than women, whereas in open-seat races, women received greater value from a strong party than did men.

Argues that research on female (F) political candidates needs to redirect its attention from aggregate to contest-specific comparisons. An examination of Fs running in 1992 suggests the comparison made affects the findings; ie, Fs fare less well when compared to their opponents vs when all Fs are compared to all male candidates. 3 Tables, 19 References. Adapted from the source document.