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This paper shows that agnostic spatial models that simultaneously attempt to estimate legislators' preferred points and ideological locations for the proposals on which they vote, such as the well-known NOMINATE model of Poole and Rosenthal, are not identified. The problem arises because the agnostic estimators inherit the granularity of the voting data and, so, cannot recapture the underlying continuous parameter space. I propose an alternative estimator that achieves identification by modeling the agenda.

AbstractImportant work has been done to measure legislative effectiveness in the U.S. Congress and to explain the individual characteristics that drive it. Much less attention, however, has been devoted to study the extent to which legislative effectiveness depends on the legislators' social connections. We address this issue with a new model of legislative effectiveness that formalizes the role of social connections, and we test its predictions using the network of cosponsorship links in the 109th–113th Congresses. We propose a new empirical strategy that addresses network endogeneity by implementing a two‐step Heckman correction based on an original instrument: the legislators' alumni connections. We find that social connections are a significant determinant of legislative effectiveness. We also study the influence of legislators' characteristics in shaping the network effects. In doing so, we provide new insights into how social connectedness interacts with factors such as seniority, partisanship, and legislative leadership in determining legislators' effectiveness.

AbstractKnowledge about political representatives' behavior is crucial for a deeper understanding of politics and policy-making processes. Yet resources on legislative elites are scattered, often specialized, limited in scope or not always accessible. This article introduces the Comparative Legislators Database (CLD), which joins micro-data collection efforts on open-collaboration platforms and other sources, and integrates with renowned political science datasets. The CLD includes political, sociodemographic, career, online presence, public attention, and visual information for over 45,000 contemporary and historical politicians from ten countries. The authors provide a straightforward and open-source interface to the database through an R package, offering targeted, fast and analysis-ready access in formats familiar to social scientists and standardized across time and space. The data is verified against human-coded datasets, and its use for investigating legislator prominence and turnover is illustrated. The CLD contributes to a central hub for versatile information about legislators and their behavior, supporting individual-level comparative research over long periods.

For decades, scholars have uncovered evidence that male and female legislators' priorities and preferences differ and that women's inclusion brings to elite-level politics a more cooperative leadership style. They also point to the symbolic benefits associated with more diversity among candidates and office holders. Although these effects are not uniform, there is no question among political scientists that women's presence in US political institutions bears directly on issues of substantive and symbolic representation. Accordingly, it is important to understand why we have so few women in politics, whether they are willing to run for office, what happens when they do, and the extent to which their presence systematically affects the legislative process. I cover each of these topics in this review, emphasizing the latest and most interesting research that speaks to these questions.

Both legislators and citizens play important roles in ensuring a fair and effective state government. Florida State Representatives and Senators have a responsibility to represent the will of their constituents. Similarly, citizens have a responsibility to educate their Representatives and Senators on how issues may impact them and other local citizens. This three-page guide walks you through the process of making your voice heard and provides some helpful tips to make your message to your legislator stand out. Written by Stacey Ellison and published by the UF/IFAS 4-H Youth Development Department, March 2019. http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/4h397

Adopting
the rhetoric of spousal abusers, Republican state Senate Pres. Page Cortez blamed  Bossier Parish victims because they dared
stand up for taxpayers when he collaborated with GOP state House Speaker Clay Schexnayder
in stripping a net nearly $140 million from parish projects.

Republican state Reps. Raymond Crews, Dodie Horton,
and Danny
McCormick a day before the massacre had voted against
busting the state's spending cap to the tune of $250 million over the next
two weeks and $1.4 billion over the succeeding year. While much of it ended up
going to one-time items, a shell game maneuvered nearly $200 million towards
education pay raises.

Crews, Horton, and McCormick along with local GOP
state Rep. Alan
Seabaugh and some other representatives across the state who voted against busting
the cap but who couldn't stop it, had a better way to secure those hikes.
By paying down state pension unfunded accrued liabilities, they planned on
facilitating local education agencies to dole out raises from money saved as a
result of the paying down. That could be accomplished without breaching the
cap.

But Schexnayder and Cortez, in league with
Democrat Gov. John
Bel Edwards, wanted to create new state taxpayer commitments and lard up
the pork even as the state faces a $1.5 billion revenue falloff within the next
three years. And this meant breaching the cap, with woe to any legislator that
got in the way.

They made the constituents of Crews, Horton, and McCormick,
and to a more diffuse extent Seabaugh who is running for a new Senate district
that encompasses Bossier and Caddo Parishes, pay for their temerity. And they
did when the final version of the capital outlay bill HB 2 came out
of a conference committee – only a few minutes away from the session's end – headed
by Cortez and Schexnayder with their allies on it.

Perhaps not coincidentally, Crews
had complained bitterly on the floor of being given no time to vet appropriations
bills. And McCormick did his best with parliamentary maneuvers to slow the
process while Schexnayder and his leadership did the opposite to ram through
the bills without debate.

Going into the HB 2 resolution, Bossier Parish,
excluding money going to the Red River Waterway Commission but including YMCA
and Jimmie Davis Bridge money that included Caddo Parish, had garnered $180,496,334,
with over $154 million assigned to the bridge project – as well it should as
the state recently let a contract for its building for nearly
$362 million starting in 2024 to last through 2028. But after Cortez and
Schexnayder stuck their thumbs onto the pie that dropped to just $41,276,334 –
and this is before Edwards gets a crack with line item vetoes.

The bulk of the loss came from dropping $136
million out of the bridge in Priority 5 dollars, which actually impacts most
the new Senate District 31 that Seabaugh is contesting and SD 36 of incumbent
Republican Robert Mills who voted to bust the cap. While this deduction probably
won't sabotage the bridge's building, it almost certainly will delay it.

But other projects directly benefitting the districts
of Crews, Horton, and McCormick were reduced, if not eliminated in the final HB
2 version. Crews took direct hits with striking a million dollars for Bossier Parish
Community College, $2.4 million for Benton, and $3 million for a Benton
Road/Interstate 220 interchange. Horton had $2.27 million eradicated for a
Haughton project and the dropping of $18.45 million in highway improvements
around Haughton down to $11.7 million. McCormick had his punishments inflicted
in Caddo Parish, where of allocation to five villages and towns in the parish
only two survived worth less than $300,000 while $2.7 million to the other
three got axed.

However, get-along-go-along interests reaped dividends
from this butchery. An item for Republican Bossier Parish Sheriff Julian
Whittington increased tenfold to $10 million and a giveaway to the YMCA of Northwest
Louisiana doubled to $2 million.

Cortez indirectly explained these adjustments in
the context of criticism of the general appropriations bill HB 1 because of unintended
consequences in that and HB 2, each produced for House consideration just minutes
before session end after the Senate had dealt with conference committee
products. He blamed the likes of Crews, Horton, McCormick, and Seabaugh who he
alleged had slowed down budget negotiations for days. "[The conservatives]
never had any real interest in doing anything but derailing the whole process,"
Cortez said. "That's certainly not what's best for Louisiana."

Cortez needs to look into the mirror before he
commits to name-calling. Blowing a once-in-a-generation surplus now rather than
setting up conditions to spend more responsibly on these items in the near
future – and with well over $100 million splurged on local governments and
nongovernmental organizations – by using the surplus to stabilize the state's
fiscal structure first only served special interests while selling out the
people of Louisiana, who will have to suffer service reductions and/or tax
increases because of the irresponsibility of term-limited Cortez, and of Schexnayder
and Edwards both also term-limited, with $1.5 billion in revenues collected
annually scheduled to roll off the books within the next three years.

Meanwhile, constituents whose legislators fought
for the state's best interests get punished. Voters need to reward the bravery
of Crews, Horton, McCormick, and Seabaugh this fall and need to ensure that
after early 2024 the exploiters Edwards, Cortez, and Schexnayder never serve
another day in any elective office.