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The literature on seat change in US House elections abounds with explanations regarding the factors contributing to the biennial change in the partisan balance of the body. While a number of theoretically & empirically appealing models have been presented, many base their explanations around presidential politics & a variety of factors independent of Congress. In this article, I argue that in developing models of congressional seat change, it is worthwhile to consider how the public image of the institution impacts the electoral success of its members. I describe & test a model that captures the influence of the public's perception of Congress on party seat change. Encompassing tests suggest that this framework significantly improves upon existing models. The results underscore the importance of endogenous, Congress-specific factors in explaining aggregate seat change in the US House of Representatives. 1 Table, 1 Appendix, 35 References. Adapted from the source document.

AbstractStudies of bill sponsorship in the modern Congress highlight the effects of constituency characteristics, seniority, and committee membership. These studies, however, are limited in their ability to assess the effects of institutions. We provide the first systematic study of bill sponsorship in the premodern House of Representatives. In doing so, we take advantage of this period's expansive legislative agenda and variation in electoral system rules. Using matching and event count models, we estimate the effects of institutions, electoral competition, and members' institutional positions and political experiences on their sponsorship of different types of bills. We find that two reforms—the Australian ballot and nominating primary—increased sponsorship of bills designed to cultivate personal votes, thereby contributing to the growth in private legislation and bills aimed at local constituencies. Our results establish these reforms as a major event shaping lawmaking activity and, with it, the character of contemporary representation.

The increasingly common involvement of the United States in military conflict resonates throughout American political institutions and affects the balance of power in important ways. We examine one particular aspect of executive augmentation of power in times of war—legislative deference—and move beyond a binary approach to the effect of war. Instead, we contend that executive advantage depends on the salience and severity of the conflict. Matters of war often drive upward the prevalence of security concerns in public discourse. Although this can leave the president to compete with Congress on a much more friendly playing field, perceptions of the war's development can turn the tide. We empirically test our hypotheses with data spanning a 50-year period and find that the salience and severity of war matter, though not equally for both chambers of Congress. The findings hold implications for how we understand the institutional balance of power within and across conflicts, which represents a major aspect of American constitutional design and function.

We investigate the rise of federal military pensions in the antebellum US Congress to examine whether key aspects of the contemporary electoral connection were present in earlier historical eras. Overall, the political responses of members of Congress to pressures for military service pensions reveal that the quest for credit-claiming opportunities significantly shaped the adoption and evolution of this type of distributive legislation. Analyzing key legislative activity from 1818 to 1832, we find that members' electoral interests gave rise to a particularistic and often inefficient system of benefits. Specifically, what began as a relatively simple program to provide for disabled Revolutionary War veterans grew into a broader entitlement-style program based on military service that legislators carefully cultivated in order to maximize their prospects for subsequent political advantage. Our analysis thus reveals that crucial features of the electoral connection were indeed present in the antebellum-era Congress, a finding that broadens our collective understanding of the early foundations of American political development.

Numerous studies have examined the incidence of killer amendments in Congress, but most of these studies have been either case specific, focusing on the legislative maneuverings around a single issue or bill, or temporally limited, focusing on strategic activity in only one or two Congresses. In this article, we present the beginning of a comprehensive research agenda for the systematic study of killer amendments. Using roll‐call data from the 83d through the 108th U.S. House (1953–2004), we identified those bills that (a) were successfully amended and (b) subsequently went down to defeat, a necessary condition for the existence of a killer amendment. We then examined these cases in greater detail, using both spatial analyses and case studies. Our analysis uncovered five cases, four of which are new, that appear to have the characteristics of true killer amendments, thus setting the stage for future analyses across time and legislative chambers and bodies.

We examine the connection between pork-barrel projects and the election returns of members of the U.S. Congress. While previous researchers have uncovered little evidence of a direct link, we refine the perspective that pork has electoral implications by advancing the argument that its effects differ across geographic and partisan contexts. Our empirical analysis focuses on the Senate-which has largely escaped attention-and utilizes a measure of pork that includes only those projects inserted by legislators as line items in appropriation bills from 1996 to 2004. We find a direct relationship between pork and electoral performance, albeit one that is conditioned upon ideological congruence, constituency size, and the political ideology of the legislator. Electoral payoffs for pork-barreling accrue to some but not all senators. Moreover, our findings demonstrate the pragmatic rationale for conservative opposition to earmarks. Adapted from the source document.

ObjectivesWe examine the connection between pork‐barrel projects and the election returns of members of the U.S. Congress. While previous researchers have uncovered little evidence of a direct link, we refine the perspective that pork has electoral implications by advancing the argument that its effects differ across geographic and partisan contexts.MethodsOur empirical analysis focuses on the Senate—which has largely escaped attention—and utilizes a measure of pork that includes only those projects inserted by legislators as line items in appropriation bills from 1996 to 2004.ResultsWe find a direct relationship between pork and electoral performance, albeit one that is conditioned upon ideological congruence, constituency size, and the political ideology of the legislator.ConclusionsElectoral payoffs for pork‐barreling accrue to some but not all senators. Moreover, our findings demonstrate the pragmatic rationale for conservative opposition to earmarks.

This article examines the link between elections and the representational behavior of senators by considering whether ideological congruence with state preferences impacts vote shares on Election Day. We advance the literature on electoral accountability by proposing a more refined theoretical and empirical assessment of congruence with constituent preferences. Additionally, our analysis focuses on the effect of divergence in the Senate, which has been subject to significantly less attention than the House, and examines all elections to the upper chamber involving incumbents from 1960-2004. We find that measures of ideological divergence that are conditioned on the underlying ideological preferences of state constituencies significantly improve on existing measures, and that senators who are out of step with their state do in fact suffer at the polls.

This article extends recent research on partisan agenda control in the U.S. House of Representatives to the issue of procedural control of the legislative agenda via special rules. In particular, we draw out a facet of cartel and conditional party government theories that has not been addressed in prior analyses: the simultaneous interrelationship between positive and negative agenda control. Using roll‐call data on two procedural matters—votes to order the previous question on a special rule and votes to adopt a special rule—over the 1953–2002 period, we found that, in the area of procedural control of the floor agenda, the majority party's amount of agenda control depends to a significant degree upon the party's homogeneity and power.

Much of the extant literature on legislative organization treats Congress' jurisdictional framework as an exogenous facet of the political landscape. While bill referral and statutory rules are key institutional determinants shaping the politics of committee jurisdiction, we argue that important choices affecting committee power occur at post-referral stages of the legislative process, including actions taken by the Rules Committee. The analysis suggests that variation in amendment challenges to committee bills resulting from special rule decisions is systematically affected by key factors related to organizational theories of Congress. The findings have at least two important implications for committee power in the U.S. House. Special rule decisions can shape committee power by closing or opening access to committee products bill by bill. This result diminishes the significance of prior referral decisions granting committees the prerogative to exercise uninhibited discretion over policies within their jurisdiction. Furthermore, the findings demonstrate that patterns in amendment rights conferred by special rules respond systematically to majority party interests.