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Although the "Gingrich Senators" thesis solves a vexing issue, a broader theoretical question remains: Why does the House have a polarizing effect on its members that seems to persist even after a representative wins election to the Senate? In the first section, I propose that lawmakers learn partisan norms in the House and simply continue those extreme behavioral routines after switching chambers. And in the second part, I test possible sources of this effect. Results show that senators who came from the House display greater ideological extremism if they (a) served in the House within an extreme partisan cohort and (b) won election to the Senate after representing a partisan district. In contrast, serving within a polarized chamber and during periods of divided party control have no long-term effects on a senator's ideological extremism. Robustness checks reveal that the effect of a senator's House partisan cohort persists even when we control for his/her ideological extremism before winning election to the House as well as selection effects caused by electoral dynamics. Additional analyses show that the partisan cohort effect is the largest determinant of partisan learning, exists throughout most of congressional history, is strongest when the parties are homogeneous, and persists for much of a senator's career. As a whole, the results show that the House's effect on Senate polarization is not due to a single person or a function of chamber polarization. Rather, the "Housification of the Senate" is a consequence of cohort socializing effects and is observable throughout congressional history.

Motivated by research showing that policy preferences are driven by social-interests rather than strict self-interest, this article examines if stereotypes of "the rich" shape Americans' tax policy preferences. For this project, an original free-response survey was designed asking respondents to describe "the rich." Respondents offered 1,570 unique descriptions, ranging from "hard working" and "job producer" to "selfish" and "inheritance." In the analysis, these stereotypes were modeled in three ways: (a) as affective stereotypes, (b) as discrete categories, and (c) as deservingness stereotypes. There are three main findings. First, political ideology and affective stereotypes have large and statistically indistinguishable effects on tax policy preferences. Second, deservingness stereotypes—in particular, whether the rich exhibit dispositional and prosocial characteristics—have particularly large effects on preferences for taxing the wealthy. And third, both affective and deservingness stereotypes have an interactive effect with personal ideology. For self-described liberals, preferences for taxing the wealthy are largely a function of ideological considerations. For conservatives, however, tax policy preferences are determined by a mix of ideology and stereotypes. In sum, the findings suggest that stereotypes affect policy preferences even when the target belongs to an advantaged group and the policy domain is nonracial.

The first stage in the policy lifecycle—creation—has garnered significant attention while the final stage—repeal—has received scarcely any. To reconcile this imbalance, an extensive data set recording repeals to landmark laws enacted from 1951 to 2006 was complied. Event history analysis yields three significant results. First, the incidence of repeal exhibits a regular pattern characterized by an increasing hazard immediately after enactment followed by institutionalization and a monotonically declining hazard. Second, divided government has a complementary effect on the policy process, simultaneously constraining lawmakers from reversing enacted policies while effecting more durable legislation over the long term. Thus, the negative effects of divided government on policy production are offset by a decrease in policy repeal. Third, polarization has a curvilinear effect on the risk of repeal. Moderate polarization facilitates coalition formation when enacting repeals while polarized and depolarized periods have an attenuating effect.

Does the Tea Party affect how lawmakers vote? Given the possible spurious effect of a representative's ideology, we leverage natural variation in the Tea Party's existence and examine this question through the lens of party switching. Like when lawmakers change parties, representatives who (1) joined Tea Party Caucus and (2) had a large volume of Tea Party activists in their district underwent a significant shift to the right in the 112th Congress. We believe these findings support both legislative-centered and extended network theorists. An additional analysis reveals that, unlike Democrats and non-Tea Party aligned Republicans who also shifted to the extremes in the 112th Congress, Tea Party Republicans did not "bounce back" in the 113th Congress. Lastly, we find no equivalent rightward shift in comparable conservative caucuses or among Republicans with similar ideologies and districts. In the end, although the Tea Party is not a "party" in the classic sense of the word, we claim that it is having "party like" effects in Congress. In the conclusion section, we discuss the implications of these results for the stability of the current two-party system. Given our findings, a major realignment or split within the Republican Party would not be surprising.

When does Congress repeal laws enacted by prior generations? Although the substantial body of work on policy creation provides tentative explanations, we believe repeals represent an alternative way of examining the effects of congressional organization on legislative behavior. In this paper, we develop hypotheses based on both the conditional nature of party power and the location of pivot points, and test these hypotheses with a new data set of repeals from 1877 to 2012. We find that the largest effects on Congress's capacity to repeal legislation are variation in the majority's positive agenda control and shifts in the gridlock interval. We also find that when the majority claims control of both chambers after a long stretch in the minority, there is an increased likelihood of repeal beyond what is predicted by conditional party government alone. Because the partisan factors in our model have the largest substantive effects, and because repeals do not occur automatically in productive Congresses, we characterize repeals as long-term contests between two great "teams" over the location of the status quo.