Suchergebnisse

This book is about congressional policy making, and particularly processes by which congressional policy changes - and does not change. At times in our history Congress has been a policy initiator, at others it has been the bastion of resistance to new directions of government action. It reflects the will of the citizenry at times, while at others its rules and processes have done more to serve the interests of special and minority interests. In this collection of original essays, each presenting new research on the personal, political, and institutional factors influencing congressional polic

The Progressives believed that political parties, especially those in the cities during the first part of the past century, undermined the quality of democracy in the country. The patronage that held the parties together led to corruption and inefficiencies. While some of the reforms from the Progressive Era, such as the secret ballot and direct primary, have been adopted almost universally, Charles Adrian wrote about one, the nonpartisan ballot, that was adopted in many places, but not all. More than three fourths of municipal elections and about half of all U.S. elections use the nonpartisan ballot. This constitutes a huge quasi-experiment in the impact of political parties on governance and representation. As most political scientists agree that competitive political parties are necessary for healthy representative democracy and the centrality of political parties for voter decision making, this experiment is interesting and potentially significant for understanding the role parties play in elections and policy making.

In a nationwide survey Carey, Niemi, Powell, and Moncrief (2006) found that term-limited state legislators feel less constrained by their constituencies. I use direct measures of legislative activity to examine how this 'Burkean shift' in attitudes is manifested in roll-call behavior. With a new dataset consisting of all competitive state legislative roll calls for the 1999-2000 sessions and a new measure of district constituency preferences, I examine three hypotheses: that term-limited legislators are less representative of their constituents, are more polarized, and participate less in roll-call voting. I find no evidence that term-limited legislators are any less representative, and no differences in levels of party polarization appear associated with the term limits reform. I find that the impact of term limits on roll-call voting is manifested in decreased legislative effort, but this effect only appears in the more demanding legislatures. The results are consistent with the sorting model in which elections are reasonably efficient at selecting leaders whose preferences align with those of their districts, but the prospect of re-election has little role in achieving representation of constituents' ideological preferences. Adapted from the source document.

In a nationwide survey Carey, Niemi, Powell, and Moncrief (2006) found that term-limited state legislators feel less constrained by their constituencies. I use direct measures of legislative activity to examine how this "Burkean shift" in attitudes is manifested in roll-call behavior. With a new dataset consisting of all competitive state legislative roll calls for the 1999–2000 sessions and a new measure of district constituency preferences, I examine three hypotheses: that term-limited legislators are less representative of their constituents, are more polarized, and participate less in roll-call voting. I find no evidence that term-limited legislators are any less representative, and no differences in levels of party polarization appear associated with the term limits reform. I find that the impact of term limits on roll-call voting is manifested in decreased legislative effort, but this effect only appears in the more demanding legislatures. The results are consistent with the sorting model in which elections are reasonably efficient at selecting leaders whose preferences align with those of their districts, but the prospect of re-election has little role in achieving representation of constituents' ideological preferences.