David Epstein

Do Majority-Minority Districts Maximize Substantive Black Representation in Congress?

Majority-minority voting districts have been advanced as a remedy to the underrepresentation of minority interests in the political process. Yet, their efficacy in furthering the substantive goals of minority constituents has been questioned because they may dilute minority influence in surrounding areas and lead to an overall decrease in support for minority-sponsored legislation. Thus, there may be a trade-off between increasing the number of minority officeholders and enacting legislation that furthers the interests of the minority community. Using nonlinear estimation techniques, we simulate the districting strategies that maximize substantive minority representation, and find that such a trade-off does exist. We also find that, outside of the South, dividing minority voters equally across districts maximizes substantive representation; inside the South the optimal scheme creates concentrated districts on the order of 47% black voting age population. In addition, minority candidates may have a substantial chance of being elected from districts with less than 50% minority voters.

Divided Government and the Design of Administrative Procedures: A Formal Model and Empirical Test

Despite the abundance of recent studies on divided government, no clear consensus has emerged as to whether divided partisan control has an appreciable impact on policy outcomes. In this article we take a new perspective on the divided government debate by emphasizing the important role that the federal bureaucracy plays in shaping policy. We present a game theoretic model of the policy-making process in which legislators design administrative procedures, the president appoints agency heads, and bureaucrats collect information and promulgate regulations. The model predicts that during times of divided control Congress delegates less discretionary authority to the executive branch, and that these changes in authority have significant policy consequences. We then test the implications of our model with data drawn from U.S. trade policy between 1890 and 1990. Our central finding is that divided government influences policy indirectly, through the procedures that Congress designs to control the bureaucracy.

MONEY TALKS: DETERRING QUALITY CHALLENGERS IN CONGRESSIONAL ELECTIONS

J /4T/e examine the role of incumbent fundraising in deterring strong challengers. We construct Vf V a signaling model in which incumbents can use fundraising strategically to ward off W v quality challengers. We show, however, that only under very limited circumstances will there be an observable relationship between fundraising and challenger quality. Therefore, previous empirical tests for deterrence have systematically underestimated the effects of fundraising in decreasing electoral competition. Our analysis also suggests that by making fundraising easily observable, Federal Election Commission regulations may encourage candidates to overinvest time and resources accumulating large war chests instead of governing.

Alternative Models of Dynamics in Binary Time-Series-Cross-Section Models: The Example of State Failure 1

This paper investigates a variety of dynamic probit models for time-series– cross-section data in the context of explaining state failure. It shows that ordinary probit, which ignores dynamics, is misleading. Alternatives that seem to produce sensible results are the transition model and a model which includes a lagged latent dependent variable. It is argued that the use of a lagged latent variable is often superior to the use of a lagged realized dependent variable. It is also shown that the latter is a special case of the transition model. The relationship between the transition model and event history methods is also considered: the transition model estimates an event history model for both values of the dependent variable, yielding estimates that are identical to those produced by the two event history models. Furthermore, one can incorporate the insights gleaned from the event history models into the transition analysis, so that researchers do not have to assume duration independence. The conclusion notes that investigations of the various models have been limited to data sets which contain long sequences of zeros; models may perform differently in data sets with shorter bursts of zeros and ones.

A Comparative Approach to Legislative Organization: Careerism and Seniority in the United States and Japan

Theory: This paper provides a comparative study of legislative institutions in the United States and Japan. It explains the rise of committee-based legislative organizations as an institutional choice made by rational legislators deciding how best to regularize their career advancement subject to electoral and constitutional constraints. Hypotheses: We argue that the rise of careerism within a legislature leads to a regularized system of career advancement, or a seniority system. Furthermore, the details of this system depend on the heterogeneity of intra-party preferences and each countrys electoral and constitutional system. To the extent that parties can offer members electoral security and influence over policy, they will retain control over the policy-making process. Otherwise, control will devolve to smaller organizational units, such as committees. Methods: We develop a new measure of seniority within committees. We present statistical evidence linking a rise in average tenure within both legislatures to a regularization of careers, and detailing the nature of committee-based seniority in each country. Results: In the United States, single-member electoral districts, alternating party control, and a separation of powers system gave legislators an incentive to create committee-based policy jurisdictions. In Japan, multi-member districts, singleparty control, and a parliamentary system led to a unique two-tiered seniority system in which members rise first through committees and then through cabinet posts.

A Social Science Approach to Race, Redistricting, and Representation

In his critique of our earlier paper on majority-minority voting districts, David Lublin suggests that our conclusions with respect to the election of minorities to office are flawed, and that we incorrectly estimate optimal districting strategies for the substantive representation of minority interests in Congress. Subjecting these claims to direct empirical examination, we find that our previous results are unaltered by the inclusion of Latino voters in our estimates of equal opportunity, and that incumbency advantage cannot fully explain the recent victories of minority candidates in the South. Neither do the critiques of our results regarding substantive representation stand up to systematic analysis: Evidence at both the state level and over time confirm our conclusion that districts on the order of 45% black voting age population maximize the expected number of votes for minority-supported legislation.

An informational rationale for committee gatekeeping power

This essay investigates the relationship between congressional committees, information, and gatekeeping power. It shows that the power to obstruct legislation increases the amount of information transmitted by committees in equilibrium. As a consequence, rational floor actors will make it somewhat difficult, but not impossible, to discharge committees. Some committees will have effective gatekeeping power under the optimal rule, while others will not. The only committees that will be discharged are those which cannot credibly transmit any information to the parent body.

Asymmetric Information, Delegation, and the Structure of Policy-Making:

Congress uses varying degrees of specificity when passing legislation. Sometimes it writes very detailed, exacting laws; other times it leaves these details to implementing agencies. A natural positive question then arises: what factors are critical for understanding the degree of delegation used by Congress in a particular circumstance? This paper exploits the tradeoff between the distributive and informational effects of organizational design to examine congressional delegation. We argue that variations in the relative preferences of committee, floor (congressional median voter), and executive actors cause a rational floor voter to choose different forms of collective decision making. We find that homogeneity of committee-floor preferences leads to less delegation, while preference homogeneity between Congress and the executive leads to more delegation. We also argue that delegation emerges when actors are more risk averse or when the uncertainty characterizing the collective choice environment is large. We develop our logic using a game theoretic model of the policy-making process and draw out the empirical implications of our approach.

Minorities and Democratization

We analyze the process of democratization in a polity with groups that are divided along ethnic as well as economic lines. We show that: (i) the presence of ethnic minorities, in general, makes peaceful democratic transitions less likely; (ii) minorities suffer from discriminatory policies less in democracies with intermediate levels of income inequality; and (iii) in new democracies with low levels of income inequality, politics is divided along ethnic lines, and at greater levels of inequality economic cleavages predominate.

Legislating from both sides of the aisle: Information and the value of bipartisan consensus

This paper motivates bipartisanship through a formal model in which committee members are assumed to possess policy expertise. Its central findings are: 1) bipartisan support for legislation is more informative than partisan support; 2) bipartisanship is preferred when the uncertainty surrounding outcomes is large and partisan policy differences are small; 3) “minority party gatekeeping” is possible when minority party members refuse to endorse majority party proposals; and 4) legislators with extreme preferences need minority party support to pass legislation. An equilibrium selection criterion is also introduced and applied to the model to predict under what conditions the majority party will seek bipartisan support.