Eric D. Lawrence

Partisanship, Blame Avoidance, and the Distribution of Legislative Pork

majority party advantage in the allocation of federal resources, a relation? ship seemingly at odds with the bipartisan support often enjoyed by distributive policies and pragrams. We reconcile this disjuncture by developing a partisan blame avoidance account of the distribution of legisla? tive pork. According to this account, the majority party inoculates itself against minority party charges of wasteful spending by including the minority in pork barrel coalitions. At the same time, the majority party, mindful of the electoral benefits of

Who Wins? Party Effects in Legislative Voting

Political scientists have long attempted to measure and describe the modest and contingent effects of party on the behavior of members of Congress. Recent efforts have extended the debate to the more specific question of whether or not party influences are sufficiently strong to move policy outcomes away from the median position. In this article, we specify four theories of legislative behavior. One is a preference-based, or partyless, theory of behavior. This theory posits that there are no party effects independent of preferences and that equilibrium outcomes are located at the chambers median. The other theories rely on different conceptions of the foundations of party effects and yield distinctive predictions about the legislators who will support bills on final passage votes. After testing, our conclusion is that strong party influences can be found in final passage voting in the House: the partyless theory receives little support, but a model based on majority party agenda control works well. Legislative outcomes are routinely on the majority partys side of the chamber median.

Crafting Urban Policy The Conditions of Public Support for Urban Policy Initiatives

This article assesses how policy framing and targeting may influence public support for federal initiatives that address urban problems. Does directing federal aid to specific target groups, programmatic uses, or types of cities affect the level of public support? To explore these questions, the authors conducted two survey experiments asking whether respondents support aid to cities while randomly varying the framing and targeting conditions. The evidence suggests that some framing and targeting strategies (particularly, targeting specific programmatic uses) do affect public support for urban aid. The authors conclude by discussing the implications of the analysis for support for federal urban assistance.

Tracking the Filibuster, 1917 to 1996

Scholars and observers of the U.S. Senate have noted an appreciable rise in the use of the filibuster over the course of the 20th century. Although numerous explanations have been offered, alternative accounts have never been pitted against each other in a multivariate fashion. In this article, we survey and test these multiple accounts, using data on filibusters launched between 1917 and 1996. Our findings suggest that the incentive to filibuster is predictably shaped by both partisan preferences and institutional opportunity, findings that hold even before the marked rise in partisanship evident at late century.

The Consequences of Political Innumeracy

The prevalence of political innumeracy – or ignorance of politically relevant numbers – is well-documented. However, little is known about its consequences. We report on three original survey experiments in which respondents were randomly assigned to see correct information about the racial composition of the US population, median income and educational attainment, and the unemployment and poverty rates. Although estimates of these quantities were frequently far from the truth, providing correct information had little effect on attitudes toward relevant public policies.

The Politics of Speaker Cannon's Committee Assignments

decision-making process. erhaps the most fabled example of the Speakers use of institutional power is Speaker Joseph Cannons appointment of committees in the early twentieth century (Jones 1968). Conventional wisdom holds that Cannon used his unilateral control over assignments to further a variety of political goals, including securing Cannons own position as House leader. Although Cannons critics insisted that Cannon manipulated committee assignments for his own purposes (Norris 1946), scholarly views of his assignments offer a much more complicated portrait (Chiu 1928; Polsby, Gallaher, and Rundquist 1969; Shepsle 1978; and Krehbiel and Wiseman forthcoming). We use newly discovered archival evidence-personal notebooks maintained by Cannons staff for the Speakers use-to enrich our understanding of the assignment process during an earlier set of legislative institutions. We build upon previous portraits of Cannons assignment practices in two important respects. First, we demonstrate that Cannon was a strategic leader who systematically employed different assignment criteria at different stages of his speakership. Whereas during his first term in office (the 58th Congress, 1903-1905) Cannon used his powers to promote party loyalty, at the start of the 61st Congress (1909-1911), Cannon used his power to punish members whom he viewed as personally disloyal. Second, we suggest that assignment decisions are shaped by auxiliary actors inside and outside the House chamber.

Adopting Direct Democracy Tests of Competing Explanations of Institutional Change

Why was direct democracy adopted in some U.S. states and not others? In this article, we sort through the various arguments advanced in the predominantly historical literature by using event history analysis. Among other factors we identify the importance of popular support for Populists and Socialists as well as the constraints imposed by state constitutions. We also find that the demographic composition of states was strongly associated with success or failure to adopt the initiative. Furthermore, we identify a number of key cases—highlighted by this approach—that present intriguing anomalies to the general patterns identified in the historical and political science literatures to date.

The Impact of Party Cues on Citizen Evaluations of Senators

Students of Congress highlight the connections that legislators cultivate with constituents, bonds that help to secure voters’ trust and incumbents’ reelection. We revisit the forces that shape citizens’ evaluations of their senators, embedding a survey experiment in the 2006 Cooperative Congressional Election Study to test for the impact of party labels. We show that citizens think more highly of senators from the opposite party when prompted with that senators party label, results that are consistent with the psychological theory of “reference group effects.” The theory and results help explain how senators maintain favorable reputations from cross-partisans in periods of partisan voting.

The adoption of direct primaries in the United States

This article asks why, and when, the process of nominating candidates in the United States changed from conventions to direct primaries. We conduct an event history analysis to investigate rival explanations for why the rules governing nominations changed. One credits reformist pressures that were largely external to the interests of the major political parties. Another proposes that party elites adopted direct primaries to protect their internal interests. We produce some results consistent with each explanation, but find the weight of our evidence supports the idea that rules changed in response to anti-party reform pressures.