Erik J. Engstrom

Candidate Quality, the Personal Vote, and the Incumbency Advantage in Congress

Most political observers agree that incumbent legislators have a considerable advantage over nonincumbents in modern congressional elections. Yet there is still disagreement over the exact source of this advantage and the explanation for its growth over time. To address this debate we utilize a unique set of historical elections data to test for the presence of an incumbency advantage in late-nineteenth-century House elections (1872–1900). We find a modest direct effect of incumbency and a substantial candidate quality effect. Moreover, the cartel-like control of ballot access by nineteenth century political parties created competition in races that the modern market-like system simply does not sustain. Our results suggest that candidate quality is a fundamental piece of the puzzle in understanding the historical development of the incumbency advantage in American politics.

Assessing the Allocation of Pork: Evidence From Congressional Earmarks

Distributive politics represents one of the most important and controversial aspects of legislative policymaking. In the U.S. Congress, controversies over distributive politics are most evident in the area of legislative earmarking. In this article, we employ a unique set of data matching earmarks to their legislative sponsors to assess the leading explanations of distributive politics. We find that members of the majority party do considerably better than equally situated members of the minority. Moreover, party leaders target earmarks to those holding pivotal agenda-setting positions and to electorally vulnerable members. These findings have direct implications for both the extensive political science literature on distributive politics and the practical politics of earmarking reform.

Testing the Basis of Incumbency Advantage: Strategic Candidates and Term Limits in the California Legislature

Conventional wisdom suggests that incumbent politicians use the resources of office to create an electoral advantage. But Cox and Katz (2002) argue that at least part of this incumbency advantage in the United States House of Representatives can be attributed to the strategic entry and exit decisions of incumbents. We test this claim by taking advantage of the natural experiment provided by state legislative term limits in California. By comparing different types of open seats, we identify the strategic component of the incumbency advantage that exists above and beyond the resource-based advantage. The vote loss suffered by the incumbent party is smaller in term-limited seats than in voluntary open seats, indicating that incumbents do sometimes leave when their electoral prospects look dim. Further evidence of this strategic component is that quality challengers run more often in voluntary open seats, while quality incumbent-party replacements run disproportionately in term-limited seats.

Party ballots, reform, and the transformation of America's electoral system

1. An era in need of explanation 2. The puzzle of responsive elections 3. National forces in presidential elections 4. House of Representatives elections 5. Senate indirect and direct elections 6. State legislative elections 7. Gubernatorial elections 8. Dismantling the party-ticket system Appendix: states as bundles of electoral laws, 1840-1940.

Capitol Mobility: Madisonian Representation and the Location and Relocation of Capitals in the United States

The location of a governments capital can profoundly influence the nature and quality of political representation. Yet scholars know very little about what drives the siting of political capitals. In this article, we examine the location and relocation of political capitals in the United States, including the choice of Washington, DC, as the nations capital and the location and relocation of capitals in the 48 contiguous American states. We argue that the location of capitals in the United States followed a systematic pattern in accord with the theory of representative government developed in the new nation, especially as articulated by Madison. Based on an empirical analysis of historical census and political boundaries data from 1790 to the present, we find that decision makers consistently tended to locate—and especially relocate—the seat of government as near as possible to the population centroid of the relevant political jurisdiction, consistent with the principle of equal representation of citizens. Our analysis contributes to the study of institutional design and change, especially in the area of American political development, as well as to a burgeoning literature on the effects of geographical factors on political outcomes.

The Impact of Unified Party Government on Campaign Contributions

This article examines the connection between unified party government and campaign contributions. Our central argument is that unified party government confers a substantial, but previously overlooked, fundraising advantage to intra-chamber majority parties. We examined data on corporate campaign contributions to U.S. House incumbents and state legislators in 17 different legislative chambers. We found a strong fundraising benefit accruing to intra-chamber majority status across all of these legislatures, but the benefit is heavily conditioned by the presence of unified or divided government. The results offer important implications for our understanding of the financial balance of power in American politics and for the vast scholarly literature on unified party government.