Jason M. Roberts

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.

Presidential capital and the supreme court confirmation process

The Supreme Court nomination and confirmation process has become one of the most contentious aspects of American politics in recent years, representing a seismic struggle between the president and the U.S. Senate over the ideological makeup of the nations highest court. Existing research focuses on how the ideological compatibility of the president and the Senate affects the ideology of the presidents nominees. However, little work addresses whether presidents can overcome an ideologically hostile Senate by spending political capital to support a nominee. As such, we examine the presidents public expenditure of capital to obtain confirmation for Supreme Court nominees facing a Senate that is reticent to confirm. By content analyzing public statements made by presidents during confirmation battles we find strong support for the hypothesis that presidents strategically “go public.” Further, this strategy has a marked influence on presidents’ ability to win confirmation for their most important nominees. “Tell your senators to resist the politicization of our court system. Tell them you support the appointment of Judge Bork.” —President Ronald Reagan, 1987

The statistical analysis of roll-call data: a cautionary tale

Roll-call voting and congressional procedures are two of the most heavily studied aspects of the U.S. Congress. To date, little work has focused on the effect of procedures on the composition of the roll-call record. This article takes a step in this direction by demonstrating the effect of chamber rules and institutional constraints on House and Senate roll-call data, as well as on the inferences that scholars have drawn from the roll-call record. More specifically, I focus on recent efforts to measure party effects and ideological alignments, and I demonstrate that the composition of the roll-call record can affect these measures.

Minority Rights and Majority Power: Conditional Party Government and the Motion to Recommit in the House

Students of legislative politics have struggled to explain and measure party influence on voting and outcomes in Congress. Proponents of strong party effects point to the numerous procedural advantages enjoyed by the majority party as evidence of party effects, yet recent theoretical work by Krehbiel and Meirowitz (2002) argues that House rules guaranteeing the minority a motion to recommit with instructions effectively balances the procedural advantages enjoyed by the majority. This article identifies and tests the empirical implications of the Krehbiel and Meirowitz theory, using roll-call data from the 61st to 107th Congresses (1909�2002). The results call into question the validity of Krehbiel and Meirowitzs conclusions about party government in the House and provide support for the theory of conditional party government.

Processing Temporal Modulations in Binaural and Monaural Auditory Stimuli by Neurons in the Inferior Colliculus and Auditory Cortex

Processing dynamic changes in the stimulus stream is a major task for sensory systems. In the auditory system, an increase in the temporal integration window between the inferior colliculus (IC) and auditory cortex is well known for monaural signals such as amplitude modulation, but a similar increase with binaural signals has not been demonstrated. To examine the limits of binaural temporal processing at these brain levels, we used the binaural beat stimulus, which causes a fluctuating interaural phase difference, while recording from neurons in the unanesthetized rabbit. We found that the cutoff frequency for neural synchronization to the binaural beat frequency (BBF) decreased between the IC and auditory cortex, and that this decrease was associated with an increase in the group delay. These features indicate that there is an increased temporal integration window in the cortex compared to the IC, complementing that seen with monaural signals. Comparable measurements of responses to amplitude modulation showed that the monaural and binaural temporal integration windows at the cortical level were quantitatively as well as qualitatively similar, suggesting that intrinsic membrane properties and afferent synapses to the cortical neurons govern the dynamic processing. The upper limits of synchronization to the BBF and the band-pass tuning characteristics of cortical neurons are a close match to human psychophysics.

Strategic Politicians and U.S. House Elections, 1874–1914

One of the most fundamental changes in post-World War II congressional elections has been the rise of candidate-centered campaigns. This phenomenon has given rise to considerable theoretical and empirical literature demonstrating the strategic behavior of congressional candidates. Yet very few scholars have assessed the effect or existence of strategic candidate behavior for the pre-World War II era. We seek to fill part of this void by exploring the extent to which experienced or quality candidates played a role in influencing the electoral fortunes of incumbent House members in elections spanning the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Our findings suggest that in terms of strategic emergence and electoral performance, congressional candidates exhibited patterns of behavior which are strikingly similar to those seen in modern-day campaigns, suggesting that individual ambition is the best explanation for candidate behavior in both eras.

The development of special orders and special rules in the U.S. House, 1881-1937

The modern Committee on Rules plays a critical role in structuring the agenda of the U.S. House of Representatives. In fact, resolutions from the Committee on Rules are the primary means through which controversial legislation reaches the House floor. But the Committee on Rules did not play a role in shaping the floor agenda until the 1880s and, despite intense scrutiny of episodes such as the institution of the Reed rules and the revolt against Speaker Cannon, our understanding of the role of the Committee on Rules is limited and skewed heavily toward the post-World War II era. This limitation is unfortunate, because special rules play a starring role in major theories of legislative organization. In this article, I present analysis of the usage and historical development of special rules in the House, and I offer findings from my empirical analysis of the determinants of rule choice from 1881 to 1937. A nuanced interrogation of new data on special rules in this era reveals support for committee specialization and conditional party government as motives for rule choice in this era.

The Dimensionality of Congressional Voting Reconsidered

This article reports findings for a decomposition of the roll-call voting record of the U.S. Congress to determine the effect of the level of aggregation on the observed dimensionality of the policy space. In doing so, we identify some but certainly not all of the ways in which the aggregation of the voting record affects the observed dimensionality of the policy space. For the 1955 to 2008 period (84th-110th Congresses), we apply optimal classification (OC) to votes aggregated to the level of the individual bill and policy area to measure dimensionality. We examine the marginal proportional reduction in error (MPRE) across dimensions. Our results demonstrate that complexity in voting patterns of individual bill episodes is the norm, that aggregating to higher levels reduces the observed dimensionality, and that the liberal–conservative dimension appears more dominant in more highly aggregated analyses. These results call into question many of the conclusions from the theoretical and empirical literature on the U.S. Congress that uses a unidimensional model.

Difference in maxillary sinus volumes of patients with cleft lip and palate

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE Sinus disease is noted to be common in patients with cleft lip and palate. Many have wondered if anatomic differences are a cause or at least a contributor of this. In this sense, comparisons of sinus volumes of patients with different craniofacial clefts may be helpful to determine possible differences from normal. Thus, the present study aimed to evaluate and compare the maxillary sinus volume of patients with unilateral (UCLP) and bilateral (BCLP) cleft lip and palate to control, i.e. non-cleft patients, using cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) images. METHODS The sample consisted of 30 subjects with UCLP, 15 with BCLP and 15 control individuals (non-cleft). Each maxillary sinus was assessed three-dimensionally, segmented and its volume was calculated. The comparison between right and left sinus was performed by Student t-test, and the differences between the control and cleft groups were calculated using ANOVA. RESULTS No statistical differences were found when the sides were compared (p>0.05). In relation to the assessment among groups, all comparisons had statistically significant differences (p<0.05), with the UCLP group presenting the lowest sinus volume. CONCLUSION UCLP individuals present maxillary sinuses with smaller volumes, without differences found between the cleft and non-cleft side. BCLP subjects also present a reduction in the volume when compared to a control sample, but the average sinus volume is larger than in UCLP patients.

Party Committee Targeting and the Evolution of Competition in US House Elections

Abstract This paper examines the effects of the increased role of party organizations in the recruitment and funding of congressional candidates in the US House post-1994. The recent uncertainty over which party will gain majority control of the House has transformed the role of party organizations in House campaigns. Despite the new resources devoted to each competitive seat in the House we find minimal changes in the overall competitiveness of US House elections. Additionally, the vast majority of potentially competitive seats do not draw a high quality challenger. Our results suggest that if parties recruited more quality candidates in the full range of these conceivably winnable seats this effort could produce more competitive seats or more seat turnover in the House.