Jeffrey W. Ladewig

Domestic Influences on International Trade Policy: Factor Mobility in the United States, 1963 to 1992

The constituent influences on congressional voting patterns for trade policy have long been an important field of study. A central theoretical component (explicitly or implicitly) of all these studies is the level of factor mobility that defines which constituent coalitions will form and how they will be affected. Yet the recent literature offers contradictory evidence on the current level of factor mobility. Using an original data set of economic demographics of House districts and the roll call votes of U.S. House members on trade policies from 1963 to 1992, I argue that factor mobility was relatively low in the 1960s and 1970s but was rising. The relative level of factor mobility, then, reached a pivot point in the late 1970s and was subsequently relatively high in the 1980s and 1990s. I check the robustness of these results on the expected strength of the political parties in supplying these policies and the effects of divided government.I would like to thank Oksan Bayulgen, Sam Best, Mark Boyer, Stephen Bronars, Walter Dean Burnham, Virginia Hettinger, Alan Kessler, Peter Kingstone, Tse-Min Lin, Robert Moser, Phil Paolino, Dennis Plane, Howard Reiter, Brian Roberts, Ken Scheve, Lyle Scruggs, Mathieu Turgeon, the editor of IO, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions. Any errors that remain are, of course, my own.

Ideological Polarization and the Vanishing of Marginals: Retrospective Roll-Call Voting in the U.S. Congress

The extensive literature on the recent ideological polarization in the U.S. Congress has not provided much in the way of incremental and member-specific explanations. I develop such a theory; I posit that members’ past electoral performance can influence their ideological extremity. This link requires a reexamination of congress members’ roll-call vote calculus. To do so, I adapt the theory of citizen retrospective voting to congress members’ roll-call voting. This new theory also provides a missing link in many studies of ideological shirking and democratic accountability. I test and confirm the theory of retrospective roll-call voting for the current period of ideological polarization, 1970 to 2008. As such, I argue that the recent trend of vanishing marginals has been a contributing cause in the recent trend of ideological polarization in the U.S. House.

The Effect of Risk Perceptions on Online Political Participatory Decisions

Abstract Since the emergence of the Internet as an outlet for mass political participation, there has been considerable disagreement over whether political activities can be performed reliably and securely online. In this paper, we consider one aspect of this debate, assessing whether the general public perceives differential risk in participating in political activities occurring on the Internet and in those occurring in traditional media. Using a series of split-sample experiments, we find evidence that the public believes online political activities are more likely to generate adverse consequences than do their offline counterparts. We then demonstrate that risk perceptions are a significant factor in decisions to participate in a variety of online political activities. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings.

Conditional Party Government and the Homogeneity of Constituent Interests

The conditional party government (CPG) theory posits that political parties will be strong when they are polarized and homogeneous. The homogeneity of the parties is generated from the homogeneity of constituent coalitions. However, these root causes of constituent interests have remained largely untested. By focusing on trade policy issues, we can provide one such test, albeit limited, because the level of factor mobility a priori defines constituent interests and the relative homogeneity of constituent coalitions. Using ideal point estimation and an originally compiled data set of constituent economic demographics at the level of U.S. House districts from 1963 to 1992, I confirm the constituent foundations of the conditional party government theory for trade policy and add factor mobility to the secular trends that have contributed to the decline and resurgence of American political parties.

On the Causes and Consequences of and Remedies for Interstate Malapportionment of the U.S. House of Representatives

Forty years ago, the Supreme Court drew attention to and made considerable efforts toward eliminating intrastate malapportionment among U.S. House districts with the one-person, one-vote rule. Today, this rule is significantly, and more severely, violated by a rarely discussed or analyzed form of malapportionment, interstate malapportionment. We identify and discuss its causes and consequences, as well as possible remedies. We argue that changing the fixed size of the U.S. House membership is the only solution that meets normative, constitutional, and practical standards. We demonstrate that the current fixed size of the chamber unreasonably corrupts the popular basis of the U.S. House, which is necessary for the proper functioning of American representative democracy. Jeffrey Ladewig is an assistant professor at the University of Connecticut in the Department of Political Science (jeffrey.ladewig@uconn.edu). Mathew Jasinski is an attorney at Robinson & Cole in Hartford, Connecticut (mathew.jasinski@gmail.com). We would like to thank Oksan Bayulgen, Larry Bowman, Robert Darcy, Virginia Hettinger, David Jones, and Howard Reiter for their suggestions and assistance. We also want to thank the anonymous reviewers for their extraordinarily in-depth and helpful reviews. Any remaining errors are our own.

Vetoing the future: political constraints and renewable energy

ABSTRACT Despite the increased importance of and attention to renewable energy, its share in the overall energy mix has varied significantly across countries and over time. There are many determinants of clean energy transitions; this study focuses on political constraints. Here it is argued that political systems that have fewer political constraints have fewer access points through which powerful status quo veto players can slow the progress of clean energy reforms. To test the theory, a hierarchical model is applied on a dataset of 125 countries over four decades. The results provide significant support for the theory. Furthermore, the effects for political constraints hold even when we distinguish between hydro and non-hydro renewable sources and control for regime type. This study builds on research that recognizes the importance of politics in understanding the challenges and opportunities of clean energy reform.

Owning Valence Issues: The Impact of a “Culture of Corruption” on the 2006 Midterm Elections

The 109th Congress commenced with a huge ethical cloud hanging over the Capitol. In January 2005, prominent Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff admitted conspiring to defraud Native American tribes and corrupt public officials. As a result, the Democratic Party chose to adopt corruption as a central theme of their 2006 congressional campaign. They argued that the scandal resulted from a “culture of corruption” fostered by Republicans, who controlled Congress. Although past research shows that voters do punish at the polls congressional incumbents under criminal investigation, little is known about whether the mere appearance of wrongdoing can be assigned to an entire party and cost its candidates votes. Utilizing data from a variety of sources, we find that systemic efforts by House Democratic leaders to frame Republicans as “owning” the scandal—whether individual members actually received Abramoff funds or not—were largely successful in the polls and at the ballot box. These findings suggest that scholarly views of the influence of corruption may have been overly restrictive and that voters are willing, at least in this case, to punish public officials who “appear” to be corrupt.

Housing Starts and the Political Business Cycle

The political business cycle (PBC) literature has, generally, been characterized by a relatively narrow set of economic variables and by unidirectional causal analysis. I challenge both of these traditional constructions. First, I expand the search by examining a surprisingly understudied component of the political economy: the housing market. As a vital component of the American macroeconomy, housing is an uncharacteristically powerful tool for politicians and political analyses alike. Second, I use vector autoregression to more accurately model the dynamic and reciprocal nature of the economic and political interrelations found in PBCs. I find significant evidence of PBCs in the U.S. housing market from 1959 to 2005.