Kenneth W. Moffett

The calculus of cosponsorship in the U.S. Senate

We investigated why a legislator would be willing to vote “yea” on final passage of a bill but would choose not to cosponsor that bill. We tested a series of hypotheses regarding the cosponsorship decisions of individual senators, using a dataset that includes every major initiative that was introduced and received a floor vote in the Senate between 1975 and 2000. We found that senators are more likely to cosponsor bills when their preferences diverge from the Senate median but are closer to those of the bills sponsor. Also, senators are more likely to cosponsor bills when they sponsor a higher number of bills overall, when they become more connected with colleagues, and when their constituents increase demand for legislation within particular policy areas. Senators are less likely to cosponsor bills if they received a higher percentage of the general election vote in their most recent election.

Campaign-Related Social Networking and the Political Participation of College Students

College students politically participate through traditional mechanisms at lower rates than their elders. Yet, members of this group may participate by other means, like friending candidates and joining political groups through social networking websites. We argue that these online activities serve as a meaningful form of civic engagement by broadening who participates and encouraging other forms of participation. Using a survey of randomly chosen undergraduates at a large Midwestern university, we discover that important distinctions exist between those who friend or join these online social networks and those who participate in more traditional off-line political activities. While interest in politics is a precursor to off-line engagement, it does not predict friending or joining an online social network that is political in nature. However, friending candidates or joining such networks appears to mobilize college students to engage in other forms of political participation.

Congressional Response to Presidential Signing Statements

Popular and scholarly accounts argue that signing statements are important tools for presidents to shape the implementation of policy. Although signing statements might be important presidential tools, the legislative branch stands in the most immediate and direct competition with the executive for ultimate control of the bureaucracy. In this article, we assess whether congressional committees react to presidential signing statements with increased oversight. Using a data set that includes every oversight hearing held by the U.S. House between 1995 and 2007, we find evidence that congressional committees are sensitive to the number of objections raised by presidents in signing statements. As the president uses signing statements to object to a larger number of provisions in laws, the affected House committees respond with more oversight.

Parties and Procedural Choice in the House Rules Committee

Party-based theories argue that leaders of the majority party use restrictive rules to increase that majoritys influence over policy. However, informational theorists suggest that restrictive rules reduce information costs and encourage committee specialization. Using data on every bill on which the House Rules Committee placed a rule from the 94th through 109th Congresses, I test these explanations. Considering the use of restrictive rules, the evidence verifies some of the predictions of partisan theories, but unveils mixed support for informational theories. In addition, we learn that Democratic and Republican majorities differ with respect to the use of restrictive rules. The results indicate that Republican majorities behaved as more of a procedural cartel than their Democratic predecessors.

College Students and Online Political Expression During the 2016 Election

While college students traditionally exhibit low levels of political participation and interest in politics, they are more likely to engage in some forms of political expression than their elders. Their greater familiarity with online forms of political expression and engagement potentially lowers their barriers for political involvement. In turn, this potentially draws more young adults into the political process. The authors compare the precursors of expressive forms of online political engagement to those of talking to someone off-line and trying to persuade them to vote for or against a candidate or party among college students. They find that both activities are positively connected with politically oriented activity on social media as well as the frequency with which one reads blogs. They also discover that the mechanisms that explain online political expression are both similar to and different from those that explain off-line attempts at persuasion in several key ways.

Partisan vote buying and suspensions in the Postreform House

In the US House, the Suspension of the Rules procedure provides a route by which vote buying may occur. To investigate the conditions under which partisan theories anticipate that this behavior is more likely to happen, I use a dataset of all bills on which a final passage vote was taken in the House between 1975 and 2010. The House is more likely to consider bills by suspension to provide side payments to three types of bill sponsors from the majority party: ideologically distant members of this group; members whose preferences are located within the first 30% of the space in the majority party blockout zone; and members whose preferences are located on the minority party side of the chamber median.

Taking College-Level Political Science Courses and Civic Activity

The annual Cooperative Institutional Research Program Freshman Survey (2013) showed a 40 percent decrease in the number of incoming college freshmen who think that keeping up with politics is important. In 1966, 60 percent of this group thought that keeping up with politics was important (Galston 2004), while only 36.1 percent thought so in 2013 (Eagan et al. 2013). This trend coincides with research findings that indicate that the percentage of young adults who exercise suffrage has declined in this timeframe (Levine and Lopez 2002; Miller and Shanks 1996), and that young adults are less apt than their elders to engage in other forms of political activity such as contributing money to political parties or candidates, contacting their elected officials, or voting (Rosenstone and Hansen 1993; Zukin et al. 2006).