Logan Dancey

Elevating Women’s Voices in Congress: Speech Participation in the House of Representatives

The authors analyze gender differences in members’ speech participation on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. Speeches increase members’ visibility and voice in the legislative process, providing opportunities for members to highlight their policy knowledge, constituents’ concerns, and partisan commitments. The authors hypothesize that women’s underrepresentation, coupled with the related challenges that female legislators face in a predominantly male institution, motivates congresswomen of both parties to speak at greater rates than congressmen. Analyzing over ten thousand floor speeches during the 103rd and 109th Congresses, the authors find strong support for their hypothesis, demonstrating that congresswomen’s participation in legislative debate increases their visibility and enhances women’s substantive representation.

Inferences Made Easy Partisan Voting in Congress, Voter Awareness, and Senator Approval

This article investigates whether constituents are able to accurately infer their senators’ votes when the senator frequently votes against the party line. We find that when senators repeatedly vote against the party line, constituents’ ability to correctly identify their senators’ votes drops precipitously while levels of misinformation rise. We then show that citizens represented by senators who tend to vote against the party line are also less able to connect their policy positions with their evaluations of those senators. These findings indicate that there is substantial variation across senators in the ability of their constituents to hold them accountable for their votes while in office. Constituents simply know less about the positions taken by moderate senators and have a harder time aligning their levels of policy agreement with a senator with their evaluation of that senator if she frequently votes against her party.

Individual Scrutiny or Politics as Usual? Senatorial Assessment of U.S. District Court Nominees

Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings offer senators a public opportunity to exercise their “advice and consent” privilege and scrutinize presidential nominees. In this article, we examine the purpose and functioning of confirmation hearings for federal district court nominees, which make up the majority of presidential selections to federal courts. Using transcripts from all hearings between 1993 and 2008, we find the characteristics of individual nominees have little effect on the types of questions senators pose. Instead, larger institutional and political factors—such as Senate composition, party of the president, and proximity to a presidential election—are much better predictors of how senators use their opportunity to scrutinize nominees. The results indicate senators use hearings to engage in partisan and ideological position taking rather than to ascertain the qualifications of district court nominees.

Partisanship and Perceptions of Party-Line Voting in Congress:

This paper explores public perceptions of congressional partisanship in an era of polarized parties. We use data from a module on the 2014 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES) that asks respondents about the voting behavior of their legislators. Our results show that individuals underestimate the extent to which legislators from their own party vote the party line—even when primed with information about high levels of party-line voting in Congress—while fairly accurately perceiving levels of unity in the opposing party. We also find evidence that this perceptual gap endures, and at times widens, at higher levels of political knowledge and in the presence of elections. Finally, in a separate experiment, we explore how voters respond to differential levels of party-line voting by a hypothetical legislator. The combined results from the experiment and CCES module suggest voters’ perceptions often align with what allows them to have the most favorable impression of their party’s senators or unfavorable impression of the other party’s senators. The results suggest that biases in how voters process information about levels of partisanship in Congress may limit accountability in meaningful ways.

The Macro-dynamics of Partisan Advantage

How do party reputations change over time? We construct a measure of the common movement in the parties’ perceived policy handling abilities for the period 1980 to 2016 and investigate its relationship with the public’s evaluation of Congress and the president. In contrast to key claims made in theories of congressional parties, we find an inconsistent relationship between evaluations of Congress and party reputations and find no evidence that successful agenda control enhances the majority party’s reputation. Instead, our analysis shows a strong relationship between party reputations and presidential approval, reaffirming the central role the president plays in shaping party reputations.

Ethics and the Party Brand: The Case of the Office of Congressional Ethics

ABSTRACT Dating back to its creation in 2008, the independent Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) has faced criticism from the very members of Congress it is tasked with investigating. Despite this criticism, a majority of House members both voted to create OCE in 2008 and have ultimately backed away from any efforts to rein in the office. Why? Through an examination of both the passage of OCE in 2008 and subsequent efforts to rein in its power, this article argues that partisan considerations and pressure from party leaders played a critical role in OCEs creation and survival. The creation of the independent commission in the House thus demonstrates the power of the party valence brand in the contemporary Congress.

Race and representation on Twitter: members of congress’ responses to the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the public responses of members of Congress to the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner and the subsequent protests and grand jury decisions. To do so, we examine members’ engagement with the issue on Twitter, which became a platform for public protest with such hashtags as #BlackLivesMatter and #ICantBreathe. We find that a member’s race is a more robust predictor of their engagement on the issue than is the member’s partisanship or the partisan and racial demographics of their district. By showing that descriptive representation may overwhelm more traditional notions of district-based representation in responses to a racially charged issue, we further highlight the role descriptive representation in Congress plays in ensuring that the diversity of voices coming out of Congress reflects the diversity of voices in the public at large.