Sean M. Theriault

Party Polarization in the US Congress: Member Replacement and Member Adaptation

Democrats and Republicans in the US Congress are as ideologically consistent and distinct as they have been at any point in the past three decades. Since 1973, the Senate has become 29 percent more polarized and House polarization has increased 47 percent. This investigation of party polarization finds that member adaptation accounts for one-third of the total party polarization in both the House and Senate. Member replacement accounts for the other two-thirds, the lions share of which has been the replacement of moderate southern Democrats by conservative Republicans. Republicans in both chambers are polarizing more quickly than Democrats. If the Democratic senators have taken one step toward their ideological home, House Democrats have taken two steps, Senate Republicans three steps and House Republicans four steps.

Patronage, the Pendleton Act, and the Power of the People

The conventional wisdom and congressional scholarship find that members of Congress use their public authority to facilitate their reelections (Aldrich 1995; Moe 1990; Parker 1992; Weingast and Marshall 1988). The adoption of the Pendleton Act of 1883 has been cited as another in a long line of examples in which members have “stacked the deck” in their own self-interests (Johnson and Libecap 1994a). I challenge these pervasive views by presenting evidence that public pressure was an important and frequently overlooked factor in explaining the adoption of civil service reform in the late nineteenth century. More generally, I argue that members of Congress will enact reforms that diminish their power or restrict their authority only when the public is attentive and united; otherwise, they will establish governing structures and rules that facilitate their own reelections. This insight sheds light, more broadly, on the relationship between the represented and their representatives.

Moving Up or Moving Out: Career Ceilings and Congressional Retirement

This research note presents a theory of congressional retirement and tests it with data from the 102d Congress. The results bridge the gap between the 1970s macro retirement studies and the more recent micro-centered approaches by highlighting the importance of career ceilings. Defined as the interaction between formal position and years of service, the career ceilings variable can be interpreted as the degree to which the members career in the House has stagnated. This variable dominates the traditional causes of retirement in the quantitative analysis. In light of the convergence of the unique 1992 retirement-causing factors, its power is especially surprising. Not only was 1992 the first election after redistricting and the House bank scandal, but it was also the last chance for members to convert excess campaign cash to personal income. Nevertheless, career ceilings predict retirement much better than any of the 1992-specific variables.

The Gingrich Senators and Party Polarization in the U.S. Senate

The political parties in the Senate are almost as polarized at they are in the House. Nevertheless, the explanations for party polarization work better in the House than they do in the Senate. In this article, we argue that the polarization in the House has directly contributed to polarization in the Senate. We find that almost the entire growth in Senate party polarization since the early 1970s can be accounted for by Republican senators who previously served in the House after 1978—a group we call the “Gingrich Senators.” While our analysis indicates that part of this effect has its roots in the senators’ constituencies, the experience of these representatives serving in the House continues to exert a real and substantial effect on their voting behavior in the Senate.

Will She Stay or Will She Go? Career Ceilings and Women's Retirement from the U.S. Congress

This article offers the first broad-based, systematic, times-series assessment of the gender dynamics underlying congressional retirement. We extend the body of work on gender and representation by using the congressional retirement literature to develop an argument that accounts for the gender gap in the average length of congressional service. Our results indicate that women are less willing than men to remain in Congress when their ability to influence the legislative agenda stalls. Because of womens relatively early departures from the House of Representatives, our analysis suggests that prospects for womens representation are less promising than the conventional wisdom suggests.

The two faces of congressional roll-call voting

Most analyses of congressional voting, whether theoretical or empirical, treat all roll-call votes in the same way. We argue that such approaches mask considerable variation in voting behaviour across different types of votes. In examining all roll-call votes in the U.S. House of Representatives from the 93rd to the 110th Congresses (1973–2008), we find that the forces affecting legislators’ voting on procedural and final passage matters have exhibited important changes over time, with differences between these two vote types becoming larger, particularly in recent congresses. These trends have important implications not only on how we study congressional voting behaviour, but also in how we evaluate representation and polarization in the modern Congress.

PUBLIC PRESSURE AND PUNISHMENT IN THE POLITICS OF CONGRESSIONAL PAY RAISES

Congressional pay raises, perhaps better than any other issue, pit members’ personal interests against their constituents’ preferences. And yet, various studies find that members rarely pay a political price for supporting pay raises. Such findings call into question the mechanism behind the large body of literature tying members’ votes to their constituents’ desires. Taking the stance that the electoral accountability theory is better than the empirical results, this article tries to uncover an electoral punishment. Three results stand out. First, electorally vulnerable members and members from poor districts are the least likely to vote for pay raises. Second, pay raise supporters suffer systematically lower reelection percentages. Third, members who support pay raises are more likely to lose. The latter two findings do not hold in every case, but rather under systematically special circumstances.

The Strategic Timing behind Position-taking in the US Congress: A Study of the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act

Roll call voting by members of the US Congress has been frequently studied. In contrast, the various decisions leading up to roll call voting are relatively unexplored. This article analyses one of those decisions: when senators announce their final passage vote intention. The authors use the same set of variables to analyse both the timing of the announcement and the final passage vote. They find that different independent variables predict these two different decisions, though the constituency and the senators institutional setting matter in both. Furthermore, this study corroborates an assumption in the rational choice literature that those members with the most information are the first movers.

The legislative politics of congressional redistricting commission proposals

Many politicians and reformers have suggested that allowing non- or bipartisan redistricting commissions to draw congressional districts will make elections more competitive and reduce partisan polarization. Although such commissions reduce the power of political parties and elected officials, they have been considered in 24 states from 1999 to 2006. We combine an analysis of national patterns of bill consideration with an intensive examination of legislative activity in three states. Our study suggests that internal pressures, such as redistricting controversies, and external pressures, such as the initiative process, contribute to the consideration of redistricting commission legislation. Furthermore, the precise combination of internal and external pressures in a state leads proposals to take one of two paths in the legislative process: a “partisan path” dominated by legislative insiders and interparty wrangling and a “good government path” where outside interest groups exercise more influence and the debate surrounds specific features of the proposal.

The Death of Deliberation: Partisanship and Polarization in the United States Senate

Parliament, Italy, Portugal, Greece, Turkey and Lithuania). This is followed by a section showcasing experiences from Latin America, a region well known for its extraordinary development in the use of new media. This section mainly overviews the whole region of Latin America, with a chapter also on Mexico. The final section has case studies from developing countries, with a general chapter about aid-assisted parliamentary website initiatives in developing countries, complemented by a chapter on the Southern African Development Community region and on Malawi. The book brings together an impressive number of authors, from various backgrounds, both academics and practitioners; it also combines authors from different types of subject background: from ICT, communication, management, to others from a more parliamentary specific background. This provides a wealth of varied approaches to the topic.