Gender and Patterns of Roll Call Voting in the U.S. Senate

Previous studies of gender and representation at the state legislative level and in the U.S. House of Representatives have shown that women tend to be more liberal than their male colleagues and are more likely to support women's issues. Because of the limited presence of women in the body over the years, there is scant empirical evidence to confirm whether this pattern is present in the U.S. Senate. Sound theoretical basis indicates that the institutional rules of the Senate, the Senate's individualistic culture, the Senate's six-year election timetable, and the national profile of U.S. senators may create conditions that allow gender differences in roll call voting to be more easily detected than is possible in more rigidly structured institutions such as the U.S. House. This study employs a longitudinal design that pools roll call voting data from the 103rd Congress through the 110th Congress to determine whether female senators compile substantively different policy records than their male colleagues. The results indicate that gender does systematically influence roll call voting patterns in the Senate. However, it is largely a function of female Republicans voting in a less conservative fashion than male Republicans on the basic left-right policy space and on a smaller set of issues of importance to women.     

Ideological Warriors and Constituent Servants: Understanding the Determinants of Participation on Health Care Legislation in the Polarized Senate

Recent scholarship on the Senate indicates that partisanship and polarization have fundamentally changed the dynamics and the nature of policy making in the institution. To understand how senators balance their roles as constituent servants and partisan warriors, we examine senators’ participation in floor amending on major health legislation over a 10-year period (2000–2010). Health care is central to the ideological divide over the nature of the welfare state and has a significant impact on constituents. Unlike previous studies, we develop a fuller picture of the factors that motivate senators to participate by analyzing both amendments filed to a bill and amendments considered on the floor. We find that minority party status and ideology, both the liberal-conservative dimension and ideological extremism, are important indicators of participation. Furthermore, senators elevate ideology in comparison to constituent need when an issue is a presidential priority. Finally, the influence of constituency factors varies by party. For Democrats, their ideological commitment to the social welfare state makes them more likely to participate on health issues regardless of constituent need. However, Republican senators become more likely to sponsor amendments as the level of observable constituent factors increases.     

Putting the Brakes on Greased Wheels: The Politics of Weak Obstruction in the United States Senate

Obstruction is a fundamental aspect of legislative politics. In the United States Congress, senators exercise procedural prerogatives to defeat a bill with which they disagree on policy grounds. We argue that senators also utilize obstructive tactics in order to do more than block legislation with which they disagree. We claim that legislators engage in “weak” (as opposed to strong) obstruction in an effort to accrue political benefits to themselves and their constituents, but only when senators support the underlying policy the bill addresses. We test our theory by measuring the frequency with which senators engage in weak obstruction on bills that passed the Senate between 1973 and 2013. We find that senators are significantly more likely to engage in weakly obstructive behavior when they stand to benefit politically.     

President Obama at mid‐term

This article provides an analysis of President Obama at mid‐term. It looks at the mid‐term elections from the perspective of the political issues that informed the debate, the implications of Republican control of the House of Representatives for both legislation and relations between the administration and Congress, and the policy areas where cooperation and possible progress is possible. The article looks at the Tea Party movement as a collection of single issue and multi‐issue political groups ranging from ‘nativists’ to Christian fundamentalists to the eclectic and unprecedented combination of fiscal and social conservatives seen at Glen Beck's ‘honoring America’ event at the Washington Monument. This broad movement may be seen as a classical revitalization movement, not unlike those described by Anthony F. C. Wallace. It is opposed by another ‘revitalization movement’ namely the ‘American renewal’ promised by Obama as he ran for office in 2008. These countervailing narratives—in effect two different versions of America, one reflecting the Tea Party broadly conceived and the other reflecting Obama's ‘promise’—are seeking political traction among independents. The implications of this struggle are momentous. The prevailing narrative will frame policy going forward on a range of domestic issues and on selected foreign policy questions, which will include the present debate on the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with Russia and the upcoming debate on China, which will have even further reaching effects. Finally, this article describes Obama's struggle to frame his policy successes and the ensuing debate in a favourable light. His opponents have sought to limit his progress by presenting him as ‘the other”, an effective but destructive technique that could have longer term effects on the domestic political discourse. However, the author remains an optimist; he believes, together with 50 per cent of Americans, the president is likable, logical and gives a good speech, and that he will be re‐elected in 2012.     

Do electoral district size and diversity affect legislative behaviour?

This paper analyses how the size and socio-economic diversity of their electorate affect parliamentarians’ legislative behaviour. We study the Australian senate, which wields considerable legislative influence and is marked by large differences in the size and socio-economic makeup of the districts that senators represent. We demonstrate that as the size of their district increases, senators ask more questions and introduce more bills and amendments. By contrast, senators become less active as the diversity of their electoral district increases. The paper thus establishes that size and diversity of electorates have significant effects on legislative behaviour.     

Governed by Experience: Political Careers and Party Loyalty in the Senate

In this article, we study the U.S. Senate to understand how legislators' previous experiences in elected office influence their political behavior. We posit that, as a result of their experiences in office, former governors in the Senate are less partisan than their colleagues. We code the political jobs held by senators between 1983 and 2015 and analyze the effects of these careers on party loyalty in Senate floor votes. We find that gubernatorial service is associated with a 7–8% decrease in Party Unity. We test several hypotheses for the observed “governor effect” and find that, relative to their colleagues, former governors are supported by donor networks that are less ideologically extreme. We conclude that the unique experiences associated with serving as governor, along with the personalized nature of governors' electoral support coalitions, affect a senator's relationship with the party. Ultimately, our analysis illuminates how personal attributes, such as prior experience in elected office, can inform the study of legislative behavior.     

Setting the Table: Majority Party Effects in the United States Senate

This article joins the growing tide of research that studies party effects in the United States Senate. Previous work has shown that certain procedural tools disproportionately advantage the majority party at the expense of the minority. We build on this research by exploiting a new dataset that allows us to study motions to table amendments from the 91st to the 111th Congress. By examining the success of these motions, analyzing the voting calculus of individual senators on procedural and substantive votes, and simulating the aggregate impact of this tool, we provide some of the strongest evidence to date that political parties (and the majority party in particular) influence the legislative process and policy outcomes in the Senate. Our findings stand in stark contrast to the traditional vision of the Senate as an individualistic body.     

Five Factions,Two Parties: Caucus Membership in the House of Representatives, 1994–2002

This paper examines the extent of ideological cohesion and distinction of two Republican congressional factions (the conservative Republican Study Committee and the moderate Republican Main Street Partnership) and three Democratic congressional caucuses (the moderate Blue Dog Coalition, the liberal Congressional Black Caucus, and the liberal Congressional Progressive Caucus) in the House of Representatives from 1994 to 2002. Whereas much of the literature on congressional caucuses has focused on the reasons members join such groups and the policy and political orientations of those groups, this paper examines how much unity exists in the voting behavior of the members of Congress who join caucuses in comparison to their fellow partisans not in a faction. Although political parties are still a major unifying force for their respective party members, we do find that factional members are more ideologically cohesive than are nonfactional members. Joining a faction is not an insignificant activity for members. Factions allow like-minded colleagues to come together and vote on common issues, at times against direction of their party.     

Trade unions,the Australian Labor Party and the Trade–Labour Rights Debate

This paper examines the Australian trade union movement's campaign to convince the Australian Labor Party (ALP) to support the inclusion of core labour standards in international trade agreements. Despite historical affiliations, the Australian union movement has been unsuccessful in its attempts to influence the ALP. In contrast, the US union movement has convinced both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party to accept that core labour standards should be a part of the trade negotiating agenda. The reasons for the US unions' success on this issue are examined within the context of the changing relationship between the respective union movements and their traditional parliamentary allies. The need for Australian unions to examine and reassess their strategies by drawing lessons from the US experience, including the possibility of a changed relationship with the ALP, is discussed.     

Feature Review

Abstract

The emergence of the Tea Party has set off a new round of speculation on the “future” of the conservative movement. This essay discusses two issues, defense spending and immigration, on which the Tea Party may fuse a conservative-libertarian approach that might distinguish it from earlier conservative political movements. The essay notes that the twenty-first century has a developing school of conservative thought that can provide the intellectual groundwork for such a political combination between conservatives and libertarians. This school opposes both mainstream liberalism and mainstream conservatism and attempts to rework the conservative tradition to face contemporary challenges.     

Leaving on a Jet Plane: Polarization,Foreign Travel,and Comity in Congress

No political observer, politician, or political scientist doubts that party polarization has weakened the social fabric of Congress. Measuring that effect, however, is exceedingly difficult. In this article, we operationalize the congressional social fabric by examining the foreign travel behavior of members of Congress over time. We evaluate the social disintegration in Congress by examining if and whether changes in member travel can explain why the social connectedness of members has waned. Using a unique dataset of foreign travel for House members from 1977 to 2012, we find that Republican House members, in particular, have altered their foreign travel patterns. Ideologically extreme members have always been less likely to take foreign trips, but extremely conservative Republican have become much more likely to travel only with co-partisans as polarization has increased in Congress. Ideologically moderate Republicans, while still traveling as members of bipartisan delegations, have also increased their willingness to travel only with fellow Republicans. Our results suggest that bipartisan foreign travel is a victim of the partisan war waging in Congress.     

Stalinist political spectacle and the defeat of the opposition: The Fifteenth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party in 1927

The Fifteenth Party Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) took place in December 1927. It brought to an end the inner-Party struggle of the Soviet Communist Party by confirming the expulsion of Leon Trotsky, Gregorii Zinoviev and other oppositionists from Party and government posts. The Fifteenth Party Congress marked the domination of Iosif Stalin and his allies over the whole Party and the beginning of Stalinist politics which flourished in the following decades. Despite extensive scholarly interest in this crucial Party congress in the history of the early Soviet Union and the Soviet Communist Party, little has been studied on the organisational aspect of the Fifteenth Congress. This article examines the process of establishing the organisational and institutional mechanisms ahead of the Fifteenth Congress, which enabled Stalin and the Central Committee to unanimously affirm the correctness of the Party line. It also explores how Stalin attained legitimacy as the Party leader during the pre-Fifteenth Congress discussion and how it was presented at the Fifteenth Congress. Furthermore, this article demonstrates how the ‘memory’ of the Fifteenth Congress was constructed and how the Party leaders institutionalised the meaning of the Fifteenth Congress. Through these examinations, this article will shed fresh light on the Fifteenth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party and will contribute to the study of the rise of Stalinism.     

Book Reviews

Abstract

The coordinated behavior of members of a state delegation to the U.S. Senate can provide constituents in a state greater representation in Congress. Despite this potentially improved level of representation through coordination, popular and scholarly accounts of the U.S. Senate often feature senators from the same state at odds with one another on a variety of policy issues. In this research, we investigate competing expectations regarding the frequency (across topics) of collaborations between members of a state delegation to the Senate. We then test our expectations using patterns in bill cosponsorship in the 103rd–110th U.S. Senates. We find that senators from the same state work together often on the development of legislation, and that this coordinated activity is consistent across a variety of bill topics across many sessions of congressional activity. Notably, same-state status is an even stronger predictor of support via cosponsorship than is same-party status, raising possible avenues of breaking through partisan gridlock.     

What's Happened to the Watchful Eye?

This article reports results of a follow-up study to my book Keeping a Watchful Eye (1990), updating it with data from the 1990s. It examines whether congressional oversight has increased or decreased relative to earlier periods, how the variables that predicted oversight behavior in the period from 1961 to 1983 worked in later years, why changes have occurred, and what they mean. It also examines whether there was something distinctive about oversight in the 1990s when Republicans dominated both chambers. Results indicate that the amount of primary-purpose oversight continues to be quite high and that the model developed in the book to explain committee oversight behavior remains remarkably effective. What has changed is a large drop in legislative hearings and meetings (where oversight behavior often occurs), something that the data show actually predates the Republican 104th Congress. However, the Republican takeover did lead to a more oppositional oversight context–to more oversight hostile to the basic goals of programs and agencies.     

Intersectional solidarity? The Armagh women,the British left and women’s liberation

In 1980, three Republican women prisoners held in Armagh prison in Northern Ireland joined the hunger strike being conducted by male Republican prisoners in Maze Prison. Overshadowed by the fatal 1981 strike, the 1980 strike involved these women in Armagh, who challenged the traditional nationalist notion of the strong male warrior, while generating sympathy and solidarity across the globe, including with the far left and the women’s liberation movement in Britain. This article will look at how the left and the women’s liberation movement in both Britain and Ireland looked to portray these women within their competing narratives.     

The public-facing policy agenda of state legislatures: The communication of public policy via twitter

How political actors choose which politics to focus on helps shape the outcome of the policy process. While the policy agenda of the federal government has received widespread attention, there is much less known about the policy agendas of the U.S. states. In this paper, we describe how and why states choose to have similar agendas. We rely on the Twitter activity of every state legislator in America to measure the attention that states pay to the categories developed in the Policy Agenda Project (PAP). We develop machine learning tools to measure the proportion of tweets from every state legislature from 2017 in each of the PAP policy topics. Our results show that states that the public-facing policy agenda of a state legislature is correlated with the level of legislative professionalism and the partisan and ideological politics of the state. These results further our understanding of state policymaking and agenda setting.     

‘One man,one vote; one woman,one throat’: Women in New York city politics, 1890–1910

This essay challenges the assumption that women did not go into politics until they had the right to vote. In New York City at least, it was the other way around. Motivated by the municipal reform movement of the 1890s which sought to defeat Democratic Tammany Hall, women steadily took on more responsibility for electing good men to office, through meetings, canvassing and the production of literature. They did so both through their own non‐partisan reform organization and in highly partisan women's Republican Clubs. Proliferating in the 1890s, Republican women's clubs provided a steady stream of workers to elect Republican candidates, even when they opposed reformers. The Democratic Party was slow to organize women, not doing so seriously until after New York women got suffrage in 1917. However, some Democratic women organized their own clubs, which endorsed Tammany Hall candidates but did not work for them intensively.     

"Give the ladies a chance": gender and partisanship in the Prohibition Party, 1869-1912

In the nineteenth-century Prohibition Party, American women ascribed new gendered meanings to party work traditionally performed by male partisans, and also drew upon their gendered roles as women, mothers, and wives to create new partisan strategies. This article investigates the political culture that sustained a remarkable departure from traditional Democratic and Republican practices, and further explores why women's contributions to the Prohibition Party declined in the early-twentieth century. In so doing, it traces how gender and gender roles shaped the meaning of party and politics, and elucidates the interplay between institutions, constituencies, and policy during one of America's most tumultuous political eras.     

The Politics of Ego: Senatorial Front Office Presentation of Self

Many scholars have studied elected officials’ presentation of self, typically through examination of behavior in their districts, speeches, and Web sites. In this article, the authors examine a little-studied but telling element of U.S. senators’ presentation of self—the images they display to constituents and others visiting their offices in Washington, DC. Drawing on original data, we analyze both the total amount of items displayed as well as the number that focus on the senators themselves, and find that having run for president, being a Republican, and representing a state closer to Washington, DC, all predict a senator having more self-centered front-office décor, while having served more years in the chamber and hailing from a state closer to the nation's capital are associated with greater sheer number of items displayed in a senator's front office. This research demonstrates that political ambition, geography, and partisan affiliation are all related to senatorial ego. Studying senators’ presentation of self via their office walls offers important insight into the ways that elected officials view themselves and present themselves to a variety of audiences, thereby offering a glimpse of the ever-elusive link between the represented and the representative.     

Party Leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives: Making Theoretical Sense of Ambition and Context

This article focuses on the policy-making activities of House Republicans in their early transition to power (104th Congress) as well as in their settling in (105th Congress). Key components of House governance, as practiced by the Democrats in the 103rd Congress, serve as a benchmark for comparison. The analysis reveals substantial differences between the size, scope, and thrust of the leaders' issue agendas. Over time, decision-making apparatus and strategies for building floor coalitions and publicizing party views vary as well. Using data from interviews with the principals and a host of sources from the government and the media, I find evidence that draws attention to the power of personal ambitions and political contexts.