Objectives. Conventional wisdom about the link between campaign contributions and roll call votes is that contributions rarely matter because groups tend to give to like-minded legislators. This meta-analysis examines the conventional wisdom by analyzing published research on this topic. Methods. More than 30 studies are pooled to produce more than 350 individual tests of the contributions-roll call link. Extending meta-regression (Stanley and Jarrell, 1989), a logit meta-analysis is conducted to summarize the literature and assess the importance of various modeling choices. Results. We find that some, but not all, model specifications have an impact on whether significant results are present. Models that control for friendly giving by including a measure of legislators' ideology and that include more than one contributions variable are less likely to produce significant results. Conclusions. After considering the impact of model choice on study results, we conclude that one-third of roll call votes exhibit the impact of campaign contributions.Since the Federal Election Commission began collecting campaign finance data three decades ago, much research has investigated the possibility that contributions influence how elected representatives vote on proposed pieces of legislation. As the cost of financing electoral campaigns has increased, many observers of American politics have become concerned that interest groups are buying the roll call votes of elected officials. However, political scientists who have examined whether such a link exists have tended to downplay these suspicions. In fact, over time a conventional wisdom, culled from an overview of the literature, has developed that asserts PAC contributions rarely exert an independent influence on roll call votes. Although legislators often cast roll call votes congruent with the interests and preferences of those groups that contributed to their campaigns, this correlation does not reflect influence but rather the tendency of interest groups to donate to like-minded legislators. When properly modeled, it is argued, analyses show that campaign contributions seldom change the votes of n

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This study examined the structure of attitudes toward the political party an individual primarily identifies with and attitudes toward the other party with an emphasis on differentiating between the cognitive and affective components. Participants responded to a telephone survey that included measures of party identification, partisan attitudes, political information involvement activities, and voting behavior. Results indicated attitudes toward the parties were a function of both cognitive and affective components, although strong partisans had an attitudinal structure characterized as having a stronger cognitive component. Strong partisans were more polarized in their attitudes across parties. In addition, individuals with more cognitive‐affective ambivalence toward their own parties were less likely to vote, and their votes were less likely to be along party lines.

This research combines National Election Study (NES) data with data on congressional candidate quality and spending to assess explanations for ticket splitting. The results indicate characteristics of both voters and candidates are important, but candidate-level variables as a whole provide a better account of ticket splitting than individual-level variables. NES data are also used to evaluate the reasons why candidate quality and spending are so important. Candidates encourage ticket splitting through various campaign activities, especially those that are unmediated. Additionally, incumbents benefit from constituency service and pork barrel legislation, which foster ticket splitting among voters in their districts.The dealignment of the electorate that occurred during the past several decades, coupled with the regularity of divided government, has focused scholarly attention on ticket splitting. There have been two major theoretical approaches to understanding ticket splitting. One has focused on individual-level factors that appear to make some voters more likely than others to split their tickets. Another approach has identified the important candidate-level variables that encourage voters to ticket split. The research reported here integrates these two frameworks by combining National Election Study (NES) survey data with information on candidate quality and spending for the six presidential elections between 1972 and 1992.The results indicate ticket splitting is best understood as a function of both individual-level and candidate-level factors. The research design employed here, by combining individual-level survey data with data on congressional candidates, allows for an assessment of the relative importance of these levels. On balance, candidate-level variables appear to be relatively more important. Therefore, ticket splitting must be understood as a product of the electoral choices at hand more than a function of the characteristics and attitudes of the individual voter. While there are many voter characteristics that make ticket splitting more likely, candidate characteristics provide a better account of ticket splitting, primarily because the structure of electoral competition as a whole is frequently conducive to splitting.

This article explores the relationship between international integration and domestic inequality in the developed countries in the mid-1980s and early 1990s. The analysis examines two major modes of integration, trade and direct investment, disaggregating each by economic sector and distinguishing between imports and exports, and inbound and outbound flows and stocks. In measuring income inequality, extensive use is made of micro-data sets that have recently become available through the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), which provides much more detailed and comparable data on income inequality than has heretofore been the case. In particular, LIS data can be aggregated at the level of economic sector, and permit the comparison of pre- and post-government income. The study finds few significant relationships between either trade or investment and sectoral income distribution. The overall conclusion is that economic globalization is not a critically important factor in explaining recent trends in income inequality in the Western world.