The first stage in the policy lifecycle-creation-has garnered significant attention while the final stage-repeal-has received scarcely any. To reconcile this imbalance, an extensive data set recording repeals to landmark laws enacted from 1951 to 2006 was complied. Event history analysis yields three significant results. First, the incidence of repeal exhibits a regular pattern characterized by an increasing hazard immediately after enactment followed by institutionalization and a monotonically declining hazard. Second, divided government has a complementary effect on the policy process, simultaneously constraining lawmakers from reversing enacted policies while effecting more durable legislation over the long term. Thus, the negative effects of divided government on policy production are offset by a decrease in policy repeal. Third, polarization has a curvilinear effect on the risk of repeal. Moderate polarization facilitates coalition formation when enacting repeals while polarized and depolarized periods have an attenuating effect.
Although the "Gingrich Senators" thesis solves a vexing issue, a broader theoretical question remains: Why does the House have a polarizing effect on its members that seems to persist even after a representative wins election to the Senate? In the first section, I propose that lawmakers learn partisan norms in the House and simply continue those extreme behavioral routines after switching chambers. And in the second part, I test possible sources of this effect. Results show that senators who came from the House display greater ideological extremism if they (a) served in the House within an extreme partisan cohort and (b) won election to the Senate after representing a partisan district. In contrast, serving within a polarized chamber and during periods of divided party control have no long-term effects on a senator's ideological extremism. Robustness checks reveal that the effect of a senator's House partisan cohort persists even when we control for his/her ideological extremism before winning election to the House as well as selection effects caused by electoral dynamics. Additional analyses show that the partisan cohort effect is the largest determinant of partisan learning, exists throughout most of congressional history, is strongest when the parties are homogeneous, and persists for much of a senator's career. As a whole, the results show that the House's effect on Senate polarization is not due to a single person or a function of chamber polarization. Rather, the "Housification of the Senate" is a consequence of cohort socializing effects and is observable throughout congressional history.
Does the Tea Party affect how lawmakers vote? Given the possible spurious effect of a representative’s ideology, we leverage natural variation in the Tea Party’s existence and examine this question through the lens of party switching. Like when lawmakers change parties, representatives who (1) joined Tea Party Caucus and (2) had a large volume of Tea Party activists in their district underwent a significant shift to the right in the 112th Congress. We believe these findings support both legislative-centered and extended network theorists. An additional analysis reveals that, unlike Democrats and non-Tea Party aligned Republicans who also shifted to the extremes in the 112th Congress, Tea Party Republicans did not “bounce back” in the 113th Congress. Lastly, we find no equivalent rightward shift in comparable conservative caucuses or among Republicans with similar ideologies and districts. In the end, although the Tea Party is not a “party” in the classic sense of the word, we claim that it is having “party like” effects in Congress. In the conclusion section, we discuss the implications of these results for the stability of the current two-party system. Given our findings, a major realignment or split within the Republican Party would not be surprising.
Do ballot measures affect congressional voting behavior? Examining the issues of gay marriage, campaign finance, and minimum wage, we test if the results of statewide ballot initiatives inform congressional roll call votes on legislation occupying the same issue space. Theoretically, we expect signals from ballot measures-which provide precise information about the preferences of a member's voting constituency-reduce policy "shirking" by members. Our findings across the three issues indicate that ballot initiative outcomes alter the floor votes of members of the House, reducing legislative shirking, but we find that the educative effect of ballot measures is attenuated in the Senate due to institutional factors. We attribute the positive effect in House to the precise signal ballot measures provide members about the preferences of the median voter in their district.
In an election characterized by countless headlines, the refusal of Republicans to support their party's nominee was a constant topic of discussion in 2016. Our paper looks to explain why Republican members of Congress joined the socalled #NeverTrump movement. In the first part, we document the varied-and often contradictory-explanations of the #NeverTrump movement offered by journalists, pundits, and politicians during the campaign. We then categorize these popular explanations into four theoretical categories: policy preferences, identity, electoral motivations, and establishment dynamics. In the second part, we test the varied claims. We believe two findings stand out and have broader implications for American politics. First, despite the popular belief that members of Congress are single-minded in their pursuit of reelection, we found that a lawmaker's religion and sex-both in the identity category-had the largest effects on the decision to join the #NeverTrump movement. Second, the results show that establishment Republicans were more likely to support Donald Trump's candidacy. Notably, the direction of this effect is inconsistent with popular explanations of the #NeverTrump movement but consistent with a range of academic studies.
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