Party Influence in Congress

Smith, Steven S.

doi:10.1017/cbo9780511812613

Cited by 184 publications

(44 citation statements)

References 162 publications

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“…We test the proposition that the influence of Fox News on elite partisanship will be most pronounced when elections are proximate by comparing the temporal patterns of partisanship for members who represent districts with Fox News to members without Fox News (hereafter referred to as “Fox News members” and “non–Fox News members,” respectively). We examine members' voting behavior on party votes , a widely used method for analyzing elite partisanship, to capture the partisan dynamics of House members during the time period under investigation (see Cox and McCubbins , ; Rohde ; Smith ). Party votes are those roll‐call votes on which a majority of Democrats vote in opposition to a majority of Republicans.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Influence of News Media on Political Elites: Investigating Strategic Responsiveness in Congress

Arceneaux

Johnson

Lindstädt

et al. 2015

American J Political Sci

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News media play a central role in democratic politics, yet we know little about how media affect the behavior of policy makers. To understand the conditions under which news media influence political elites, we advance a theory of strategic responsiveness, which contends that elected representatives are more likely to heed their constituents' preferences when voters are attentive. Accordingly, news media's influence on legislative behavior should be most apparent near elections and dependent on the partisan composition of the constituency. We capitalize on the incremental rollout of the conservative Fox News Channel in the late 1990s to evaluate our theoretical predictions. Fox News caused both Republicans and Democrats in Congress to increase support for the Republican Party position on divisive votes, but only in the waning months of the election cycle and among those members who represent districts with a sizable portion of Republican voters.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Influence of News Media on Political Elites: Investigating Strategic Responsiveness in Congress

Arceneaux

Johnson

Lindstädt

et al. 2015

American J Political Sci

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“…In the literature on agenda‐setting power, numerators (counts) are typically provided as descriptive data, but denominators (rates) are more often used as dependent variables in multivariate analyses. The most common denominator is the roll rate developed by Cox and McCubbins (, ), but other denominators include the success rate (Jenkins and Nokken ) and the win rate (Jenkins and Stewart ; Lawrence, Maltzman, and Smith ; Smith ).…”

Section: The Consequences and Sensitivity Of Variable Constructionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On Measuring Legislative Agenda‐Setting Power

Jenkins

Monroe

2015

American J Political Sci

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We propose a typology for measuring agenda-setting success and failure in a legislative context. Our typology goes beyond the most commonly used measure ("rolls") and includes the full range of agenda-setting outcomes-rolls (opposing a proposal that subsequently passes), as well as "blocks" (opposing a proposal that is subsequently defeated), "successes" (supporting a proposal that subsequently passes), and "disappointments" (supporting a proposal that is subsequently defeated)-and thus takes into account instances of both positive and negative agenda power. We discuss these measures, and the theoretical questions surrounding them, with the hope of providing some guidance to scholars of the U.S. House, as well as those analyzing agenda power in other legislatures. As a first step in this direction, we explore variation in agenda-setting measures in 85 American state legislative chambersand Kanthak 2011; Jones and Hwang 2005). But if the agenda-setting institutions in these legislative bodies do not map well onto those in the U.S. House, the transition from theory to measure will suffer. Moreover, where theoretical innovation is sometimes hampered by the anticipation of measurement limitations, the over-focus on rolls as the measure of agenda control stunts the growth of agenda-setting theories beyond the U.S. House.In this article, we seek to loosen that restraint by proposing a typology for measuring legislative agenda-setting power. Our typology includes the full range of agenda-setting outcomes-rolls, as well as "blocks" (when an agenda setter opposes a proposal that is subsequently defeated), "successes" (when an agenda setter supports a proposal that subsequently passes), and "disappointments" (when an agenda setter

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“…Given this, we anticipate that Senates with large majorities will feature lower overall partisan support scores on procedural votes. We control for this using a variable accounting for the percent of all seats controlled by the majority party in a given Congress (Smith, ). Lastly, we hypothesize that the primary effect of the policy committees was to allow party leaders to better coordinate with rank‐and‐file members on floor activity.…”

Section: Examining Individual Party Support On Procedural Votesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Establishment of Party Policy Committees in the U.S. Senate: Coordination, Not Coercion*

Crespin

Madonna²,

Sievert³

et al. 2014

Social Science Quarterly

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Objective We seek to determine if institutional changes designed to increase intraparty coordination influenced observed levels of party unity in the U.S. Senate. In particular, we test competing claims regarding the effects of establishing party policy committees following the adoption of the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946. Methods First, we examine Congress at the vote level by looking at the overall proportion of votes that could be classified as “party unity votes” before and after the establishment of the policy committees. Second, we employ a micro‐level analysis by examining individual senators’ procedural party support scores. Results We find that members of the majority party were more likely to have higher levels of procedural unity after the adoption of policy committees. Conclusion The establishment of party policy committees in the Senate played a role in helping party leaders coordinate activities, advance a legislative agenda, and maintain high levels of party unity on the floor by better structuring procedural votes.

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Party Influence in Congress

Cited by 184 publications

References 162 publications

The Influence of News Media on Political Elites: Investigating Strategic Responsiveness in Congress

The Influence of News Media on Political Elites: Investigating Strategic Responsiveness in Congress

On Measuring Legislative Agenda‐Setting Power

The Establishment of Party Policy Committees in the U.S. Senate: Coordination, Not Coercion*

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