Unbundling Polarization

Abstract

This paper investigates the determinants of political polarization, a phenomenon of increasing relevance in Western democracies. How much of polarization is driven by divergence in the ideologies of politicians? How much is instead the result of changes in the capacity of parties to control their members? We use detailed internal information on party discipline in the context of the U.S. Congress—whip count data for 1977–1986—to identify and structurally estimate an economic model of legislative activity in which agenda selection, party discipline, and member votes are endogenous. The model delivers estimates of the ideological preferences of politicians, the extent of party control, and allows us to assess the effects of polarization through agenda setting (i.e., which alternatives to a status quo are strategically pursued). We find that parties account for approximately 40% of the political polarization in legislative voting over this time period, a critical inflection point in U.S. polarization. We also show that, absent party control, historically significant economic policies would have not passed or lost substantial support. Counterfactual exercises establish that party control is highly relevant for the probability of success of a given bill and that polarization in ideological preferences is more consequential for policy selection, resulting in different bills being pursued.

Did U.S. Politicians Expect the China Shock?

“…Beyond the trade policy literature, this paper speaks to the established empirical literature focused on modeling voting in legislatures. The elements of this vast scholarship that are closer to our paper span political economy and political science (Poole and Rosenthal, 1984;Levitt, 1996;Heckman and Snyder, 1997;Poole and Rosenthal, 1997;Jenkins, 2000;Clinton et al, 2004;McCarty et al, 2006;Canen et al, 2020). Modeling prospective behavior of legislators does figure in this strand of research, as it is often postulated that a representative politician acts by "determining her roll-call vote choice based on which legislative options will maximize her future utility" (Ladewig, 2010).…”

“…We present a model and an estimation strategy of the decisions and expectations of law makers. In this, we depart from the empirical political economy literature on legislative voting (Poole and Rosenthal, 1997;Heckman and Snyder, 1997;Clinton et al, 2004;Canen et al, 2020) and extend it in a distinct direction, as a formal analysis of law makers' information sets and expectations does not typically figure in standard empirical models of voting.…”

“…For further reference, see www.voteview.com9 The reader interested in the estimation of θ i can find a detailed analysis inCanen et al (2020) and references therein. Due to lack of sample overlap theCanen et al (2020) estimates cannot be used in our application.…”

Strategic Voting in Two-Party Legislative Elections

“…4 Third, the paper speaks to the vast literature on how political institutions affect policy choices (Persson, 2002;Morelli, 2004;Persson and Tabellini, 2005;Bordignon, Nannicini, and Tabellini, 2016).I show that in majoritarian systems, the type of election affects the congruence between voters and policies: legislative (parliamentary) elections generate superior policies to single-district (mayoral or presidential) elections. Finally, an application of the model in Section 5 adds to the literature on how political polarisation interacts with electoral institutions (Matakos, Troumpounis, and Xefteris (2016); Gentzkow (2016); Canen, Kendall, and Trebbi (2020)).…”

Tariffs, Agricultural Subsidies, and the 2020 US Presidential Election: Unintended Consequences

“…Specifically, trade-exposed electoral districts simultaneously exhibited expanding support for both strong-left and strong-right views and shifted toward the Republican candidate in the presidential election.3 Admittedly, there are several other factors that might have affected the political polarization in the US, including media bias(DellaVigna and Kaplan, 2007), divergence in the ideologies of politicians(Canen, Kendall and Trebbi, 2020), and immigration(Mayda, Peri and Steingress, 2021).…”