1 I would like to acknowledge the countless hours of data gathering and analysis conducted by Paul Barresi, my research assistant through this project, and the helpful comments of David King, Brian Loynd, David Mayhew, Howard Reiter, and several anonymous reviewers for JPH.

2 Lowi, Theodore, “Party, Policy, and Constitution in America,” ed. Nisbet, WilliamChambers, and Burnham, Walter Dean, The American Party Systems (New York, 1967), 241Google Scholar.

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4 For a review of this literature, see Gerring, John, Party Ideologies in America, 1828-1996 (Cambridge, 1998), chap. 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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6 To be sure, the role of congressional parties has been extensively studied. See, e.g., Brady, David, Cooper, Joseph, and Hurley, Patricia A., “The Decline of Party in the U.S. House of Representatives, 1887-1968,” Legislative Studies Quarterly 4 (August 1979): 381–408;CrossRefGoogle ScholarClubb, Jerome M. and Traugott, Santa A., “Partisan Cleavage and Cohesion in the House of Representatives, 1861-1974,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 1 (1977): 375–402;CrossRefGoogle ScholarCox, Gary W. and McCubbins, Mathew D., “On the Decline of Party Voting in Congress,” Legislative Studies Quarterly 16 (November 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, Legislative Leviathan: Party Government in the House (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1993); Hurley, Patricia A. and Wilson, Rick K., “Partisan Voting Patterns in the US. Senate, 1877-1986,” Legislative Studies Quarterly 14 (May 1979)Google Scholar; Roderick, D.Kiewiet, and McCubbins, Mathew D., The Logic of Delegation (Chicago, 1991)Google Scholar; Krehbiel, Keith, “Where's the Party?” British Journal of Political Science 23 (1993): 235–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar But party ideology within Congress–an intrinsically historical question–has received short shrift.

7 Poole, Keith T. and Rosenthal, Howard, Congress: A Political-Economic History of Roll Call Voting (New York, 1997)Google Scholar.

8 See Cox, and McCubbins, , Legislative Leviathan, 72–73,Google Scholar for further discussion of the NOMINATE methodology.

9 Morris, Richard B., ed., Encyclopedia of American History (New York, 1953)Google Scholar; Morris, Richard B. and Morris, Jeffrey B., eds., Encyclopedia of American History (New York, 1982)Google Scholar; idem, Encyclopedia of American History (New York, 1986).

10 Christianson, Stephen G., Facts About the Congress (New York, 1996)Google Scholar.

11 Voting data from 1833 to 1985 are taken from Rosenthal, Howard L and Poole, Keith T., United States Congressional Roll Call Voting Records, 1789-1987: Reformatted Data (LCPSR 9822). After 1985,Google Scholar voting data are obtained from Christianson, , Facts About the Congress (1996).Google Scholar If several bills or resolutions on virtually identical matters were discussed within a short space of time, only the last of these bills or resolutions was counted. If several divisions occurred on a single measure, only the last division–the vote on final passage–was considered (often this was the division on a conference report). If the bill was split into several parts, efforts were made to count only the division that concerned the most important section of the bill. In the 1830s “Jackson Democrats” and “Van Buren Democrats” in the Poole/Rosenthal coding scheme were counted as Democrat, and “National Republicans” were counted as Whig-Republican. All other parties, as well as independents, were ignored. Votes were counted whether expressed as a roll-call vote, a “pair,” or an “aye” in the Poole/Rosenthal database. (Christianson does not distinguish between these types of votes.)

12 This division conforms to an important theoretical distinction in roll-call analysis; in measuring party strength within a legislature party, cohesion (unity) must be distinguished from party conflict. In other words, the degree to which members of a party vote together is important, but so is the degree to which they vote differently from members of the other party. See Clubb and Traugott, “Partisan Cleavage.”

13 See, e.g., Copeland, Gary W. and Patterson, Samuel C., eds., Parliaments in the Modem Woiid: Changing Institutions (Ann Arbor, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Loynd, Brian, “Manufacturing Consensus: Legislative Organization in Post-Industrial Germany and Great Britain,” Ph.D. diss., Department of Political Science, Duke University, 1997Google Scholar.

14 See Burner, David, The Politics of Provincialism: The Democratic Party in Transition, 1918-1932 (New York, 1967)Google Scholar; Cooper, John Milton, Pivotal Decades: The United States, 1900-1920 (New York, 1990)Google Scholar; Craig, Douglas B., After Wilson: The Struggle for the Democratic Party, 1920-1934 (Chapel Hill, 1992)Google Scholar.

15 Reasons for declining conflict–hinging mostly on declining partisanship in the twentieth century–are discussed in Brady et al., “The Decline of Party”; Burnham, Walter Dean, “The System of 1896: An Analysis,” in Kleppner, Paul et al., eds., The Evolution of American Electoral Systems (Westport, Conn.: 1981)Google Scholar; Cox and McCubbins, “On the Decline of Party Voting”; McGerr, Michael, The Decline of Popular Politics: The American North, 1865-1928 (New York, 1986)Google Scholar; Wattenberg, Martin P., The Decline of American Political Parties, 1952-1992 (Cambridge, Mass., 1994)Google Scholar.

16 This is the general argument advanced in Wilcox, Clyde and Clausen, Aage, “The Dimensionality of Roll-Call Voting Reconsidered,” Legislative Studies Quarterly 16 (August 1991).CrossRefGoogle Scholar It should be noted, however, that the present study does not employ Clausen's typology.

17 Opinions will differ on how best to capture the multidimensional elements of American party ideology. To complicate matters further, dimensions of party conflict are in continual evolution; categories of analysis that are useful today may be less useful in understanding party behavior in the 1830s. In any case, it may be more excusable to have an overly disaggregated typology than an overly aggregated one. It seems useful, for example, to distinguish “Capitalism” divisions from “Government” divisions–even if the distinction is not always hard and fast–since party behavior on these dimensions has been so different (see Table 2). The disadvantage of disaggregation, evidently, is that it narrows the number of cases falling into each category. “Morality,” it should be noted, contains only nine cases; conclusions about this particular issue-dimension must be considered provisional.

18 Gerring, Party Ideologies in America.

19 The final column is obtained by averaging the percentage of votes correctly explained (column 11 in the Appendix) in each of the divisions classified as conflictual. To do otherwise–to score individual votes across decades–would give greater weight to votes taken in later congresses (when the size of that body grew).

20. For further discussion of this point, see John Gerring, “Culture versus Economics: An American Dilemma” (Social Science History, forthcoming).

21 Usually, the decisive decade of change in the parties' attitudes toward government is reckoned to have been the 1930s. This, I have argued (in Parry Ideologies in America), is a gross misunderstanding of each party's historical trajectory.

22 It should be noted that this is by far the smallest category of issues under observations, consisting of only eight House votes, so these conclusions must be considered less secure than the foregoing.

23 A number of the points I will make pertaining to party cohesion scores are discussed in Loynd, “Manufacturing Consensus.” I am grateful to the author for sharing his research.

24 See Rose, Richard, “British MPs: More Bark than Bite?” in Suleiman, Ezra, ed., Parliaments and Parliamentarians in Democratic Politics (New York, 1986).Google Scholar Although there has been some loss of party strength in the last several decades, Rose notes that this strength is still far above that found in the U.S. Congress. For party voting in the Commons during the nineteenth century, see Berrington, Hugh, “Partisanship and Dissidence in the Nineteenth Century House of Commons,” Parliamentary Affairs 21 (1967-1968): 338–74;CrossRefGoogle ScholarCox, Gary W., The Efficient Secret: The Cabinet and the Development of Political Parties in Victorian England (Cambridge, 1987).CrossRefGoogle Scholar For further data on party strength in European parliaments, see Peters, B. Guy, “The Separation of Powers in Parliamentary Systems,” in Mettenheim, Kurt von, ed., Presidential Institutions and Democratic Politics: Comparing Regional and National Contexts (Baltimore, 1997), 79Google Scholar.

25 The only significant exception to this two-century pattern occurred during the Reed-Cannon interregnum at the turn of the century; yet, even at this high point of party government, Henry Jones Ford would write in his classic text on party politics, “Congress represents locality; the President represents the nation” (The Rise and Growth of American Politics [New York, 1898/1967], xv).Google Scholar Leon Epstein, in his magisterial study of the American parties, concludes, “The presidential party is a more coherent national phenomenon than is any other kind of American party. Congressional parties are national too, but each is so diverse, given the considerable independence of its members in relating to their separate constituencies, that it unites only for limited purposes.” Epstein, Leon, Parties in the American Mold (Madison, 1986), 85. See alsoGoogle ScholarMayhew, David R., Congress: The Electoral Connection (New Haven, 1974)Google Scholar; Arnold, R. Douglas, The Logic of Congressional Action (New Haven, 1990).Google Scholar For a good review of this literature, see Cox, and McCubbins, , Legislative Leviathan, 1–14.Google Scholar For longitudinal studies of party cohesion, see Hurley and Wilson, “Partisan Voting Patterns,” on the Senate, and Clubb and Traugott, “Partisan Clevage,” on the House. On the importance of party cohesion, see Corrado, Anthony, “The Politics of Cohesion,” in Green, John C. and Shea, Daniel M., eds., The State of the Parties: The Changing Role of Contemporary American Parties, 2d ed. (Lanham, Md., 1996)Google Scholar; Wattenberg, Martin P., “The Republican Presidential Advantage in the Age of Party Disunity,” in Cox, Gary W. and Kernell, Samuel, eds., The Politics of Divided Government (Boulder, Colo., 1991)Google Scholar.

26 Cox and McCubbins, “On the Decline of Party Voting.”

27 See Cox and McCubbins, Legislative Leviathan; Kiewiet and McCubbins, Logic of Delegation.

28 On Italy, see Hine, David, Governing Italy: The Politics of Bargained Pluralism (Oxford, 1993). On Sweden, seeGoogle ScholarAnton, Thomas J., “Policy-making and Political Culture in Sweden,” Scandinavian Political Studies 4 (1969): 88–102;CrossRefGoogle ScholarHeclo, Hugh and Madsen, Henrik, Policy and Politics in Sweden: Principled Pragmatism (Philadelphia, 1987)Google Scholar; Steinmo, Sven, Taxation and Democracy: Swedish, British, and American Approaches to Financing the Modem State (New Haven, 1993).Google Scholar On Nordic parliaments generally, see Arter, David, The Nordic Parliaments: A Comparative Analysis (New York, 1984). On Switzerland, seeGoogle ScholarHughes, Christopher, The Parliament of Switzerland (London, 1962). On Germany, seeGoogle ScholarKatzenstein, Peter, Policy and Politics in West Germany: The Growth of a Semisovereign State (Philadelphia, 1987)Google Scholar.

29 Quoted in Asard, Erik and Bennett, W. Lance, Democracy and the Marketplace of Ideas: Communication and Government in Sweden and the United States (Cambridge, 1997), 215Google Scholar.

30 Rockman notes: “Resistance in parliamentary systems tends to come early and to be most decisive at that stage and less decisive when a matter moves to public debate. In the United States, resistance tends to accumulate and, therefore, to develop later in the process and to become more decisive as matters move to public debate.” Rockman, Bert A., “The Performance of Presidents and Prime Ministers and of Presidential and Parliamentary Systems,” in Mettenheim, Kurt Von, ed., Presidential Institutions and Democratic Politics: Comparing Regional and National Contexts (Baltimore, 1997), 46.Google Scholar Thus, the observer of a parliamentary system gains the impression of party ideology at work, while being spared the realities of logrolling, trading favors, and party dissension. In the United States, of course, low levels of party cohesion give the general public the impression that parties are weak and ineffectual. For the media, the attraction of the dissident— “Fighting Bob” LaFollette facing down the Republican stalwarts, or “Cosmic Bob” Kerrey making up his mind on the president's budget –has been irresistible. The same incentives are in operation elsewhere, of course, but in most parliamentary systems there are few dissidents to pillory (or deify). (On Kerrey's endless budget deliberations, see New York Times, 7 August 1993, 1.)Google Scholar

31 Durr, Robert H., Gilmour, John B., and Wolbrecht, Christina, “Explaining Congressional Approval,” American Journal of Political Science 41 (January 1997): 182CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 See King, David C. and Zeckhauser, Richard J., “An Options Model of Congressional Voting,” unpublished manuscript, Kennedy School of Government, Cambridge, Mass. (1997).Google Scholar This strategy seemed to be much in evidence on the Democratic side in divisions on termlimit amendments in 1997.

33 Following Hirschman, one might say that two-party systems tend to register intraparty dissent through voice (because, for many, there are no attractive exit options), and multiparty systems through exit. Hirschman, Albert O., Exit, Voice, Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States (Cambridge, Mass., 1970).Google Scholar Party leaders in both party systems are, of course, equally concerned with vote getting; the point is, losing votes has fewer ideological consequences in a two-party system. (I am indebted to Howard Reiter for reminding me of this.)

34 See John Gerring, “Minor Parties in Plurality Electoral Systems,” Party Politics (forthcoming); Lijphart, Arend, Democracies: Patterns of Majoritarian and Consensus Government in Twenty One Countries (New Haven, 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 Tsebelis, George, “Veto Players and Law Production in Parliamentary Democracies,” in Doring, Herbert, ed., Parliaments and Majority Rule in Western Europe (Frankfurt, 1995)Google Scholar.

36 Huber, John and Powell, G. Bingham, “Congruence Between Citizens and Policymakers in Two Visions of Liberal Democracy,” World Politics 46 (April 1994): 291–326CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 One possible way of operationalizing this variable would be to look at relative levels of trade dependency. See, e.g., Cameron, “Expansion of the Public Economy.”

38 See Katzenstein, Peter, Small States in World Markets: Industrial Policy in Europe (Ithaca, N.Y., 1985).Google Scholar To be sure, the United States is less autonomous than it was several decades ago, as is noted by Richard Rose. See Rose, , The Postmodern Presidency: George Bush Meets the World, 2d ed. (Chatham: Chatham House, 1991).Google Scholar However, it still enjoys more room for policy maneuvering than any other democracy in the world.

39 It might be added that the objective features of American hegemony (economic, territorial, and military) have been reinforced by features of American political culture emphasizing the uniqueness of America, the dangers of foreign involvements, and the need to preserve American independence. The twin doctrines of “isolationism” and “exceptionalism” encourage American policymakers to place domestic needs ahead of foreign exigencies.

40 Federalism, I would argue, affects policymaking at the implementation stage more than at the legislative stage. Since promise-performance studies usually operationalize policymaking at the legislative stage, federalism can be construed as a subordinate factor. For discussion of these and other factors, see Lijphart, Democracies.

41 This is the general finding of Royed, “Testing the Mandate Model.” Since presidential success on roll-call votes in Congress is primarily the product of the partisan composition of the legislature (Bond, Jon R. and Fleisher, Richard, The President in the Legislative Arena [Chicago, 1990]);Google ScholarIII, George C. Edwards, At the Margins: Presidential Leadership of Congress [New Haven, 1989])Google Scholar, one would expect presidential party ideology to have greater effect under circumstances of unified party control–a situation approximating the circumstance of “party government” in a Westminster system.