Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T02:25:47.432Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Pivotal Politics and the ideological content of Landmark Laws

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 November 2017

Thomas R. Gray
Affiliation:
The University of Texas at Dallas, School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences, USA E-mail: [email protected]
Jeffery A. Jenkins
Affiliation:
University of Southern California, Price School of Public Policy, USA E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract

The Pivotal Politics model (Krehbiel) has significantly influenced the study of American politics, but its core empirical prediction – that the size of the gridlock interval is negatively related to legislative productivity – has not found strong empirical support. We argue that previous research featured a disconnect between the exclusively ideological theory and tests that relied on outcome variables that were not purely ideological. We remedy this by dividing landmark laws (Mayhew) into two counts – those that invoke ideological preferences and those that do not – and uncover results consistent with Pivotal Politics’ core prediction: the size of the gridlock interval is negatively related to the production of ideological legislation. We also find that the size of the gridlock zone is positively related to the production of nonideological legislation. These results hold up in the face of various sensitivity analyses and robustness checks. We further show that Pivotal Politics explains variation in ideological legislation better than alternative theories based on partisan agenda control.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press, 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2015 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, CA; the 2016 annual meeting of the Southern Political Science Association, San Juan, Puerto Rico, and in workshops at Columbia University, the University of California, Merced, the University of Chicago and the University of Southern California.

References

Anderson, S. and Habel, P. (2009) Revisiting Adjusted ADA Scores for the U.S. Congress, 1947-2007. Political Analysis 17(1): 8388.Google Scholar
Auerswald, D. and Maltzman, F. (2003) Policymaking Through Advice and Consent: Treaty Consideration by the United States Senate. Journal of Politics 65(4): 10971110.Google Scholar
Baumgartner, F. R. and Leech, B. L. (1998) Basic Interests: The Importance of Groups in Politics and Political Science. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Beckman, M. N. (2010) Pushing the Agenda: Presidential Leadership in U.S. Lawmaking, 1953-2004. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Binder, S. A. (2003) Stalemate: Causes and Consequences of Legislative Gridlock. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.Google Scholar
Cameron, C. M. (2000) Veto Bargaining: Presidents and the Politics of Negative Power. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Carroll, R., Lewis, J., Lo, J., McCarty, N., Poole, K. and Rosenthal, H. (2015) “Common Space” DW-NOMINATE Scores with Bootstrapped Standard Errors (Joint House and Senate Scaling), voteview.com/data (accessed April 2015)Google Scholar
Chiou, F.-Y. and Rothenberg, L. S. (2003) When Pivotal Politics Meets Partisan Politics. American Journal of Political Science 47(3): 503522.Google Scholar
Chiou, F.-Y. and Rothenberg, L. S. (2006) Preferences, Parties, and Legislative Productivity. American Politics Research 34(6): 705731.Google Scholar
Clinton, J. D. (2007) Lawmaking and Roll Calls. Journal of Politics 69(2): 457469.Google Scholar
Covington, C. R. and Bargen, A. A. (2004) Comparing Floor-Dominated and Party-Dominated Explanations of Policy Change in the House of Representatives. Journal of Politics 66(4): 10691088.Google Scholar
Cox, G. W. and McCubbins, M. D. (2005) Setting the Agenda: Responsible Party Government in the U.S. House of Representatives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Epstein, D. and O’Halloran, S. (1999) Delegating Powers: A Transaction Cost Politics Approach to Policy Making Under Separate Powers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Groseclose, T., Levitt, S. and Snyder, J. (1999) Comparing Interest Group Scores Across Time and Chambers: Adjusted ADA Scores for the U.S. Congress. American Political Science Review 93(1): 3350.Google Scholar
Harbridge, L. (2015) Is Bipartisanhip Dead?: Policy Agreement and Agenda-Setting in the House of Representatives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Heitshusen, V. and Young, G. (2006) Macro-Politics and Changes in the U.S. Code: Testing Competing Theories of Policy Production, 1874-1946. In Adler E. S. and Lapinski J. (eds.), The Macropolitics of Congress. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 129–150.Google Scholar
Howell, W. (2003) Power Without Persuasion: The Politics of Direct Presidential Action. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Howell, W., Adler, E. S., Cameron, C. and Riemann, C. (2000) Divided Government and the Legislative Productivity of Congress, 1945-94. Legislative Studies Quarterly 25(2): 285312.Google Scholar
Jenkins, J. A. and Monroe, N. W. (2016) On Measuring Legislative Agenda-Setting Power. American Journal of Political Science 60(1): 158174.Google Scholar
Johnson, T. R. and Roberts, J. M. (2005) Pivotal Politics, Presidential Capital, and Supreme Court Nominations. Congress & the Presidency 32(1): 3148.Google Scholar
Krehbiel, K. (1998) Pivotal Politics: A Theory of U.S. Lawmaking. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Krehbiel, K. (2006a) Macropolitics and Micromodels: Cartels and Pivots Reconsidered. In Adler E. S. and Lapinski J. (eds.), The Macropolitics of Congress. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 21–49.Google Scholar
Krehbiel, K. (2006b) Pivots. In Weingast B. R. and Wittman D. A. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Political Economy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 223–240.Google Scholar
Krehbiel, K., Meirowitz, A. and Woon, J. (2005) Testing Theories of Lawmaking. In Austen-Smith D. and Duggan J. (eds.), Social Choice and Strategic Decisions: Essays in Honor of Jeffrey S. Banks. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 249268.Google Scholar
Krehbiel, K. and Peskowitz, Z. (2015) Legislative Organization and Ideal-Point Bias. Journal of Theoretical Politics 27(4): 673704.Google Scholar
Lapinski, J. S. (2008) Policy Substance and Performance in American Lawmaking, 1877-1994. American Journal of Political Science 52(2): 235251.Google Scholar
Lapinski, J. S. (2013) The Substance of Representation: Congress, American Political Development, and Lawmaking. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Lee, F. E. (2009) Beyond Ideology: Politics, Principles, and Partisanship in the US Senate. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Madonna, A. J. (2011) Winning Coalition Formation in the U.S. Senate: The Effects of Legislative Decisions Rules and Agenda Change. American Journal of Political Science 55(2): 276288.Google Scholar
Mayhew, D. R. (2005 [1991]) Divided We Govern: Party Control, Lawmaking, and Investigations, 1946-2002, 2nd ed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
McCarty, N., Poole, K. and Rosenthal, H. (2006) Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches. Cambridge: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Moe, T. and Howell, W. (1999) Unilateral Action and Presidential Power. Presidential Studies Quarterly 29(4): 850873.Google Scholar
Oh, J. S. (2015) The Pivotal Politics of Temporary Legislation. Iowa Law Review 100(3): 10551103.Google Scholar
Poole, K. T. (2007) Changing Minds? Not in Congress! Public Choice 131(3–4): 435451.Google Scholar
Primo, D. M., Binder, S. A. and Maltzman, F. (2008) Who Consents? Competing Pivots in Federal Judicial Selection. American Journal of Political Science 52(3): 471489.Google Scholar
Richman, J. (2011) Parties, Pivots, and Policy: The Status Quo Test. American Political Science Review 105(1): 151165.Google Scholar
Romer, T. and Rosenthal, H. (1978) Political Resource Allocation, Controlled Agendas, and the Status Quo. Public Choice 33(4): 2743.Google Scholar
Smith, S. S. (2007) Party Influence in Congress. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Stiglitz, E. H. and Weingast, B. R. (2010) Agenda Control in Congress: Evidence from Cutpoint Estimates and Ideal Point Uncertainty. Legislative Studies Quarterly 35(2): 157185.Google Scholar
Stimson, J. A. (1991) Public Opinion in America: Moods, Cycles, and Swings. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Wawro, G. J. and Schickler, E. (2004) Where’s the Pivot? Obstruction and Lawmaking in the Pre-Cloture Senate. American Journal of Political Science 48(4): 758774.Google Scholar
Wawro, G. J. and Schickler, E. (2006) Filibuster: Obstruction and Lawmaking in the U.S. Senate. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Woon, J. (2009) Change We Can Believe In? Using Political Science to Predict Policy Change in the Obama Presidency. PS: Political Science & Politics 42(2): 329334.Google Scholar
Woon, J. and Cook, I. P. (2015) Competing Gridlock Models and Status Quo Policies. Political Analysis 23(3): 385399.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Gray and Jenkins supplementary material

Gray and Jenkins supplementary material 1

Download Gray and Jenkins supplementary material(File)
File 316.3 KB