Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T00:12:15.372Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Estimating the locations of voters, politicians, policy outcomes, and status quos on a common scale

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 July 2021

James Coleman Battista ,
Michael Peress Open the ORCID record for Michael Peress [Opens in a new window]  and
Jesse Richman
James Coleman Battista
Affiliation:
University at Buffalo, SUNY, Buffalo, NY, USA
Michael Peress*
Affiliation:
Stony Brook University, SUNY, Stony Brook, NY, USA
Jesse Richman
Affiliation:
Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

How well are voters represented and what explains how well voters are represented? Answering these questions requires unpacking the mechanisms by which voters choose elected officials and elected officials implement policies. Though spatial theories of voting and legislative bargaining provide a broad framework for understanding these mechanisms, testing these theories involves a measurement problem where multiple political actors and outcomes must be located. We develop a technique for estimating policy outcomes, status quo locations, the ideology of elite political actors, and the ideology of voters, on a common scale. Using our new estimates, we demonstrate a similar level of incongruence for tax policies and spending policies. The incongruence arises for different reasons however—tax policies are over-responsive to the position of the median voter. Contrarily, spending policies are under-responsive and barely correlated with the position of the median voter. In examining the underlying mechanisms for policy change, we find that while the positions of elected officials over-respond to the median voter, the changing composition of state government has little immediate impact on policy. Instead, policy outcomes respond to long-term trends in the composition of government.

Keywords

Ideal point estimation
Type
Original Article
Information
Political Science Research and Methods , Volume 10 , Issue 4 , October 2022 , pp. 806 - 822
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the European Political Science Association

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.)

References

Achen, CH (1977) Measuring representation: perils of the correlation coefficient. American Journal of Political Science 21, 805–815.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Adams, J and Merrill, S (2003) Voter turnout and candidate strategies in American elections. Journal of Politics 65, 161–189.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bafumi, J and Herron, MC (2010) Leapfrog representation and extremism: a study of American voters and their members in congress. American Political Science Review 104, 519–542.Google Scholar
Battista, J, Peress, M and Richman, J (2013) Common space ideal points, committee assignments, and financial interests in the state legislatures. State Politics and Policy Quarterly 13, 70–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baumgartner, F and Jones, BD (1993) Agendas and Instability in American Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Bonica, A (2013) Ideology and interests in the political marketplace. American Journal of Political Science 57, 294–311.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caughey, D and Warshaw, C (2018) Policy preferences and policy change: dynamic responsiveness in the American States, 1936–2014. American Political Science Review 112, 249–266.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clinton, JD and Richardson, MD (2019) Lawmaking in the U.S: American legislatures and lawmaking, 1997–2011. Journal of Public Policy 39, 143–175.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clinton, J, Jackman, S and Rivers, D (2004) The statistical analysis of roll call data. American Political Science Review 98, 355–370.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, OA, Dempster, MAH and Wildavsky, A (1966) A theory of the budgetary process. American Political Science Review 60, 529–547.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Delli Carpini, MX and Keeter, S (1991) Stability and change in the U.S. public's knowledge of politics. Public Opinion Quarterly 55, 583–612.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Erikson, RS, Wright, GC and McIver, JP (1993) Statehouse Democracy: Public Opinion and the American States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Groseclose, T (2001) A model of candidate location when one candidate has a valence advantage. American Journal of Political Science 45, 862–886.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grumbach, JM (2018) From backwaters to major policymakers: policy polarization in the States, 1970–2014. Perspectives on Politics 16, 416–435.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hill, SJ and Huber, GA (2019) On the meaning of survey reports of roll call “votes”. American Journal of Political Science 63, 611–625.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jackman, S (2001) Multidimensional analysis of roll call data via Bayesian simulation: identification, estimation, inference, and model checking. Political Analysis 9, 227–241.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jessee, S (2016) (How) Can we estimate the ideology of citizens and political elites on the same scale?. American Journal of Political Science 60, 1108–1124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krehbiel, K (1998) Pivotal Politics: A Theory of U.S. Lawmaking. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lax, JR and Phillips, JH (2011) The Democratic deficit in the states. American Journal of Political Science 56, 148–166.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, JB and Tausanovitch, C (2015) When does joint scaling allow for direct comparisons of oreferences? Working Paper.Google Scholar
Lupia, A (1994) Shortcuts versus encyclopedias: information and voting behavior in California insurance reform elections. American Political Science Review 88, 63–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, WE and Stokes, DE (1963) Constituency influence in congress. American Political Science Review 57, 45–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peress, M (2013) Candidate positioning and responsiveness to constituent opinion in the U.S. house of representitives. Public Choice 156, 77–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peress, M and Spirling, A (2010) Scaling the critics: uncovering the latent dimensions of movie criticism. Journal of the American Statistical Association 105, 71–83.Google Scholar
Poole, KT and Rosenthal, H (1991) Patterns of congressional voting. American Journal of Political Science 35, 228–278.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poole, KT and Rosenthal, H (1997) Congress: A Political Economic History of Roll Call Voting. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Richman, J (2011) Parties, pivots, and policy: the status quo test. American Political Science Review 105, 151–165.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rogers, S (2017) Electoral accountability for state legislative roll calls and ideological representation. American Political Science Review 111, 555–571.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Romer, T and Rosenthal, H (1978) Political resource allocation, controlled agenda, and the status quo. Public Choice 33, 27–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rugeley, C (2007) Home or Away? An Analysis of How Institutions Shape Representation Phd Florida State University Tallahassee, FL.Google Scholar
Shor, B (2011) All together now: putting congress, state legislatures, and individuals in a common ideological space to assess representation at the macro and micro levels. Working Paper.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shor, B and McCarty, N (2011) The ideological mapping of American legislatures. American Political Science Review 105, 530–551.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shor, B and Rogowski, JC (2018) Ideology and the US congressional vote. Political Science Research and Methods 6, 323–341.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wright, G (2004) Representation in America's Legislatures. Indiana University: National Science Foundation Grant.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

Battista et al. Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/N0M2XG
Link
Supplementary material: PDF

Battista et al. supplementary material

Battista et al. supplementary material

Download Battista et al. supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 1.7 MB