Congressional Approval and Responsible Party Government: The Role of Partisanship and Ideology in Citizen Assessments of the Contemporary U.S. Congress

Abstract

While scholars posit an electoral link between congressional approval and majority party electoral fortunes, it is unclear whether citizens are grounding their assessments of approval on policy or valence grounds, such as retrospective economic evaluations. Whereas it is commonly understood that there is an ideological component to constituents’ job approval of their individual members of Congress, in addition to a strong partisan effect, the ideological basis of institutional approval has not been established. Using cross-sectional and panel survey data, which allow for scaling citizens and the congressional parties in the same ideological space, I demonstrate that, distinct from the partisan basis of congressional approval, citizens’ ideological distance from the majority party has a separate and distinct effect. These results suggest that the link between congressional approval and majority party fortunes is rooted in the collective ideological representation provided by the legislative majority in an increasingly responsible U.S. Congress.