Ideology, voting, and shirking

Abstract

Since we first raised the issue in 1979, scholars have addressed two questions regarding ideology and congressional voting. Does ideology have an impact on such voting? Do representa- tives shirk by voting their own ideology rather than their constituents' interests? For the first ques- tion, it appears that there is a consensus that ideology does matter, although we present some con- firming evidence for 1980. The second question has been confused; some think that ideology and shirking are identical, although they are logically separate categories. We show that even if ideo- logical shirking exists, it is relatively unimportant. We also show that self interested (non- ideological) shirking exists. We conclude that research efforts to untangle constituents' and representatives' separate ideologies have been misguided and that further efforts to examine the determinants of constituent ideology should be pursued. Public choice scholars have addressed two major questions related to the in- fluence of ideology on political behavior. One is essentially an existence ques- tion: Is there an influence? The second is the role of the ideology of the elected representative himself versus the role of constituent ideology. This has been ad- dressed as shirking: Do elected representatives shirk by voting their own ideo- logical preferences instead of the interests of their constituents? In this paper we provide some evidence on both of these topics. We provide confirmatory evidence on the direct impact of ideology on congressional vot- ing, and some additional evidence on the role of ideological contributors to campaigns. We then present some evidence on shirking. We conclude that self interested shirking does exist. If ideological shirking exists, it is quickly punished by voters. Finally, we suggest that the issue of shirking by legislators is of relatively little theoretical or empirical interest, and that the profession