Shifting party goals: Party electoral support and legislative behavior in the majority and the minority

Abstract

While scholars agree that parties are interested in both pragmatic (electoral) and programmatic (policy) goals, they disagree about the relative importance of those goals. How parties weight these goals has implications for the effect of party involvement on legislative behavior. We argue that parties emphasize these goals differently based on whether they are in the majority or minority. We examine links between party support in primary elections for the US Congress and subsequent legislative behaviors, finding that candidates who received more party support during the primary election were more likely to engage in partisan efforts in the next Congress. Further, party support of incoming legislators is linked to increased partisan behavior through leapfrog representation. We find that these relationships are stronger for majority party candidates, suggesting that parties put a greater emphasis on winning majorities when in the minority but a greater emphasis on policy congruence when in the majority.