Time allocation across the Senate election cycle

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper evaluates a long-standing question about how senators allocate their time to the task of governance across their lengthy, six-year term. I construct a new individual-level dataset that tracks a key component of a senator’s governance responsibilities, participation in committee hearings. With this dataset, I explain variation in a senator’s propensity to attend committee hearings with reference to the Senate election cycle, electoral competitiveness, cohort socialisation, and the permanent campaign. I find that senatorial policy activism surges in early non-election years – the first and third year of the senate term – but does not plummet until the sixth year, when a senator is up for re-election. In the domain of hearing attendance, I also show that the United States Senate’s workhorses are those who hold marginal seats and come from relatively recent legislative cohorts. Thus, my results suggest that electoral competition and political ambition help promote good governance in the United States.