Voting for ?Sin? in Kansas

Abstract

One of the issues raised in the economics literature on legislative voting is the role played by legislator ideology. Holding constituent interests constant, a finding of ideological impact is taken as evidence of shirking in a political principal-agent model. A problem in implementing such studies is how to measure both constituent interests and legislator ideology. Earlier studies have used a vector of socio-economic variables characterizing a legislator's district for the former. The latter has been measured by group ratings of liberal or conservative Congressional watchdogs, such as Americans for Democratic Action, and other indices based on voting records.1 Studies by Kalt (1980) and Peltzman (1984) have strongly suggested that what was masquerading as legislator ideology is actually, to a large degree, a measure of constituent interests. This was demonstrated by regressing group ratings on constituent variables. When Kalt and Zupan (1984), however, decomposed an ideology index into a constituent component and a legislator residual, they found that both had explanatory power in explaining United States Senate voting on anti-strip mine legislation. But it is not clear whether the legislative residual measured a Senator's ideology or was simply correlated with omitted constituent variables. Recent events in Kansas provide an opportunity to shed new light on the debate. In the November 1986 elections, Kansans voted on constitutional amendments, permitting liquor-by-the-drink, pari-mutuel wagering and a state-run lottery. Collectively, they came to be known as the 'Sin' issues, although they were generally supported on economic grounds. The amendments had earlier been approved by the Kansas legislature in separate roll call votes. Using con-