Cross Party Lines Research Articles

GENDER GAP IN THE 103rd CONGRESS

The 1992 election brought a record number of women to the US Congress. The object of this research is to determine whether the increased number of women had an impact on legislative outcomes. This paper tests the idea that the women of the 103rd Congress voted differently than their male colleagues. The findings indicate that there is a gender gap in the voting behavior of male and female members of Congress, particularly on legislative issues where women have been found to be more liberal than men, such as social policy, defense, and gun control. Results also show that there is a women's voting bloc that often crosses party lines.

Arguing for Peace: Giles Firmin on New England and Godly Unity

Richard Baxter admired the qualities Giles Firmin brought to religious controversy: ‘Candor, Ingenuitie, Moderation, Love and Peace’. Firmin, Vicar of Shalford, Essex, 1648–62, argued for peace during the Interregnum, at a time when disputes fractured the churches of his county. Factions of Presbyterians and Independents still fought about the right path to religious reform, in terms dictated by polemic of the 1640s, while sects like the Quakers rattled confidence in a united Church. Firmin devised arguments that crossed party lines, to unite against sectarianism. He wrote from an unusual perspective. He had been to Massachusetts and come home. He had taken part in the colony’s bold experiment in Congregationalist church order, which inspired English Independents, but came back into parish ministry in Essex without repudiating his colonial experience. Modern historians, like seventeenth-century Presbyterians, struggle to explain why New England’s churches claimed unity with England, but acted differently. Firmin’s outlook sets contemporary polemic in a fresh light. Nowadays, he is better known for his anecdotes than for his views, because he scattered his tracts with stories about people he had known in colony and homeland. His opinions tend to escape notice. Yet Firmin used his experience in Old and New England to make a distinctive appeal for unity.

"Give Him the Hot End of the Poker": Ohio Republicans Reject Johnson's Leadership of Reconstruction

"GIVE HIM THE HOT END OF THE POKER' OHIO REPUBLICANS REJECT JOHNSON'S LEADERSHIP OF RECONSTRUCTION Robert D. Sawrey Two DAYSafter Abraham Lincoln's assassination, William Henry Smith, a radical Republican and the editor of the Cincinnati Daily Gazette, expressed a common view in Ohio ofAndrewJohnson, the new president, when he wrote, "there is ... no man who understands their [southern leaders'] character, or who is better qualified by observation to judge the best mode of dealing with them than he. . . . We are confident that the executive office is safe in his hands, and that his course will at once bring assurance of it to the country."1 Less than one year later another Ohio Republican tellingly conveyed his frustrations with Johnson to James Garfield, suggesting that if the president did not work more closely with Congress, Garfield and Congress would "have no alternative but to open the war with him at once, and givehim thehot end of the poker." An Ohioan from the Western Reserve concluded with a tone of bewildered rage that Johnson was "determined to 'write himself down an Ass.' "2 1 Cincinnati Daily Gazette, Apr. 17, 1865. For other examples of Republican editorial supportin early 1865 forJohnson see ClevelandLeader, Apr. 21, 1865; Ohio StateJournal, Apr. 17, 1865; Lancaster Gazette, Apr. 20, 1865; Scioto Gazette, Apr. 25, 1865; Eaton Weekly Register, Apr. 20, 1865; Sandusky Daily Commercial Register, Apr. 21, 1865; Portage County Democrat, Apr. 19, 1865; Dayton Daily Journal, Apr. 24, 1985. For examples of individual expressions of support for the new president, see Tobias Plants to Andrew Johnson, Apr. 15, 1865, and James Ashley to Andrew Johnson, Apr. 15, 1865, Andrew Johnson Papers, Library ofCongress; Robert Schenck to W. D. Bickham, Apr. 20, 1865, W. D. Bickham Papers, Dayton Public Library, Dayton, Ohio; Aaron F. Perry to Jacob D. Cox, May 13, 1865, Jacob D, Cox Papers, Oberlin College Library, Oberlin, Ohio; William Johnson to Rutherford B. Hayes, Apr. 22, 1865, Rutherford B. Hayes Papers, Rutherford B. Hayes Memorial Library, Fremont, Ohio. 2 W. C. Howells to James A. Garfield, Mar. 26, 1866, James A. Garfield Papers, Library of Congress; B. F. Hoffman to Garfield, Apr. 30, 1866, ibid. Civil War History, Vol. XXXIII, No. 2, © 1987 by The Kent State University Press 156CIVIL WAR HISTORY From his first days in the presidency and throughout the remainder of 1865 Andrew Johnson received great support in Ohio. For example, when in late May he announced his reconstruction policy, Ohio Republicans , or Unionists as they continued to call themselves, applauded heartily. Such phrases as "a generous offer," "wise and just," and "worthy of Lincoln" appeared in a high percentage of editorials written about his North Carolina and Amnesty proclamations.3 However, these editors also expected that Johnson would be extremely stingy in granting pardons to the fourteen groups he excluded from his general amnesty grant and that, if problems arose in the execution of his plans, Johnson would be willing to amend his policy in order to gain a secure future for the country. In addition, Ohioans endorsed the president's plan to leave the question of black suffrage to southerners. Johnson's support on this matter crossed party lines with numerous Unionists and virtually all Democrats in general agreement that only states could determine suffrage qualifications.4 Even those Unionists who favored the enfranchisement of adult male freedmen generally muted their criticism because they correctly concluded that attacks upon the president would not find sympathy among the mass of Ohioans. While Johnson had been developing his reconstruction policy, a similar process had been occurring in Ohio, where the public debated the numerous issues involved in the reunification of the country. Ohioans generally agreed that a small group of planters who owned large numbers of slaves had led a reluctant South into rebellion. This had been possible because of the tremendous political, economic, and social power of these planters. The best way to crush the influence of that elite was to end slavery and to grant blacks a bare minimum of civil rights so that they could protect their freedom and not fall again under the control of the planters. This conclusion about the power of the planter...

Rosebery and Liberal Imperialism, 1899-1903

“Liberal Imperialism” has been a confusing label ever since the Boer War, when it was first widely applied. It was then a source of controversy within the Liberal party, much of it centering around Lord Rosebery, who introduced the term. Some of his contemporaries considered Liberal Imperialism to be marked by dangerously aggressive policy, while J. A. Spender, who also lived through these years, later interpreted it as a revival of the Palmerstonian spirit. More recently historians have treated it as ideology. Bernard Semmel has called it “social imperialism,” placing its origins in the 1880's. G. R. Searle has argued that many of Rosebery's Liberal Imperialist ideas were part of an ideology of “national efficiency,” a set of ideas that crossed party lines and that emerged in 1900 as a consequence of wartime failures. “Liberal Imperialism” has also been used to refer more generally to the “imperialism” of Liberals before as well as after the outbreak of the Boer War. I shall argue that Liberal Imperialism is best understood, not as ideology, but as the rhetoric of party infighting during the Boer War, that it is best to confine the use of the label to the period of the war and its immediate aftermath, and that the spirit of the ideas used by Liberal Imperialists, particularly as regards their perspective on the Empire, was defensive and pessimistic. In these years the Liberal right — no less than the Liberal left, with its attack on “imperialism” — was engaged in reassessing Britain's world position.

Debate on health services in the European Economic Community: Why did Norway say no?

By a percentage of S3 against 47 of those who voted on September 25, 1972 (approximately 70 per cent of the electorate), Norway rejected full membership in the European Economic Community (EEC). This result came as a shock to the vast majority of those holding power and influence in Norway, including the leading political parties and organizations. The Social Democratic Party, with nearly half of the population behind it, and the National Federation of Trade Unions had made it a condition of loyalty to vote for full membership. The Conservative Party, with about 20 per cent of the voters backing it, had also taken a strong stand for full membership. The discussion for or against membership goes back to 1962–1963, and was resumed 2 years ago. A movement against membership had been built up from the grass roots, crossing party lines and organizations. The author discusses this unique situation, where overriding values and philosophies were able to unite a majority of the nation. All age groups and social classes were involved, although younger people probably were in majority. In the author's view, this movement had very little to do with narrow nationalism or fear of contact. On the contrary, it was a forward-looking movement, motivated, among other factors, by the importance of international cooperation at a global level; by the feeling that the economic growth model of the Treaty of Rome was now outmoded; that the supplementary values to be created must be developed by decentralization in smaller units at a local level; that spreading alienation can only be counteracted by more active participation by and responsibility of the individual citizen; and that the bigger was not always a better unit. The victorious movement was, in fact, carried by a feeling that one had to break loose from the conventional development model and consciously try to lay the foundation for the coming postindustrial society.

The Development and Persistence of Ethnic Voting

Mass immigration ended fifty years ago, but national origins continue to be a salient dimension in many people's perceptions of themselves and of others. Where this salience is widespread, ethnicity plays a major role in politics. Ethnicity is often an important independent variable in voting behavior. “Ethnic voting,” as I shall call it, has two manifestations. (1) Members of an ethnic group show an affinity for one party or the other which cannot be explained solely as a result of other demographic characteristics. Voters of Irish descent, to take a familiar example, are more likely than other voters of similar economic status to be Democrats. (2) Members of an ethnic group will cross party lines to vote for—or against—a candidate belonging to a particular ethnic group.

A Comparison of Constituency Influences in the Upper and Lower Chambers of a State Legislature

T IS GENERALLY CONCEDED that the voting behavior of legislators is affected by both party and constituency influences. Some legislators identify themselves chiefly with their party, while others perceive their role as one of representing constituency interests.1 Many inquiries have been made into the relative merits of Burkean representation, accountability to constituency, and party responsibility, but few studies have bothered to investigate the actual extent of insurgency, constituency influences, and party voting in legislative bodies.2 The only published article to date which has examined the effect of constituency influences on party cohesion in the voting behavior of state legislators, is a study of the Massachusetts House of Representatives by Duncan MacRae, Jr.3 Working with roll-call votes on legislation which appeared to reflect socio-economic differences, MacRae found that legislators representing districts typical of those which generally elected members of their party on a home-owner occupancy index tended to display greater party loyalty than legislators elected by districts atypical of their party. MacRae also found that representatives whose previous election margins were narrow tended to cross party lines more often than representatives elected by wide margins. The study summarized by this paper produced similar findings regarding the 1957 session of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, but, perhaps more significantly, found the patterns which described legislative voting behavior in the lower chambers in both Massachusetts and Pennsylvania to be inappropriate for describing voting behavior in the Pennsylvania State Senate. Variations in the voting behavior of members of the upper and lower chambers of a legislature should not confound readers of the American classics. The Federalist Papers discuss the probable behavior of members of the separate chambers and in so doing inadvertently suggest certain hypotheses capable of verification. These hypotheses will be examined later.

The Motivational Basis of Straight and Split Ticket Voting

The extraordinary discrepancy in the popular vote for President Eisenhower and the vote for Republican Congressmen in the 1956 election dramatized a privilege which the American electorate exercises almost uniquely in the democratic world, the right of voters to split their ballots between the candidates of opposing political parties.The fact of ballot splitting in American elections is of course a commonplace but it has not been widely studied and it is not well understood. The aggregative statistics from the 1956 election make it apparent that millions of voters must have chosen President Eisenhower and a Democratic congressman but they do not tell us how many voters split their ballots in the opposite direction or how many voted for president but not for Congressman, and they give us only the vaguest indications of what was in the voters' minds when they crossed party lines in marking their ballots.

The Relation Between Roll Call Votes and Constituencies in the Massachusetts House of Representatives

A major concern of political theorists has been the definition of the proper role of legislators in relation to their constituencies. Yet relatively little analysis has been made of the uniformities of behavior that actually prevail in these relations. Such uniformities, if they could be found, would bear directly on the theory of the party system, on speculation about the nature of representative government, and on the feasibility of proposals for a reordering of party practices.It has been shown that the tendencies of Congressmen to vote with their party or to cross party lines are associated with the similarity or dissimilarity between party policy and presumed interest of constituency. One aim of this study is to test the applicability of this proposition to the Massachusetts House of Representatives, by examination of the relation between roll-call votes and constituency characteristics. The evidence indicates that a similar relation exists in this body, and has been present consistently throughout the last two decades.