Ideology Scores Research Articles

Valence and interactions in judicial voting.

The collective statistics of voting on judicial courts present hints about their inner workings. Many approaches for studying these statistics, however, assume that judges' decisions are conditionally independent: a judge reaches a decision based on the case at hand and his or her personal views. In reality, judges interact. We develop a minimal model that accounts for judge bias, depending on the context of the case, and peer interaction. We apply the model to voting data from the US Supreme Court. We find strong evidence that interaction is an important factor across natural courts from 1946 to 2021. We also find that, after accounting for interaction, the recovered biases differ from highly cited ideological scores. Our method exemplifies how physics and complexity-inspired modelling can drive the development of theoretical models and improved measures for political voting. This article is part of the theme issue 'A complexity science approach to law and governance'.

A Study of the Asymmetric Polarization of Congressional Partisan Politics Based on the Ideological Scores of Challengers and Incumbents in Both Parties in the United States

A Study of the Asymmetric Polarization of Congressional Partisan Politics Based on the Ideological Scores of Challengers and Incumbents in Both Parties in the United States

Relationship of political ideology of US federal and state elected officials and key COVID pandemic outcomes following vaccine rollout to adults: April 2021–March 2022

Scant research, including in the United States, has quantified relationships between the political ideologies of elected representatives and COVID-19 outcomes among their constituents. We analyzed observational cross-sectional data on COVID-19 mortality rates (age-standardized) and stress on hospital intensive care unit (ICU) capacity for all 435 US Congressional Districts (CDs) in a period of adult vaccine availability (April 2021-March 2022). Political metrics comprised: (1) ideological scores based on each US Representative's and Senator's concurrent overall voting record and their specific COVID-19 votes, and (2) state trifectas (Governor, State House, and State Senate under the same political party control). Analyses controlled for CD social metrics, population density, vaccination rates, the prevalence of diabetes and obesity, and voter political lean. During the study period, the higher the exposure to conservatism across several political metrics, the higher the COVID-19 age-standardized mortality rates, even after taking into account the CD's social characteristics; similar patterns occurred for stress on hospital ICU capacity for Republican trifectas and US Senator political ideology scores. For example, in models mutually adjusting for CD political and social metrics and vaccination rates, Republican trifecta and conservative voter political lean independently remained significantly associated with an 11%-26% higher COVID-19 mortality rate. Associations between the political ideologies of US federal elected officials and state concentrations of political party power with population health warrant greater consideration in public health analyses and monitoring dashboards. This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

Measuring Executive Ideology and Its Influence

AbstractExecutives are important elites, and ideology is important to elite behavior, but measurement challenges and a focus on the presidency have kept scholars from fully exploring executive ideology. This article advocates studying US governors to learn more about executive ideology. It provides an overview of the data scholars can use to measure gubernatorial preferences, and highlights Bonica’s campaign finance-based ideology scores (CFscores) as offering the greatest coverage and allowing common-scale comparisons with other actors. As a validation exercise, I find that CFscores explain within-party variation in other measures and predict the decisions that governors make when in office. Then, I run a preliminary test of the substantive importance of executive ideology. Four models explain state policy liberalism as a function of executive, legislative, and citizen ideology. Gubernatorial preferences emerge as most predictive of the three. These results encourage greater investigation into the role of executive ideology in the policy process.

Citizens United vs. FEC. on the Political Policies of U.S. Senators

The increase in corporate political donations brought by Citizens United vs. Federal Election Committee (2010) has given businesses more power. Using regression analysis, I analyzed the proportions of PAC donations from businesses to incumbent senators re-elected in 2018 and 2020 in order to determine a relationship between contributions to senators and political ideology scores. Republicans were largely unaffected by the portion of business PAC donations they received, but Democratic senators who received a larger portion of PAC donations from businesses became more neutral than Democratic senators who did not receive such a high percentage of corporate PAC donations. 

Agree to Disagree: Generational Differences in Ideological Values and the Impact on Depressive Symptoms

COVID-19 has significantly changed the way we engage in leisure. The influence of public health measures and messaging on leisure put older and younger people alike at increased risk of stress, anxiety, loneliness, and isolation. Despite these similar experiences, ageism and tensions between generations intensified during the pandemic. Thus, it is imperative to encourage strategies that foster connections and solidarity between generations, such as participating in intergenerational family leisure. Intergenerational family leisure can both attenuate negative outcomes heightened or created by the pandemic (i.e., risk reduction) and increase positive experiences (i.e., wellness promotion). However, it is important to recognize that intergenerational family leisure may not be available, or ideal, for everyone, especially during the pandemic. There are longstanding and pandemic-specific pitfalls to engaging in intergenerational family leisure that need to be considered. Further, the conditions and handling of the COVID-19 pandemic have complicated family leisure in paradoxical ways. Many contradictions emerge as we navigate social systems and personal experiences when engaging in intergenerational family leisure during the pandemic. This paper critically presents some of the potentials, pitfalls, and paradoxes associated with connecting multiple generations in and through family leisure during the pandemic.

Comparing Campaign Finance and Vote-Based Measures of Ideology

I show that campaign finance-based measures of ideology (CFScores) and vote-based measures of ideology (NOMINATE) have become entirely uncorrelated among Democratic legislators in the US Congress. This is not the case for Republican members of Congress or for state legislators of either party. I show this by comparing Bonica’s CFScores with NOMINATE scores from 1980 to 2018 and with state legislator ideology scores (NPAT) from 1996 to 2012. The decline in correlation begins in the early 2000s and approaches zero in 2014, where it has remained since 2014. These previously undocumented results illustrate a dramatic change among Democrats in Congress in the relationship between fund-raising and voting—two activities that consume a significant portion of legislators’ time and attention. Furthermore, scholars of representation need to be aware that different latent measures of ideology can lead to different conclusions about the relationship between legislators and their constituents.

The efficacy of measuring judicial ideal points: The mis-analogy of IRTs

IRT models are among the most commonly used latent trait models in all of political science, particularly in the estimation of ideal points of political actors in institutions. While widely used, IRT models are often misapplied, and a key element of their estimation, the item parameters, are almost always ignored and discarded. In this paper, we look into the application of IRT models to the estimation of judicial ideology scores by Martin and Quinn (2002). Building off of a replication and extension of Martin and Quinn (2002), we demonstrate that the often-ignored item parameters are, in fact, inconsistent with the assumptions of IRTs. Then, using a post-estimation fix that is designed to ameliorate the problem, we run the model again, generating new scores. We then compare our new ideal points to the existing ideal points and discuss the implications for both ideal point modeling generally and in judicial politics specifically. We conclude by replicating a prominent study in judicial politics that demonstrates how inconsistencies in the estimation of IRT models can be consequential and bring up concerns with the implications for what this could mean for the usefulness of scores estimated via IRT models.

Amateur hour: the impact of background on the ideology of members of congress

ABSTRACT Research has found numerous differences between amateur and quality candidates in the realm of campaigns and elections, but little research has been conducted on the ideological differences between the two classes of candidates once they enter Congress. Using ideology scores and background data from members of the House since the 103rd Congress, I demonstrate that previously serving in an elected office exerts a moderating effect on Representatives’ ideologies. These findings suggest that Representatives who had never served in elective government before joining Congress are less likely to compromise with the other party and thus more likely to add to Congressional polarisation. However, not all previous experience before joining Congress is equal. Previous experience serving at the local level, such as major or city council member, appears to have the greatest moderating effect on the ideology of members of the House.

A Summary Statistic for Political Ideology of Web Domains Using Differentially Private Engagement Data with Applications to Social Science One

This research note describes an estimator for inferring political ideology of web domains from hyperlink-level sharing data with differentially private noise (noise injected to protect against individual de-identification). As similar individual-level protections become increasingly common in large data releases, our proposed estimator and related analysis provide guidance for when such ideology estimates can be made and a blueprint for developing estimators robust to such noise. Applying this estimator to a large dataset of hyperlink sharing information, provided by the Social Science One consortium, we impute domain-level ideology estimates for 2,624 popular domains shared on Facebook and evaluate potential bias in this estimator in the context of differentially private sharing data. We demonstrate both analytically and via simulation that, for domains with sufficient amounts of sharing, bias in this estimator is neither statistically nor practically significant and provide insight on levels of sharing -- both at the domain- and individual link-level -- necessary for this estimator to yield robust estimates. Comparing resulting ideology scores to published estimates, computed without noise, validates our estimator as it achieves strong Pearson's correlation (>0.9) with prior methods. We then use this estimator to characterize the ideological distribution of the top-1% most shared domains in the US on Facebook and find that most content is centrist, 24% of domains lean liberal, and 14% lean conservative.

The color of shareholders' money: Institutional shareholders' political values and corporate environmental disclosure

In this study, we investigate whether and to what extent institutional shareholders' political values influence their investees' environmental disclosure and performance. Using employees' political donation data, we construct institutional investors' political ideology score, which higher (lower) value represents a more Republican- (Democratic)-leaning culture. We find that firms led by institutional shareholders with a more Republican-oriented political ideology are less likely to issue environmental reports. Such a negative effect is more pronounced for firms with institutional shareholders with long-term horizons, with high corporate Republican ideology scores, and without an environmental committee. We further find that institutional shareholders' Republican-oriented political values are negatively associated with their investee firms' environmental performance and green innovations. Overall, our results indicate that institutional shareholders' internal political polarization significantly influences corporate environmental disclosure policies.

The Changing Ideological Politics of U.S. State Firearms Regulation

Are the components of policy ideology in the American states fixed, or do they change over time? We document a change in the ideological loading and internal consistency of state firearms laws. While state policy liberalism has long correlated positively with restrictive gun regulation, this relationship strengthened over the 1986‐2016 period. Moreover, states' gun policy regimes have become more internally consistent since 1986, and newly salient issues, such as concealed‐carry laws and assault weapons bans, have been enfolded into the existing dimension of regulatory restrictiveness. This process also corresponds to a shift in the geographic bases of the Republican and Democratic Parties toward nonurban and urban areas, respectively. The changes in gun policy patterns across states reflect dynamic representation of voter ideology. The results suggest that certain modeling assumptions used to generate cardinal state policy ideology scores in prior research ought to be revised.Related ArticlesJoslyn, Mark R., and Donald P. Haider‐Markel. 2018. “Motivated Innumeracy: Estimating the Size of the Gun Owner Population and Its Consequences for Opposition to Gun Restrictions.” Politics & Policy 46 (6): 827‐850. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12276Smith‐Walter, Aaron, Holly L. Peterson, Michael D. Jones, and Ashley Nicole Reynolds Marshall. 2016. “Gun Stories: How Evidence Shapes Firearm Policy in the United States.” Politics & Policy 44 (6): 1053‐1088. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12187Tucker, Justin A., James W. Stoutenborough, and R. Matthew Beverlin. 2012. “Geographic Proximity in the Diffusion of Concealed Weapons Permit Laws.” Politics & Policy 40 (6): 1081‐1105. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-1346.2012.00399.x

Examining Political Trustworthiness through Text-Based Measures of Ideology

This work shows the value of word-level statistical data from the US Congressional Record for studying the ideological positions and dynamic behavior of senators. Using classification techniques from machine learning, we predict senators’ party with near-perfect accuracy. We also develop text-based ideology scores to embed a politician’s ideological position in a one-dimensional policy space. Using these scores, we find that speech that diverges from voting positions may result in higher vote totals. To explain this behavior, we show that politicians use speech to move closer to their party’s average position. These results not only provide empirical support for political economy models of commitment, but also add to the growing literature of machine-learning-based text analysis in social science contexts.

When left or right do not matter: Ideology and spending in Central and Eastern Europe

I reassess the argument by Tavits and Letki (2009) that in Eastern Europe in the 1990s and 2000s left-leaning governments were less likely to spend than right-leaning governments. I argue that the findings are most likely driven by time bias in their manifesto-based measurement of ideology. Starting in the mid-nineties, governments became artificially leftist, thus, the robustness of the relationship proposed by Tavits and Letki may be questioned. When adjusted for time bias, ideology does not influence spending in Eastern Europe. These findings have important consequences on the established literature linking ideology and spending. The findings also suggest that although manifesto-based measures of ideology have become widely used in time-series analyses, ideology scores at different times may not be comparable without adjustments.

Public positions, private giving: Dark money and political donors in the Digital Age

Dark money—campaign funds raised by 501(c)(4) designated non-profit corporations whose donors are exempt from disclosure—has become an increasingly large fraction of outside spending in American elections at both the state and the federal level. This paper makes use of the only publicly available donor list for a dark money group in existence today—that of “Americans for Job Security,” who contributed $11 million to two conservative-leaning ballot initiative campaigns in California during the 2012 elections. In comparing the ideological scores of donors of this dark money group to traditional donors to the two conservative propositions, I find a strong liberal tilt of donors to Americans for Job Security—indicating a social pressures motivation behind concealing one’s donation via a dark money group. These results also show disclosure laws have an effect on a donor’s calculus to contribute to a political cause.

We Were The Robots: Automation and Voting Behavior in Western Europe

We investigate the impact of robot adoption on electoral outcomes in 14 Western European countries, between 1993 and 2016. We employ both official election results at the district level and individual-level voting data, combined with party ideology scores from the Manifesto Project. We measure exposure to automation both at the regional level, based on the ex-ante industry specialization of each region, and at the individual level, based on individual characteristics and pre-sample employment patterns in the region of residence. We instrument robot adoption in each country using the pace of robot adoption in other countries. Higher exposure to robot adoption is found to increase support for nationalist and radical-right parties. Unveiling some potential transmission channels, higher robot exposure at the individual level leads to poorer perceived economic conditions and well-being, lower satisfaction with the government and democracy, and a reduction in perceived political self-efficacy.

We Were the Robots: Automation and Voting Behavior in Western Europe

We investigate the impact of robot adoption on electoral outcomes in 14 Western European countries, between 1993 and 2016. We employ both official election results at the district level and individual-level voting data, combined with party ideology scores from the Manifesto Project. We measure exposure to automation both at the regional level, based on the ex-ante industry specialization of each region, and at the individual level, based on individual characteristics and pre-sample employment patterns in the region of residence. We instrument robot adoption in each country using the pace of robot adoption in other countries. Higher exposure to robot adoption is found to increase support for nationalist and radical-right parties. Unveiling some potential transmission channels, higher robot exposure at the individual level leads to poorer perceived economic conditions and well-being, lower satisfaction with the government and democracy, and a reduction in perceived political self-efficacy.

The Trade Origins of Economic Nationalism: Import Competition and Voting Behavior in Western Europe

AbstractWe investigate the impact of globalization on electoral outcomes in 15 Western European countries over 1988–2007. We employ both official election results at the district level and individual‐level voting data, combined with party ideology scores from the Comparative Manifesto Project. We compute a region‐specific measure of exposure to Chinese imports, based on the historical industry specialization of each region. To identify the causal impact of the import shock, we instrument imports to Europe using Chinese imports to the United States. At the district level, a stronger import shock leads to (1) an increase in support for nationalist and isolationist parties, (2) an increase in support for radical‐right parties, and (3) a general shift to the right in the electorate. These results are confirmed by the analysis of individual‐level vote choices. In addition, we find evidence that voters respond to the shock in a sociotropic way.

More Than a Score: Interest Group Ratings and Polarized Politics

This article examines the origins and influence of ideological index scores—where liberal and conservative interest groups rate legislator performance on selected roll call votes. Two such groups founded in the mid-twentieth century—the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) and the Americans for Constitutional Action (ACA)—were crucial to the development of this type of metric, transforming roll call analysis from detailed tabular scorecards into streamlined percentage scores showing how often a lawmaker voted “right.” ADA and ACA scores have been heavily utilized in political science as proxies for liberalism and conservatism and used to demonstrate the growing polarization of the congressional parties. Archival evidence suggests, however, that those scores were intended to create the very phenomenon they have been used to measure. They were deeply political rather than objective metrics, which the ADA and ACA used to guide their electoral activities in accordance with an increasingly partisan strategic plan. Each group directed campaign resources toward incumbent lawmakers they rated highly, but they did so unevenly—with the ADA favoring liberal Democrats over Republicans and the ACA showing a preference for conservative Republicans over time. By rewarding favored lawmakers in their preferred party, and using scores to highlight and discourage ideological outliers, they hoped to reshape the parties along more distinct and divided ideological lines—to create more “responsible” parties, as prominent political scientists then desired.

Ideological influences on governance and regulation: The comparative case of supreme courts

AbstractA key influence on governance and regulation is the ideology of individual decisionmakers. However, certain branches of government – such as courts – while wielding wide ranging regulatory powers, are expected to do so with no attitudinal influence. We posit a dynamic response model to investigate attitudinal behavior in different national courts. Our ideological scores are estimated based on probability models that formalize the assumption that judicial decisions consist of ideological, strategic, and jurisprudential components. The Dynamic Comparative Attitudinal Measure estimates the attitudinal decisionmaking on the institution as a whole. Additionally, we estimate Ideological Ideal Point Preference for individual justices. Empirical results with original data for political and religious rights rulings in the Supreme Courts of the United States, Canada, India, the Philippines, and Israel corroborate the measures' validity. Future studies can utilize Ideological Ideal Point Preference and the Dynamic Comparative Attitudinal Measure to cover additional courts, legal spheres, and time frames, and to estimate government deference.