Legislative Shirking Research Articles

Proxy voting in the U.S. House of Representatives: Legislative shirking in new clothing?

New technological developments have heightened interest in understanding and evaluating new tools of participatory and representative engagement in the political sphere. Recent academic research in this area is mainly theoretical, and focuses on voters rather than legislators. This study addresses this gap in the literature by empirically exploring the unique case of proxy voting by members of the U.S. House of Representatives that was introduced as an emergency measure to allow the Congress to function during COVID-19. The core result from this study, given its finding that vote skipping during 2019 is positively correlated with the use of proxy voting during 2021, indicates that proxy voting in this case is connected to legislative shirking. Thus, it appears that the proxy voting mechanism introduced in 2020 via a U.S. House resolution represents a new configuration of traditional legislative shirking or vote skipping.

Proxy Voting in the U.S. House of Representatives: Legislative Shirking in New Clothing?

Proxy Voting in the U.S. House of Representatives: Legislative Shirking in New Clothing?

Political competition and legislative shirking in roll-call votes: Evidence from Germany for 1953\u20132017

We analyze the impact of elected competitors from the same constituency on legislative shirking in the German Bundestag from 1953 to 2017. The German electoral system ensures at least one federal legislator per constituency with a varying number of elected competitors between zero to four from the same constituency. We exploit the exogenous variation in elected competitors by investigating changes in competition induced by legislators who leave parliament during the legislative period and their respective replacement candidates in an instrumental variables setting with legislator fixed effects. The existence of elected competitors from the same constituency reduces absentee rates in roll-call votes by about 6.1 percentage points, which corresponds to almost half of the mean absentee rate in our sample. The effect is robust to the inclusion of other measures of political competition.

Testing legislative shirking in a new setting: the case of lame duck sessions in the Korean National Assembly

AbstractThis paper aims to test two types of legislative shirking in a new democracy, South Korea. Using the lame-duck sessions of the Korean National Assembly, we test whether a legislator shirks in voting participation and in voting decisions. We weave two competing motivations of legislative shirking in voting participation – that to secure more leisure time and that to utilize the last, valuable voting opportunity – into a synthetic hypothesis and test it with two-part hurdle models. To test a shirking in voting participation hypothesis, we analyze legislators’ choices on bills that are supposedly related to the interests of constituents or political parties. Empirical results strongly support our shirking in voting participation claims, while only partial evidence is found on shirking in voting decisions. The findings suggest that, besides the trade-off between labor and leisure, some legislators deem the lame-duck sessions an opportunity to express their own preferences unconstrained.

Testing the Median Voter Model and Moving Beyond its Limits: Do Personal Characteristics Explain Legislative Shirking?

ObjectivesThis study quantifies the quality of the median voter model (MVM) and analyzes whether personal characteristics explain legislative shirking.MethodsWe employ a natural measure for divergence between politicians and voter preferences by matching final roll‐call votes of politicians with referendum results. The relevance of personal characteristics for legislative shirking is analyzed by means of logit regressions.ResultsThe MVM outperforms a random decision benchmark when predicting the behavior of politicians regarding the revealed preferences of their constituencies, but the model fails to account for a substantial part of its theoretical prediction. Personal characteristics of politicians do not explain overall legislative shirking.ConclusionsPolicy predictions based on the MVM should be carefully considered because of failing convergence. Majority elections tend to crowd out personal characteristics of politicians as potential explanations for legislative shirking.

Parties, Term Limits, and Representation in the U.S. States

This research examines how severing the electoral connection influences legislative behavior. Unlike previous studies of legislative shirking, we argue for a more nuanced conceptualization that takes account of members’ electoral circumstances (beyond a dichotomous measure of term limited/nonterm limited) as well as the nature of the votes under consideration. This enables us to incorporate expectations of party influence into our model of legislative shirking. Our research demonstrates shirking among legislators leaving public office as they are no longer susceptible to party pressure, while those who face term limits and are seeking another public office may remain adherent to the party on votes most crucial to the party (i.e., procedural votes). Moreover, we find evidence that legislators who are no longer constrained by elections also exhibit a greater level of roll call abstention, although only those leaving public office demonstrate significant increases in abstentions on procedural votes. Thus, we may find very different shirking patterns among term-limited members depending on their future political ambition (or lack thereof) and also depending on the nature of the votes that we are examining.

Sweating the Vote: Heat and Abstention in the US House of Representatives

AbstractSeveral recent studies noted systematic links between weather conditions and voting turnout amid the mass public. This article extends this logic to the elite level by exploring the relationship between summer heat and abstentions in the US House of Representatives. In controlled multivariate regressions, heat is a significant predictor of abstentions across all votes held between 1991 and 2000. This finding provides new insight into legislative behavior as well as the motivation behind some abstentions, which could inform the understanding of the literature on legislative shirking.

Shirking the Initiative? The Effects of Statewide Ballot Measures on Congressional Roll Call Behavior

Do ballot measures affect congressional voting behavior? Examining the issues of gay marriage, campaign finance, and minimum wage, we test if the results of statewide ballot initiatives inform congressional roll call votes on legislation occupying the same issue space. Theoretically, we expect signals from ballot measures—which provide precise information about the preferences of a member’s voting constituency—reduce policy “shirking” by members. Our findings across the three issues indicate that ballot initiative outcomes alter the floor votes of members of the House, reducing legislative shirking, but we find that the educative effect of ballot measures is attenuated in the Senate due to institutional factors. We attribute the positive effect in House to the precise signal ballot measures provide members about the preferences of the median voter in their district.

Timely shirking: time-dependent monitoring and its effects on legislative behavior in the U.S. Senate

Studies of legislative shirking have made important contributions to our understanding of democratic accountability and representative government. In the literature, legislative shirking is defined as behavior that diverges from constituency demands and seen as the result of imperfect monitoring and ineffective punishment by constituencies. Most research has focused on ineffective punishment as the main cause of legislative shirking. In this study, we focus on the other side of the shirking story - imperfect monitoring. We argue that since information costs and constituency memory vary over the course of an election cycle, there should also be systematic variation in constituent monitoring over time. Furthermore, if constituent monitoring varies across time, and assuming that constituents are not the only cue that legislators rely on, we should expect time-dependent legislative shirking. We develop a simple theoretical model of legislative decision making with time-dependent monitoring, which we then empirically test using legislative roll-call data. Specifically, we look at how the policy positions of U.S. senators change over the course of their six-year terms. We find that a substantial number of senators engage in behavior consistent with systematic, time-dependent shirking. Furthermore, our results show that when senators shirk in a time-dependent manner, they systematically move toward extreme positions when constituent monitoring is low and moderate when it is high. Thus, it appears that constituents do provide a constraint on legislative behavior.

Delegation and Accountability

Critics of legislative delegation to the bureaucracy worry that delegation diminishes electoral accountability and exacerbates legislative shirking. This paper provides equilibrium foundations for such concerns in a model in which legislators are heterogeneous in their policy preferences and bureaucrats have expertise concerning the policies that best serve the public. We further use our model to address debates concerning the welfare consequence of judicial enforcement of the nondelegation doctrine. We find that when the risk of special-interest capture of incumbent legislators is high and bureaucratic expertise is limited, a ban on delegation would benefit our model's representative voter; otherwise, the representative voter gains from delegation despite the fact that it can be exploited by unscrupulous politicians.

Timely Shirking: Time-Dependent Monitoring and its Effects on Legislative Behavior in the U.S. Senate, 1981-2002

Studies of legislative shirking have made important contributions to our understanding of democratic accountability and representative government. In the literature, legislative shirking is defined as behavior that diverges from constituency demands and seen as the result of imperfect monitoring and ineffective punishment by constituencies. Most research has focused on ineffective punishment as the main cause of legislative shirking. In this study, we focus on the other side of the shirking story - imperfect monitoring. We argue that since information costs and constituency memory vary over the course of an election cycle, there should also be systematic variation in constituent monitoring over time. Furthermore, if constituent monitoring varies across time, and assuming that constituents are not the only cue that legislators rely on, we should expect time-dependent legislative shirking. We develop a simple theoretical model of legislative decision making with time-dependent monitoring, which we then empirically test using legislative roll-call data. Specifically, we look at how the policy positions of U.S. senators change over the course of their six-year terms. We find that a substantial number of senators engage in behavior consistent with systematic, time-dependent shirking. Furthermore, our results show that when senators shirk in a time-dependent manner, they systematically move toward extreme positions when constituent monitoring is low and moderate when it is high. Thus, it appears that constituents do provide a constraint on legislative behavior.

Legislative Shirking in the Pre-Twentieth Amendment Era: Presidential Influence, Party Power, and Lame-Duck Sessions of Congress, 1877–1933

In 1933, the Twentieth Amendment to the Constitution was adopted. Otherwise known as the Lame Duck Amendment, it reorganized the congressional terms of office and dates of annual convening, eliminating the short (or “lame-duck”) session that had existed up to that time. The amendment was the brainchild of Sen. George W. Norris (R-NE), who argued that lame-duck sessions posed a grave threat to democratic accountability and responsiveness, as they convenedafterthe elections to thenextCongress and thus were populated in part by members who were retiring or had lost their reelection bids. As a result, according to Norris, the potential for an agency problem in representation was great in lame-duck sessions. Using the literature on legislative shirking—especially the subliterature on last-term effects—as our theoretical backdrop, we investigate Norris's arguments in detail, examining whether his concerns regarding lame-duck sessions were justified. Using a variety of data and a number of tests, we find little systematic evidence to suggest that exiting members altered their behavior significantly (i.e., shirked) in their last terms in office. In short, the concerns that Norris expressed, such as excessive presidential influence in the legislative process and increased majority-party manipulation of the legislative agenda, were not in fact major problems in lame-duck sessions.

Much Ado About Very Little: Reply to Herron

While Herron (2004, Political Analysis 12:182–190) is correct that sensitivity to changes in underlying scale and how they affect estimates and inferences is generally important, our assumption in Rothenberg and Sanders (2000, American Journal of Political Science 44:310–319) that W-NOMINATE scales can be directly compared from one Congress to another to study legislative shirking is quite defensible because scale variability is not a substantial problem. Not only are the assumptions in our original analysis regarding variability very reasonable, because any variability is quite small, but effects on consistency are marginal and, to the degree that they are relevant, indicate that our test of the shirking hypothesis is conservative. Furthermore, even generous estimates of variability in W-NOMINATE between one immediate Congress and another have little impact on results. In addition, Herron's analysis includes an unaddressed censoring problem that again, while unlikely to have much substantive relevance, indicates that Rothenberg and Sanders have worked against themselves in trying to find shirking. In conclusion, the issues that Herron highlights are of marginal consequence for the original analysis and, to the extent they matter, only buttress the findings generated and the inferences drawn.

REPRESENTATIVE IDEOLOGY AND THE VOTE FOR WELFARE REFORM

ABSTRACTThis article examines the congressional vote for HR3734, The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. The primary concern is to identify the factors that had a significant influence over the voting decision, paying special attention to representative ideology measured by Americans for Democratic Action and American Conservative Union voting scores. An empirical model is developed and estimated using logistic regression. The model incorporates proxies for representative ideology, constituent ideology, constituent economic interests, and the potential for legislative shirking. The results indicate that representative ideology was an important factor in the vote, but that constituent ideology and interests were also influential. Knowledge of the pattern of voting on the original legislation should prove useful to policymakers as the need for further refinement of the welfare system becomes evident, as it almost surely will.

Severing the Electoral Connection: Shirking in the Contemporary Congress

Studies of representation focusing on legislative shirking tend to offer an interesting tension: when the opportunity presents itself, it seems that exiting members do not change their votinq behavior (ideological shirking) but do reduce their effort level by voting less (participatory shirking). Our analysis avoids the pitfalls of prior studies by defining a simple, quasi-experimental, research design contrasting those certain that they are seeking reelection with those sure that they are departing the House for the102nd, 103rd, and 104th Congresses (1991-1996). We measure changes in ideology and participation using all roll-call votes in the last six months of election years, controlling for possible member selection effects and short-term influences, and show that legislators are disposed toward ideological and participatory shirking while selection effects are unimportant. Thus, we reconcile results seemingly at odds and suggest that policies affecting member turnover, such as term limits, can interfere with representation. A fundamental issue concerning political representation is the extent to which the necessity of reelection constrains officeholders. If incumbents plan to retire, thus freeing themselves of their electoral shackles, or if they pursue higher office and face a distinct constituency, will they behave differently? Or do members continue to behave in the same manner even in the absence of an electoral connection to the districts they represent? Answers to such questions have important implications for how we understand and model the representative process. Additionally, they have ramifications for the likely impact of public policy choices that affect member turnover rates, such as the imposition of term limits, on the political system. A primary means of drawing inferences regarding shirking-which we simply define as legislator behavior that differs from what would be observed given perfect monitoring and effective punishment by constituents-is to determine if politicians change their behavior when electoral discipline is removed. Most notably, scholars examine members' actions during their last period in office, on the grounds that those voluntarily departing can behave according to a distinct set of preferences, even if they run afoul of their districts or of their electoral coalitions. Empirical results on final period behavior are voluminous and sometimes contradictory (Bender and Lott 1996). Nevertheless, two general inferences seem to have gathered support. First, there is little evidence for shirking in terms of vote choice (ideological shirking).' While, as we will discuss shortly, there are a variety of potential explanations for such nonfindings, one intuitive and frequently offered reason is that they reflect member-specific selection effects. This implies that

Voting on Abortion in the House of Commons: A Test for Legislator Shirking

Using an agency theory approach, this paper examines the tightness of the links in the relationship between Canadian Members of Parliament (MPs) and their respective constituents. The paper focuses on a 1988 parliamentary free vote on the abortion issue. It finds that MP voting on this issue did not appear to be influenced by the preferences of constituents, but was significantly influenced by the personal ideologies of the MPs themselves. Under an agency theory view, these results can be interpreted as evidence of behaviour by legislators. Futhermore, to the extent that legislator shirking was found to exist, this shirking was more likely in constituencies where greater constituent-legislator slack was present. Greater constituent-legislator slack lowers the political cost to the legislator of engaging in shirking, since such shirking behaviour is less likely to be punished by constituents.

A Test of Shirking Under Legislative and Citizen Vote: The Case of State Lottery Adoption

Abstract Legislators vote on numerous issues, many of which are not offered for citizen vote. As a result, most previous studies of legislative shirking have used only data on legislators' votes and the characteristics of the legislators' constituencies. The case of state lottery adoption allows a direct test of how well legislators voted according to the preferences of their constituencies, since both voters and legislators voted on the issue. In addition, the legislative vote on lottery adoption occurred before the citizen vote, thus forcing legislators to accurately forecast constituency preferences. Examining West Virginia legislators, I first find the lottery preferences of each legislator's average and core constituencies. I then compare each legislator's actual vote on lottery adoption to his or her predicted vote. After considering all possible determinants of legislators' votes, I find an average of 28 percent of West Virginia legislators still failed to vote according to their constituencies' ma...

The Political Implications of State Political Ideology: A Measure Tested

Abstract Four different state political ideology measures are estimated and evaluated on the basis of their reliability and consisteny. The state political ideology measure accounting for constituency economic interest, legislator shirking, and political party loyalty is found to be the one with the most predictive power. Using this preferred ideology measure states were classified according to their political ideology along a conservative‐liberal continuum. The state rankings showed there are distinct regional differences in ideology. The Northeast and Pacific regions are very liberal, the South and Mountain regions are very conservative, and the Midwest region is relatively moderate. States in the Mountain region are found to be the most ideologically homogeneous, while the more heavily populated states tend to be more liberal. In addition, the United States citizens are found to have a moderately conservative political philosophy. Finally, the results suggest that a Democratic candidate would need to win Illinois, California, and Ohio plus all the liberal states to become President of the United States. The 1996 presidential note sustains the analysis herein.

An Empirical Analysis of the Political Economy of Tariffs

We seek to analyze the determinants of senatorial response to “generic” trade bills that seek to impose restrictions on the lowering of tariffs. The analysis is based on the response of senators to the trade expansion acts of 1962 and 1974. In the recent past these have been the only bills that are “generic” in nature since they are not targeted at any particular industry. Within the same framework we also examine the issue of “legislator shirking”, a term used to imply the response of senators based on pure personal ideology rather than the interests of the constituents. Regression results show the growing influence of state specific factors and the diminishing role of party and personal ideology on senatorial response. Interestingly, we find that despite the similar generic nature of the two bills examined, the influence of personal ideology on the response of senators varies across the two bills examined.

On the (mis)measurement of legislator ideology and shirking

In this paper, we show that current statistical measures of legislator's shirking are implicitly based on the electoral concept of a unique majority rule equilibrium point in the policy space where elections are contested. We note that such equilibria do not exist generically and present statistical results showing that cross-sectional regressions where legislators' voting indices are predicted by district average demograhic and economic data are mis-specified. We also discuss a weaker equilibrium construct, the uncovered set, and present statistical evidence showing that differences in voting behavior between Senators from the same state are positively related to the heterogeneity of the electorate. We argue that current evidence alleged to show shirking by Senators is equally consistent with Senators who perfectly represent an idiosyncratic constituency that cannot be represented by district average data.