Partisan Behavior Research Articles

A influência da dinâmica eleitoral sobre o comportamento dos partidos na Câmara dos Deputados e no Senado Federal

This article discusses the impact of electoral dynamics on partisan political behavior in the Brazilian Congressional arena. Based on an analysis of voting and electoral alliances, the author shows that Presidential elections became efficient and influenced the parties' performance and alignments in Congressional disputes. She then proceeds to argue that repeat contestants in Presidential races behave more coherently and in a more disciplined way in the Congressional arena in order to maximize their party's electoral value, which is not expected of one-time Presidential contestants. The findings show that the partisan approach underlying the behavior of party leadership and delegations in the Brazilian Congress is explained by the electoral and organizational dynamics, and not only by centralization of the decision-making process.

Partisan Improprieties: Ministerial Control and Australia's Security Agencies, 1962–72

Partisan behaviour and abuses by intelligence and security agencies have often been attributed to the fact that agencies have become ‘out of control’ or ‘rogue elephants’. But a detailed empirical study of the politicization of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) over ten years shows that the agency was not ‘out of control’ but very much under the control of its minister. The partisan use of security information arose from directives issued through the ‘democratic’ control exercised by a government. On the basis of this study, prevention of abuses by tighter governmental control is unlikely to work. A combination of government control, autonomy of the agency and independent scrutiny by an inspector-general is more likely to succeed.

Taxation and Credible Commitment: Left, Right, and Partisan Turnover

Building on the fiscal contract literature, this paper argues that taxation is partly a game of credible commitment. Using data for 18 OECD countries, it shows that partisan turnover systematically affects the long-run equilibrium mix of taxes and services. When partisan turnover is low, more right-wing influence permanently increases corporate tax revenue and the corporate share of pre-tax income; more left-wing influence, by contrast, permanently increases consumption tax revenue and social spending. When turnover is high, even powerful partisans do not increase taxes that disproportionately affect their supporters. When partisans tax their own supporters, they raise more revenue, even when we account for some plausible benefits. Our theoretical conjectures are consistent with the pattern of partisan behavior within countries, not just between them.

Partisanship, Voting, and the Dopamine D2 Receptor Gene

Previous studies have found that both political orientations (Alford, Funk & Hibbing 2005) and voting behavior (Fowler, Baker & Dawes 2007, Fowler & Dawes 2007) are significantly heritable. In this article we study genetic variation in another important political behavior: partisan attachment. Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we show that individuals with the A1 allele of the D2 dopamine receptor gene are significantly less likely to identify as a partisan than those with the A2 allele. Further, we find that this gene's association with partisanship also mediates an indirect association between the A1 allele and voter abstention. These results are the first to identify a specific gene that may be responsible for the tendency to join political groups, and they may help to explain correlation in parent and child partisanship and the persistence of partisan behavior over time.

The Red-Blue Divide on the Bench: An Examination of the Effects of Selection Systems on Partisan Divisions in State Supreme Court Decisions

This study explores at a very basic level how the partisan behavior of judges manifests itself on courts that use different judicial selection systems. Specifically, it examines how different reselection systems affect judges' propensity to form partisan coalitions in criminal cases, by looking at the voting habits of the justices on several state supreme courts over five years. The evidence indicates that partisan elections appear to promote the appearance of party line divisions, while systems that require judges to be reappointed have no effect on the incidence of party line votes. The evidence also indicates that although retention elections do not appear to have any significant effect on the incidence of party line votes, and that nonpartisan elections actually tend to decrease the incidence of party line votes.

Partisanship, Voting, and the Dopamine D2 Receptor Gene

Previous studies have found that both political orientations (Alford, Funk, and Hibbing 2005) and voting behavior (Fowler, Baker, and Dawes 2008; Fowler and Dawes 2008) are significantly heritable. In this article we study genetic variation in another important political behavior: partisan attachment. Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we show that individuals with the A2 allele of the D2 dopamine receptor gene are significantly more likely to identify as a partisan than those with the A1 allele. Further, we find that this gene's association with partisanship also mediates an indirect association between the A2 allele and voter turnout. These results are the first to identify a specific gene that may be partly responsible for the tendency to join political groups, and they may help to explain correlation in parent and child partisanship and the persistence of partisan behavior over time.

'Overly Deferential to Executive Power:' Partisanship and Evasiveness in Justice Samuel Alito's Confirmation Hearing

In all President George W. Bush made three nominations to the Supreme Court: John Roberts, Harriet Miers, and Samuel Alito. I suggest that a key factor in the selection of each of these nominees was their stance on the issue of executive authority and the war on terrorism. While evidence suggests that on a number of issues Miers was a very different nominee, or at least a potentially very different nominee, from Roberts and Alito, I submit that on the issue of executive authority all three were seen by the Bush administration as reliable votes for the New Paradigm or Unitary Executive theory of government. In the following paper I conduct a content analysis of Alito's senate confirmation hearing. Did the Senate make the issue a priority? Was the issue treated in a partisan fashion? Was the nominee forthcoming or evasive in his responses on the topic? In order to answer these queries, I employ a content analysis of the questioning behavior of the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Recent news accounts of warrantless wiretapping and torture increased the issue's value as senators used executive-authority exchanges to signal constituents and score points with their colleagues. I find that of the substantive issues discussed, executive authority matters were addressed as much as abortion and both outpaced all other substantive issues that were raised. Furthermore, executive authority issues were treated in a partisan fashion with Democrats far more likely to raise the issue than Republicans and far more likely to be skeptical and critical in their remarks then their GOP colleagues who were almost always positive and supportive of the Bush administration and the nominee. Ultimately, my results provide support for recent studies that suggest senators engage in strategic and partisan behavior in the confirmation process.

The Dynamics of Partisan Behavior: CPG in the House and in the Districts 1982-2000

This study uses congressional district data to explore the relationship between electoral constituencies and legislative behavior. We demonstrate a relationship between conditional party government (CPG) and the fit between members' party affiliation and their districts. This suggests that CPG may be partly driven by members' response to district preferences. As majority party members' districts become increasingly supportive of their party, members may support the delegation of power to their party leadership in order to move outcomes away from the chamber median.

Elite Opinion Differences and Partisanship in Congressional Foreign Policy, 1975-1996

Why are some foreign policy votes partisan and others bipartisan? The authors argue that an electoral connection drives partisanship in congressional foreign policy voting. Members of Congress depend on core supporters for mobilization and money, and primary voters are likely to follow the opinion cues of partisan elites; as a result, when Republican and Democratic opinion elites hold more distinct views on an issue, one may expect to observe more partisan behavior in Congress on both low and high-politics foreign policy issues. An empirical analysis of elite public opinion and congressional voting on foreign policy issues for six Congresses between 1975 and 1996 supports the elite opinion cleavage argument.

Electoral Institutions and the Evolution of Partisan Conventions, 1880-1940

This article examines variation in partisanship levels across the United States between 1880 and 1940 and suggests that the introduction of three electoral laws in this time period—party registration, primaries and secret ballots—can explain the geographic variation in partisanship levels across the United States during this era. Specifically, the article argues that the introduction of party registration increased the observability of partisan behavior; and this, in turn, increased partisanship strength in the states in which party registration was introduced. Conversely, primaries and secret ballots reduced the observability of partisan actions, which consequently weakened the level of partisanship. The authors test their theoretical predictions on aggregate levels of split-ticket voting across the United States between 1880 and 1940. The authors find considerable support for their predictions in time-series cross-section (TSCS) estimates of the effects of electoral institutions on levels of partisanship across states, support undiminished after corrections for endogeneity and selection bias.

Looking for Standards (in All the Wrong Places): Partisan Gerrymandering Claims after Vieth

In 1986, the Supreme Court held that it would entertain claims that a legislative decision to redistrict legislative seats to give unfair advantage to one major political party over the other could violate the United States Constitution's Equal Protection Clause. But the Court's fractured decision in Davis v. Bandemer that such claims were justiciable resulted in virtually no successful claims in the lower courts.In Vieth v. Jubelirer, 124 S. Ct. 1769 (2004), the Court revisited the issue. The case was a 4-1-4 split. Four Justices signed a plurality opinion stating the view that partisan gerrymandering claims should be considered nonjusticiable because of the absence of a standard for separating permissible from impermissible consideration of party affiliation of voters in the redistricting enterprise. Four Justices would have adopted one of three invigorated tests to police partisan gerrymandering. Justice Kennedy, writing only for himself, agreed with the four dissenters that partisan gerrymandering cases remain justiciable. But he also agreed with the four Justices in the plurality that the Vieth plaintiffs' claim must fail because no one has articulated thus far judicially manageable standards for partisan gerrymandering claims. He suggested a standard might emerge from historical discussions of districting practices, better computer technology, or shifting to a First Amendment analysis.Part I of this Article surveys the five opinions in Vieth, focusing on Justice Kennedy's pivotal opinion. Part II explains why Justice Kennedy is unlikely to find a judicially manageable standard for partisan gerrymandering in history, technology, or the First Amendment, given his rejection of vote dilution, expressive harm, conflict of interest, and improper motive tests proposed by the Vieth plaintiffs and dissenters. Finally, Part III endorses Justice Kennedy's decision to leave the door open to future partisan gerrymandering cases. It explains that the judicial manageability debate in Vieth conflates two separate concerns: one about consistency of result across the courts and a second about the justifiability of a standard for judging partisan gerrymandering claims. The consistency of result concern is overblown, because the Court could rather easily come up with an easily administrable partisan gerrymandering standard. But the Court should refrain from coming up with such a standard until it could be justified by an emerging social consensus regarding proper and improper consideration of voter party identification in redistricting. If consensus emerges, the Court may embrace it. Until then, the matter should be left to the political processes, which have a number of tools to control egregious partisan behavior.

Looking for Standards (in All the Wrong Places): Partisan Gerrymandering Claims after Vieth

In 1986, the Supreme Court held that it would entertain claims that a legislative decision to redistrict legislative seats to give unfair advantage to one major political party over the other could violate the United States Constitution's Equal Protection Clause. But the Court's fractured decision in Davis v. Bandemer that such claims were justiciable resulted in virtually no successful claims in the lower courts.In Vieth v. Jubelirer, 124 S. Ct. 1769 (2004), the Court revisited the issue. The case was a 4-1-4 split. Four Justices signed a plurality opinion stating the view that partisan gerrymandering claims should be considered nonjusticiable because of the absence of a standard for separating permissible from impermissible consideration of party affiliation of voters in the redistricting enterprise. Four Justices would have adopted one of three invigorated tests to police partisan gerrymandering. Justice Kennedy, writing only for himself, agreed with the four dissenters that partisan gerrymandering cases remain justiciable. But he also agreed with the four Justices in the plurality that the Vieth plaintiffs' claim must fail because no one has articulated thus far judicially manageable standards for partisan gerrymandering claims. He suggested a standard might emerge from historical discussions of districting practices, better computer technology, or shifting to a First Amendment analysis.Part I of this Article surveys the five opinions in Vieth, focusing on Justice Kennedy's pivotal opinion. Part II explains why Justice Kennedy is unlikely to find a judicially manageable standard for partisan gerrymandering in history, technology, or the First Amendment, given his rejection of vote dilution, expressive harm, conflict of interest, and improper motive tests proposed by the Vieth plaintiffs and dissenters. Finally, Part III endorses Justice Kennedy's decision to leave the door open to future partisan gerrymandering cases. It explains that the judicial manageability debate in Vieth conflates two separate concerns: one about consistency of result across the courts and a second about the justifiability of a standard for judging partisan gerrymandering claims. The consistency of result concern is overblown, because the Court could rather easily come up with an easily administrable partisan gerrymandering standard. But the Court should refrain from coming up with such a standard until it could be justified by an emerging social consensus regarding proper and improper consideration of voter party identification in redistricting. If consensus emerges, the Court may embrace it. Until then, the matter should be left to the political processes, which have a number of tools to control egregious partisan behavior.

Inter-Party Mobility among Parliamentary Candidates in Post-Communist East Central Europe

The development of stable partisan commitments among political elites is crucial for party-system institutionalization in the new democracies of post-communist Europe. Little is known, however, about the partisan behavior of those who compete for national office. This study begins to fill this gap through an analysis of inter-party mobility among all candidates who ran for the lower house of parliament in two pairs of consecutive elections in Poland (1991–3 and 1993–7) and in three pairs of consecutive elections in the Czech Republic (1990–2, 1992–6 and 1996–8). We consider the overall extent of inter-party mobility, structural versus voluntary components of mobility, patterns of movement between types of parties and electoral payoffs of stable and shifting partisan affiliations. Although the overall rate of party-switching has declined substantially in the Czech Republic but not in Poland, changes in other characteristics of inter-party mobility indicate that party-system institutionalization is taking place in both countries.

The Invention of Party Politics: Federalism, Popular Sovereignty, and Constitutional Development in Jacksonian Illinois

Invention of Party Politics: Federalism, Popular Sovereignty, and Constitutional Development in Jacksonian Illinois. By Gerald Leonard. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002. Pp. x, 328. Cloth, $45.00.)In Invention of Party Politics, Gerald Leonard reinterprets origins of mass party competition by studying Jacksonian Illinois. Taking up a question posed initially by Richard Hofstadter in Idea of a Party System (1969), Leonard asks how mass parties emerged from antipartisan milieu of early national America. question is an important one. After all, mass parties came to dominate nineteenth-century politics, profoundly shaping history of country; and, as Hofstadter observed, they also facilitated operation of government under and established idea of a legitimate opposition.Leonard's explanation for emergence of parties, however, breaks categorically with Hofstadter. Hofstadter contended that a new class of professional politicians spurred rise of modern partisan politics in 182Os and 183Os. Not tethered to strong convictions or to unbending ideologies, these men organized assiduously and accepted idea of permanently competing with an opposition party. By contrast, Leonard argues that emergence of competing mass parties was an unintended consequence of a constitutional reform movement inaugurated by democratic at local and state level. Believing in existence of what they called the democracy, comprising those Americans who advocated political equality, majority rule, and states' rights, and believing that democracy should be sovereign, partyists responded to threat of neo-Hamiltonian loose constructionists, such as John Quincy Adams, by creating a party of democracy to protect federalism and popular sovereignty (5). According to Leonard, partyists paradoxically clung to sentiment because they did not recognize constitutional legitimacy of an aristocratic party, such as defunct Federalists, and they rejected idea that any party could represent a portion of sovereign democracy. Thus party of democracy-soon to be called Democratic Party-was antiparty party of Constitution (46).Antipartyists, unsurprisingly, objected to this justification for party, which seemed to be a hypocritical and unconstitutional assault on framers' attempt to establish a against parties. But antipartyists soon confronted necessity of organizing a party in order to fend off partyists; hence, they haltingly created Whig Party, and so began organized two-party competition. The origins of mass party competition, Leonard explains, thus lay in a battle not so much about social and economic positions for which Democratic and Whig parties are well known, but in a battle over question of party itself and its relationship to Constitution, neither party ever fully accepting constitutional legitimacy of other (14). With this argument, Leonard challenges not only Hofstadter, but also legion of scholars who have located origins of second Party System in social, cultural, or economic issues.Leonard makes his case by tracing how politicians justified expansion of partisan behavior in Illinois from 1817 to 1840. Although this focus may seem narrow, social and economic history of state is largely irrelevant to his argument because he maintains that Jacksonian politics in Illinois was essentially constitutional. While politicians necessarily addressed substantive policy issues, their central focus was the constitutional implications inherent in handling of each issue (117). Thus, to take one example, Leonard does not interpret campaign of 1840 as a debate over partisan economic policy, but rather as a partisan struggle to control historical interpretation of founding and development of American Constitution (176). …

Fiscal Policy and the Democratic Process in the European Union

The construction of a monetary union with a single currency in Europe raises serious concerns for those who understand the democratic process as one in which social groups compete on different ideological programs. This is because it increasingly constrains national governments of different partisan hues to follow similar fiscal and monetary policies. Recent empirical studies indicate that these concerns might be somewhat misplaced since there is evidence that partisan convergence on macroeconomic policy predates these institutional developments. One problem with these studies, though, is that they fail to include the electoral system as a constraint on partisan behavior. Since electoral systems generate centripetal and centrifugal tendencies, we should expect to find strong evidence for partisan differences only where electoral rules encourage dispersion. We test this argument using data on fiscal policy from European Union countries between 1981 and 1992. We find that there is still no systematic evidence for partisan differences. Given this, it is hard to see how EMU can add to the democratic deficit in the European Union.

Southern Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives

This book focuses on southern Democratic behavior in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1973. During this period, southern Democratic Representatives have contributed substantially to the rise of partisanship in congressional policy making. Basing his analysis primarily on data from surveys and congressional roll-call votes, Stanley P. Berard compares the voting behaviors of southern Democratic House members to those of their constituents across many issues.Berard argues that the increasing similarity between southern and northern Democratic constituencies is not strictly the result of southern districts becoming more like northern districts. Rather, southern district electorates who support Democratic candidates and are politically active on their behalf have become more like activist northern Democratic constituents because the most conservative southerners support Democratic congressional candidates with diminishing frequency. Through this analysis, the book expands the theory of conditional party government, an important approach to the study of partisan behavior in the House.

Reexamining the Politics of Talk: Partisan Rhetoric in the 104th House

Drawing off the work of Maltzman and Sigelman (1996), this paper looks at the propensity of members to speak on the House floor during minute speeches in the 104th Congress. I used a negative binomial event count model to predict not only who will participate in one in general, but also who will engage in partisan rhetoric, which was such an important aspect of the volatile 104th Congress. The model finds that, while general participation can be predicted, we can also use a number of explanatory variables, such as tenure, electoral insecurity, ideological intensity, party rank, constituency time zone, and party identification to understand why some members engage in partisan rhetoric during minutes and why others do not. The findings have implications both for understanding partisan behavior in the 104th Congress and for understanding and predicting minute speaking practices in the future.

Class, Race Issues, and Declining White Support for the Democratic Party in the South

The Democratic Party in the South has experienced a major loss of white voters in recent decades. Two major hypotheses have been proposed to explain this change. The dominant explanation in recent years has been that race issues have driven whites from the Democratic Party in the South. In this view, defections from the Democratic Party have occurred because whites oppose the party's positions on race issues. In contrast, others have suggested that class divisions have emerged as important, with affluent whites increasingly supportive of the Republican Party because they find its positions more compatible with their interests. Using NES data, this article assesses the evidence for these hypotheses, examining the impact of income position and race issues on partisan behavior since 1952. While both factors affect partisan support, income has come to have a relatively greater effect on partisan support than race issues. The evidence clearly indicates that class divisions in the South have steadily increased and that affluent whites have steadily shifted to the Republican Party. The implications are significant for understanding the dramatic changes in the South in recent decades. Much has been made of the tensions over race issues, and the findings presented here lend further support to the importance of race issues in southern electoral politics. However, these findings also suggest that class divisions are a steadily increasing source of political cleavage in this region. The current state of electoral politics in the South cannot be properly understood unless both of these factors are taken into account.

Rating the Chancellors and Their Budgets

The annual budget presentation is one of the most important forms of public, partisan behaviour in a parliamentary democracy. As such, it should share many features with the addresses of US presidents, including their presumed efficacy. Yet public reactions to budget presentations have been studied only indirectly, and a link between these reactions and government standing has not been established. We use Gallup data over four decades to investigate how voters assess Chancellors of the Exchequer and their budgets. We find that voters' assessments are a product of the performance of the economy, the content of the budget, the media's reaction to the budget and political factors, and are not simply derivative of general feelings about the government in power or intended vote. While developed independently, evaluations of the Chancellor and the budget affect short-term voting intentions of the public. Thus, in unitary, parliamentary governments, as in federal and presidential systems, voters use more than one focal point (in a single party) to evaluate the government and its actions.

Conditional Party Government and Member Turnout on Senate Recorded Votes, 1873-1935

According to the conditional party government thesis, party members bond or precommit themselves to supporting party positions under certain circumstances. A test of this thesis asks whether party members are more likely to participate in a roll call vote when the question has been identified by party leaders as important to the party. We show that party leadership signals systematically affected member turnout levels in the U. S. Senate during 1873-1935. On average, two-party turnout on party-salient votes rose by more than five members during 1873-1923 and more than three members during 1923-35 relative to nonsalient votes. These results also provide evidence of cohesive partisan behavior in the Senate well before the parties began the regular practice of designating floor leaders and whips.