IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/apsrev/v105y2011i01p151-165_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Parties, Pivots, and Policy: The Status Quo Test

Author

Listed:
  • RICHMAN, JESSE

Abstract

Identifying policy status quo locations is a precondition for testing key predictions of many spatial models of legislative politics, but such measures have proved to be extremely difficult to construct. This study applies a novel technique that measures policy locations in relation to legislators’ preferences. The resulting status quo estimates allow for a direct test of the policy consequences predicted by pivotal politics and party cartel theories of legislative politics. The empirical tests indicate that parties interact with pivotal politics to contribute to policy gridlock and shape policy change. By bringing pressure to bear on pivotal politics “pivots” and by blocking policy changes that would “roll” the party, parties increase the range of policies subject to gridlock in the American political system.

Suggested Citation

  • Richman, Jesse, 2011. "Parties, Pivots, and Policy: The Status Quo Test," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 105(1), pages 151-165, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:105:y:2011:i:01:p:151-165_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0003055410000638/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Thomas R. Gray & Jeffery A. Jenkins, 2017. "Unpacking pivotal politics: exploring the differential effects of the filibuster and veto pivots," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 172(3), pages 359-376, September.
    2. Krehbiel, Keith & Peskowitz, Zachary, 2012. "Legislative Organization and Ideal-Point Bias," Research Papers 2124, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    3. Ryan J. Vander Wielen & Michael J. Vander Wielen, 2020. "Unpacking the unknown: a method for identifying status quo distributions," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 182(1), pages 49-72, January.
    4. Jarron Bowman, 2020. "Do the Affluent Override Average Americans? Measuring Policy Disagreement and Unequal Influence," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 101(3), pages 1018-1037, May.
    5. Keith Krehbiel & Zachary Peskowitz, 2015. "Legislative organization and ideal-point bias," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 27(4), pages 673-703, October.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:105:y:2011:i:01:p:151-165_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/psr .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.