IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/apsrev/v96y2002i02p367-379_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Influence of Party: Evidence from the State Legislatures

Author

Listed:
  • Wright, Gerald C.
  • Schaffner, Brian F.

Abstract

American legislative studies in recent years have been occupied to a large degree with the question of the effects of political parties on the policy behavior of elected legislators, with most of the research focusing on the U.S. Congress. We undertake a comparative analysis of state legislatures for a window into the character and extent of party's effects. Specifically, we compare the impact of party on the partisan polarization and dimensionality of campaign issue stances and roll call voting in the Kansas Senate and the largely comparable, though nonpartisan, Nebraska Unicameral. This comparison offers us a nice quasi-experiment to assess the impact of party by establishing a baseline condition in Nebraska for what happens when party is absent. We argue that party lends order to conflict, producing the ideological low-dimensional space that is a trademark of American politics. Where parties are not active in the legislature—Nebraska is our test case—the clear structure found in partisan politics disappears. This works to sever the connection between voters and their elected representatives and, with it, the likelihood of electoral accountability that is essential for the health of liberal democracy.

Suggested Citation

  • Wright, Gerald C. & Schaffner, Brian F., 2002. "The Influence of Party: Evidence from the State Legislatures," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 96(2), pages 367-379, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:96:y:2002:i:02:p:367-379_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0003055402000229/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. Per G. Fredriksson & Le Wang, 2020. "The politics of environmental enforcement: the case of the Resource and Conservation Recovery Act," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 58(6), pages 2593-2613, June.
    2. Fredriksson, Per G. & Wang, Le, 2011. "Sex and environmental policy in the U.S. House of Representatives," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 113(3), pages 228-230.
    3. Per G. Fredriksson & Le Wang & Patrick L Warren, 2013. "Party Politics, Governors, and Economic Policy," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 80(1), pages 106-126, July.
    4. Barth, James R. & Bolden, Nicholas & Joo, Sunghoon & Hilliard, Jitka, 2017. "Do Political Parties Matter for the Funding Status of State Pension Plans?," Journal of Regional Analysis and Policy, Mid-Continent Regional Science Association, vol. 48(3), November.
    5. Daniel E. Bergan, 2010. "Estimating the Effect of Tobacco Contributions on Legislative Behavior Using Panel Data," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 91(3), pages 635-648, September.
    6. Leandro M. De Magalhães & Lucas Ferrero, 2009. "Budgetary Separation of Powers in the American States and the Tax Level: A Regression Discontinuity Design," The Centre for Market and Public Organisation 09/225, The Centre for Market and Public Organisation, University of Bristol, UK.
    7. Shor, Boris & McCarty, Nolan, 2010. "The Ideological Mapping of American Legislatures," Papers 8-11-2010, Princeton University, Research Program in Political Economy.
    8. Leandro M. de Magalhães, 2011. "Political Parties and the Tax Level in the American States: A Regression Discontinuity Design," Bristol Economics Discussion Papers 11/622, School of Economics, University of Bristol, UK.

    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:96:y:2002:i:02:p:367-379_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.