IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/pubcho/v165y2015i1p25-43.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Jeffords switch and legislator rolls in the U.S. Senate

Author

Listed:
  • Chris Den Hartog
  • Nathan Monroe

Abstract

On May 24, 2001 United States Senator James Jeffords announced that he was switching from Republican to independent and would vote with Democrats on organizational matters (i.e. votes deciding party membership and majority party status), effectively taking majority party control of the Senate from the Republicans and giving it to the Democrats. This created an unusually well controlled quasi-experimental opportunity for learning about the role of parties in the Senate—it held most important variables constant while one variable, majority status, changed. We use roll call data to evaluate the probability of individual members of each party being rolled on Senate final passage votes, before and after the switch. We find that, contrary to conventional wisdom on the Senate, majority status is an important factor in Senate decision-making. Our results show that Republicans were more likely to be rolled after the switch than they had been before, and that Democrats were less likely to be rolled than they had been before. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015

Suggested Citation

  • Chris Den Hartog & Nathan Monroe, 2015. "The Jeffords switch and legislator rolls in the U.S. Senate," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 165(1), pages 25-43, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:165:y:2015:i:1:p:25-43
    DOI: 10.1007/s11127-015-0289-0
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11127-015-0289-0
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11127-015-0289-0?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fang‐Yi Chiou & Lawrence S. Rothenberg, 2003. "When Pivotal Politics Meets Partisan Politics," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 47(3), pages 503-522, July.
    2. Keith Krehbiel, 2007. "Partisan Roll Rates in a Nonpartisan Legislature," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 23(1), pages 1-23, April.
    3. Thomas Romer & Howard Rosenthal, 1978. "Political resource allocation, controlled agendas, and the status quo," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 33(4), pages 27-43, December.
    4. Jayachandran, Seema, 2006. "The Jeffords Effect," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 49(2), pages 397-425, October.
    5. Plümper, Thomas & Troeger, Vera E., 2007. "Efficient Estimation of Time-Invariant and Rarely Changing Variables in Finite Sample Panel Analyses with Unit Fixed Effects," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 15(2), pages 124-139, April.
    6. -, 1986. "Agenda = Agenda," Series Históricas 8749, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL).
    7. Clinton, Joshua & Jackman, Simon & Rivers, Douglas, 2004. "The Statistical Analysis of Roll Call Data," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 98(2), pages 355-370, May.
    8. Binder, Sarah A., 1999. "The Dynamics of Legislative Gridlock, 1947–96," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 93(3), pages 519-533, September.
    9. Nicholson, Stephen P., 2005. "The Jeffords Switch and Public Support for Divided Government," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 35(2), pages 343-356, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jonathan B Slapin, 2014. "Measurement, model testing, and legislative influence in the European Union," European Union Politics, , vol. 15(1), pages 24-42, March.
    2. 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.
    3. David M. Primo & Sarah A. Binder & Forrest Maltzman, 2008. "Who Consents? Competing Pivots in Federal Judicial Selection," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 52(3), pages 471-489, July.
    4. Jörg L. Spenkuch & B. Pablo Montagnes & Daniel B. Magleby, 2018. "Backward Induction in the Wild? Evidence from Sequential Voting in the US Senate," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(7), pages 1971-2013, July.
    5. Lehrer, Nimrod David, 2018. "The value of political connections in a multiparty parliamentary democracy: Evidence from the 2015 elections in Israel," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 13-58.
    6. Andrew Whitford, 2006. "Unitary, Divisional, And Matrix Forms As Political Governance Systems," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 10(4), pages 435-454, November.
    7. Shaheen Naseer, 2019. "Public Spending, Quality of Bureaucracy and Economic Growth: A Theoretical Analysis," The Pakistan Development Review, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, vol. 58(2), pages 203-221.
    8. Urs Fischbacher & Simeon Schudy, 2020. "Agenda Control And Reciprocity In Sequential Voting Decisions," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 58(4), pages 1813-1829, October.
    9. Myunghoon Kang, 2017. "Representation, sophisticated voting, and the size of the gridlock region," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 29(4), pages 623-646, October.
    10. Adam Ramey, 2015. "Bringing the minority back to the party: An informational theory of majority and minority parties in Congress," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 27(1), pages 132-150, January.
    11. Bernard Steunenberg, 2001. "Enlargement and Institutional Reform in the European Union: Separate or Connected Issues?," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 12(4), pages 351-370, December.
    12. Jan Sauermann, 2020. "On the instability of majority decision-making: testing the implications of the ‘chaos theorems’ in a laboratory experiment," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 88(4), pages 505-526, May.
    13. Shawn Patterson Jr & Thomas Schwartz, 2020. "Parties, agendas, and roll rates," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 32(2), pages 348-359, April.
    14. Krehbiel, Keith & Peskowitz, Zachary, 2012. "Legislative Organization and Ideal-Point Bias," Research Papers 2124, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    15. Justin Fox, 2006. "Legislative Cooperation among Impatient Legislators," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 18(1), pages 68-97, January.
    16. Bernard Steunenberg & Dieter Schmidtchen & Christian Koboldt, 1999. "Strategic Power in the European Union," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 11(3), pages 339-366, July.
    17. Keith Krehbiel & Zachary Peskowitz, 2015. "Legislative organization and ideal-point bias," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 27(4), pages 673-703, October.
    18. Krehbiel, Keith, 2005. "Pivots," Research Papers 1865r1, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    19. Ayranci, Evren, 2010. "Family involvement in and institutionalization of family businesses: A research," Business and Economic Horizons (BEH), Prague Development Center (PRADEC), vol. 3(3), pages 1-22, October.
    20. Agarwalla, Astha, 2011. "Agglomeration Economies and Productivity Growth in India," IIMA Working Papers WP2011-01-08, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, Research and Publication Department.

    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:kap:pubcho:v:165:y:2015:i:1:p:25-43. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.