IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/pubcho/v45y1985i1p3-17.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Congressional rationality and spatial voting

Author

Listed:
  • Gregory Brunk

Abstract

It is very difficult to demonstrate that representatives employ sophisticated cost-benefit calculations in evaluating constituent benefits when making many legislative decisions. This is because most modern American legislation is ambiguous about which constituencies will receive particularized benefits. This paper examines a series of locational rollcall votes in which the benefits going to constituents were obvious. In such cases representatives balance increases in voter support within their congressional districts and potential increases in their political power within Congress to be gained by vote trading. If constituency benefits are great, representatives overwhelmingly support legislation to provide such benefits. As the benefits decline, vote trading increases. Copyright Martinus Nijhoff Publishers 1985

Suggested Citation

  • Gregory Brunk, 1985. "Congressional rationality and spatial voting," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 45(1), pages 3-17, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:45:y:1985:i:1:p:3-17
    DOI: 10.1007/BF00163584
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/BF00163584
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/BF00163584?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. Riker, William H. & Ordeshook, Peter C., 1968. "A Theory of the Calculus of Voting," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 62(1), pages 25-42, March.
    2. J C Archer, 1980. "Congressional-Incumbent Reelection Success and Federal-Outlays Distribution: A Test of the Electoral-Connection Hypothesis," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 12(3), pages 263-277, March.
    3. Deacon, Robert T & Shapiro, Perry, 1975. "Private Preference for Collective Goods Revealed Through Voting on Referenda," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 65(5), pages 943-955, December.
    4. J. Archer & David Reynolds, 1976. "Locational logrolling and citizen support of municipal bond proposals," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 27(1), pages 21-39, September.
    5. Riker, William H. & Ordeshook, Peter C., 1968. "A Theory of the Calculus of Voting," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 62(1), pages 25-42, March.
    6. R J Johnston, 1978. "Political Spending in the United States: Analyses of Political Influences on the Allocation of Federal Money to Local Environments," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 10(6), pages 691-704, June.
    7. Susan Cowart, 1981. "Representation of high demand constituencies on review committees: A research note," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 37(2), pages 337-342, January.
    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. Eli Noam, 1982. "Demand functions and the valuation of public goods," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 38(3), pages 271-280, January.
    2. Cutler, David M & Elmendorf, Douglas W & Zeckhauser, Richard J, 1993. "Demographic Characteristics and the Public Bundle," Public Finance = Finances publiques, , vol. 48(Supplemen), pages 178-198.
    3. Nelson, Erik & Uwasu, Michinori & Polasky, Stephen, 2007. "Voting on open space: What explains the appearance and support of municipal-level open space conservation referenda in the United States?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(3-4), pages 580-593, May.
    4. Meya, Johannes & Poutvaara, Panu & Schwager, Robert, 2020. "Pocketbook voting, social preferences, and expressive motives in referenda," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 175(C), pages 185-205.
    5. J. Biegeleisen & David Sjoquist, 1988. "Rational voting applied to choice of taxes," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 57(1), pages 39-47, April.
    6. Sobbrio, Francesco & Navarra, Pietro, 2010. "Electoral participation and communicative voting in Europe," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 185-207, June.
    7. Cantoni, Enrico & Gazzè, Ludovica & Schafer, Jerome, 2021. "Turnout in concurrent elections: Evidence from two quasi-experiments in Italy," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    8. Robbett, Andrea & Matthews, Peter Hans, 2018. "Partisan bias and expressive voting," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 107-120.
    9. León, Gianmarco, 2017. "Turnout, political preferences and information: Experimental evidence from Peru," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 56-71.
    10. Ni, Xinwen, 2019. "Voting for Health Insurance Policy: the U.S. versus Europe," IRTG 1792 Discussion Papers 2019-012, Humboldt University of Berlin, International Research Training Group 1792 "High Dimensional Nonstationary Time Series".
    11. Abraham Aldama & Mateo Vásquez-Cortés & Lauren Elyssa Young, 2019. "Fear and citizen coordination against dictatorship," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 31(1), pages 103-125, January.
    12. Lirong Xia, 2020. "How Likely Are Large Elections Tied?," Papers 2011.03791, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2021.
    13. Ming Li & Dipjyoti Majumdar, 2010. "A Psychologically Based Model of Voter Turnout," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 12(5), pages 979-1002, October.
    14. Schnellenbach, Jan & Schubert, Christian, 2015. "Behavioral political economy: A survey," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 40(PB), pages 395-417.
    15. Alastair Smith & Bruce Bueno de Mesquita & Tom LaGatta, 2017. "Group incentives and rational voting1," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 29(2), pages 299-326, April.
    16. Stephen Coate & Michael Conlin, 2002. "Voter Turnout: Theory and Evidence from Texas Liquor Referenda," NBER Working Papers 8720, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Battaglini, Marco, 2005. "Sequential voting with abstention," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 445-463, May.
    18. Assar Lindbeck & Jörgen Weibull, 1987. "Balanced-budget redistribution as the outcome of political competition," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 52(3), pages 273-297, January.
    19. Klien, Michael & Melki, Mickael & Pickering, Andrew, 2021. "Voter turnout and intergenerational redistribution," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(2), pages 603-626.
    20. Londregan, John & Vindigni, Andrea, 2006. "Voting as a Credible Threat," Papers 10-04-2006, Princeton University, Research Program in Political Economy.

    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:kap:pubcho:v:45:y:1985:i:1:p:3-17. 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.