IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/pubcho/v63y1989i2p175-181.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Do legislators' votes reflect constituency preference? A simple way to evaluate the Senate

Author

Listed:
  • Robert Higgs

Abstract

U.S. senators frequently vote against the preference of their constituency, assuming that such a preference exists. Both of a state's senators represent the same constituency. Whenever they split their votes, one or the other is necessarily going against the constituency preference. For the sample of defense-related votes analyzed above, “misrepresentation” — either observable vote splitting or unobservable vote matches that go against the constituency preference — occurred at least 37 percent of the time, at least 46 percent on one vote. Although party differences accounted for more than two-thirds of the vote splitting, a substantial number of splits remained. Besides, a party difference for a state's senatorial pair is itself problematical. The method employed here can be applied easily to any data whatever on senatorial voting. Its application will show that, quite often, many senators depart from constituency preference. This finding refutes the hypothesis, popular in certain circles, that ours is a more or less “perfect political market” with little or no scope for ideologically driven voting by legislators. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 1989

Suggested Citation

  • Robert Higgs, 1989. "Do legislators' votes reflect constituency preference? A simple way to evaluate the Senate," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 63(2), pages 175-181, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:63:y:1989:i:2:p:175-181
    DOI: 10.1007/BF00153399
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/BF00153399
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/BF00153399?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. Peltzman, Sam, 1984. "Constituent Interest and Congressional Voting," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 27(1), pages 181-210, April.
    2. Kalt, Joseph P & Zupan, Mark A, 1984. "Capture and Ideology in the Economic Theory of Politics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(3), pages 279-300, June.
    3. Peltzman, Sam, 1985. "An Economic Interpretation of the History of Congressional Voting in the Twentieth Century," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(4), pages 656-675, September.
    4. Poole, Keith T. & Daniels, R. Steven, 1985. "Ideology, Party, and Voting in the U.S. Congress, 1959–1980," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 79(2), pages 373-399, June.
    5. Nelson, Douglas & Silberberg, Eugene, 1987. "Ideology and Legislator Shirking," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 25(1), pages 15-25, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Morong, Cyril, 1996. "Socio-economic elements in Public Choice research," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 25(5), pages 559-569.
    2. Eoin F. McGuirk & Nathaniel Hilger & Nicholas Miller, 2023. "No Kin in the Game: Moral Hazard and War in the US Congress," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 131(9), pages 2370-2401.
    3. J Stephen Ferris & Stanley L. Winer, 2018. "Political Competitiveness and Fiscal Structure: A Time Series Analysis. Canada, 1870 - 2015," CESifo Working Paper Series 7220, CESifo.
    4. Boadu, Frederick O. & Thompson, Marla R., 1993. "The Political Economy Of The U.S.-Mexico Free Trade Agreement: Analysis Of The Congressional Fast Track Vote," Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics, Southern Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 25(2), pages 1-9, December.
    5. Potters, Jan & Sloof, Randolph, 1996. "Interest groups: A survey of empirical models that try to assess their influence," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 403-442, November.
    6. Fredriksson, Per G. & Gaston, Noel, 1999. "The "greening" of trade unions and the demand for eco-taxes," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 15(4), pages 663-686, November.

    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. John Lott & W. Reed, 1989. "Shirking and sorting in a political market with finite-lived politicians," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 61(1), pages 75-96, April.
    2. Morong, Cyril, 1996. "Socio-economic elements in Public Choice research," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 25(5), pages 559-569.
    3. Bohara, Alok K. & Camargo, Alejandro Islas & Grijalva, Therese & Gawande, Kishore, 2005. "Fundamental dimensions of U.S. trade policy," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(1), pages 93-125, January.
    4. Robert Lowry, 1998. "Religion and the demand for membership in environmental citizen groups," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 94(3), pages 223-240, March.
    5. Li, Wei & Qiang, Christine Zhen-Wei & Xu, Lixin Colin, 2005. "Regulatory Reforms in the Telecommunications Sector in Developing Countries: The Role of Democracy and Private Interests," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 33(8), pages 1307-1324, August.
    6. Irwin, Douglas A. & Kroszner, Randall S., 1996. "Log-rolling and economic interests in the passage of the Smoot-Hawley tariff," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 45(1), pages 173-200, December.
    7. Mian, Atif & Sufi, Amir & Trebbi, Francesco, 2013. "The Political Economy of the Subprime Mortgage Credit Expansion," Quarterly Journal of Political Science, now publishers, vol. 8(4), pages 373-408, October.
    8. Atif Mian & Amir Sufi & Francesco Trebbi, 2010. "The Political Economy of the US Mortgage Default Crisis," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(5), pages 1967-1998, December.
    9. Irwin, Douglas A. & Kroszner, Randall S., 1996. "Log-Rolling and Economic Interests in the Passage of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff," Working Papers 124, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State.
    10. Dennis, Christopher & Medoff, Marshall H. & Magnera, Michael, 2008. "Constituents' economic interests and senator support for spending limitations," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 37(6), pages 2443-2453, December.
    11. Potters, Jan & Sloof, Randolph, 1996. "Interest groups: A survey of empirical models that try to assess their influence," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 403-442, November.
    12. Jannis Bischof & Holger Daske & Christoph J. Sextroh, 2020. "Why Do Politicians Intervene in Accounting Regulation? The Role of Ideology and Special Interests," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(3), pages 589-642, June.
    13. Dennis, Christopher & Bishin, Benjamin & Nicolaou, Politimy, 2000. "Constituent diversity and congress: the case of NAFTA," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 349-360, July.
    14. Rausser, Gordon C. & de Gorter, Harry, 1988. "Endogenizing Policy In Models Of Agricultural Markets," 1988 Annual Meeting, August 1-3, Knoxville, Tennessee 270460, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    15. John Lott, 1987. "Political cheating," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 52(2), pages 169-186, January.
    16. Werner Troesken, 1994. "The Institutional Antecedents of State Utility Regulation: The Chicago Gas Industry, 1860 to 1913," NBER Chapters, in: The Regulated Economy: A Historical Approach to Political Economy, pages 55-80, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Scott Crichlow, 2002. "Legislators' Personality Traits and Congressional Support for Free Trade," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 46(5), pages 693-711, October.
    18. Christopher John Boudreaux, 2015. "Democratic age and the size of governmen," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 35(3), pages 1531-1542.
    19. Gertrud Fremling & John Lott, 1988. "Televising legislatures: Some thoughts on whether politicians are search goods," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 58(1), pages 73-78, July.
    20. Stadelmann, David & Portmann, Marco & Eichenberger, Reiner, 2013. "Quantifying parliamentary representation of constituents’ preferences with quasi-experimental data," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(1), pages 170-180.

    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:63:y:1989:i:2:p:175-181. 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.