INTRODUCTION

Thus far in this book we have focused on party roll rates, which indicate how frequently each party has suffered unwanted policy changes. In this chapter, we consider policy directions, which indicate which way – left or right – bills reaching a final-passage vote propose to move policy. The reader may recall that we first considered policy directions in Chapter 4, finding that the adoption of Reed's rules sharply increased the proportion of bills moving policy toward the majority party (leftward for Democratic majorities, rightward for Republican majorities). In the post-Reed era, our data showed that Democratic speakers preside over mostly leftward moves, while Republican speakers preside over mostly rightward moves.