Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-ndmmz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-12T23:45:40.563Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Inter-Party Constituency Differences and Congressional Voting Behavior*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Lewis A. Froman Jr.
Lewis A. Froman Jr.*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Academic studies of roll-call voting in Congress have tended to stress two factors: (1) the substantial degree of party cohesion in Congress on most issues, and (2) the importance of constituency factors in explaining deviations from party votes within parties. These studies indicate that party is the single most important predictor of roll-call behavior, and that constituency factors explain most of the deviation from party votes. No such study, however, describes constituency differences between Democrats and Republicans on the national level—that is, inter-party differences on constituency variables as opposed to intra-party differences. We will attempt, in this study, to demonstrate that differences between Democrats and Republicans are not merely a matter of party label or ideology (few really contend otherwise), but that they are rooted in basic differences in the kinds of constituencies from which Democrats and Republicans come. We will then go on to show that these constituency factors are also important in explaining intra-party differences in voting in Congress, but only by way of supporting the hypothesis that party voting patterns reflect constituency differences.

The general theory underlying this analysis posits gross relationships between sociological variables and political behavior, especially in democratic systems which permit relatively wide latitude in political activity. Since shared attitudes about various problems confronting people are often the result of sharing similar environments, and since economic and social environments vary widely in the United States, it is not surprising to find people located in similar environments choosing up sides in similar ways on matters of public policy, and differing with those who do not share the same environment. These effects should be most noticeable in relatively small areas, such as congressional districts.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 57 , Issue 1 , March 1963 , pp. 57 - 61
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1963

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

The research reported in this paper was aided by a grant from the Graduate Research Committee of the University of Wisconsin. I wish to thank Rufus P. Browning, Ralph K. Huitt, and Samuel C. Patterson for suggestions and criticisms, and my research assistant, Josef Burger, for his hours of coding and machine work.

References

1 Turner, Julius, Party and Constituency: Pressures on Congress (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1951)Google Scholar; MacRae, Duncan Jr., Dimensions of Congressional Voting (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1958)Google Scholar; and Truman, David B., The Congressional Party (New York, 1959)Google Scholar. For an analysis of variability on issues see MacRae, op. cit., and Patterson, Samuel C., “Dimensions of Voting Behavior in a One-Party State Legislature,” Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 26 (Summer, 1962), pp. 185–201 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Other factors include leaders vs. rank-and-file, and state delegations, see Truman, op. cit.

3 For party differences in a state legislature see MacRae, Duncan Jr., “The Relation Between Roll Call Votes and Constituencies in the Massachusetts House of Representatives,” in Eulau, Heinz, Eldersveld, Samuel J., and Janowitz, Morris, eds., Political Behavior (Glencoe: Free Press, 1956), pp. 317–324 Google Scholar.

4 See, for example, Lipset, Seymour M., Lazarsfeld, Paul F., Barton, Allen H., and Linz, Juan, “The Psychology of Voting: An Analysis of Political Behavior,” in Lindzey, Gardner, ed., The Handbook of Social Psychology (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1954), Vol. 2, pp. 1124–1177 Google Scholar; Lazarsfeld, Paul F., Berelson, Bernard, and Gaudet, Hazel, The People's Choice, 2d ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1948)Google Scholar; Berelson, Bernard, Lazarsfeld, Paul F., and McPhee, William N., Voting (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954)Google Scholar; and Campbell, Angus, Converse, Philip E., Miller, Warren E., and Stokes, Donald E., The American Voter (New York, 1960)Google Scholar.

5 Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, 44, 1961 Google Scholar.

6 Cf. Dexter, Lewis A., “The Representative and His District.” Human Organization, Vol. 16 (Spring, 1957), pp. 11–16 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For initial data on the problem see Miller, Warren E., “Policy Preferences of Congressional Candidates and Constituents,” paper delivered at the 1961 Annual Meeting of The American Political Science Association, St. Louis, Missouri Google Scholar.

7 Turner, Julius, “Responsible Parties: A Dissent From the Floor,” this Review, Vol. 45 (03, 1951), 143–52Google Scholar.