Hostname: page-component-77f85d65b8-zzw9c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-03-26T18:45:27.946Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Parties in Elections, Parties in Government, and Partisan Bias

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2017

Keith Krehbiel ,
Adam Meirowitz  and
Thomas Romer
Keith Krehbiel
Affiliation:
Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. e-mail: krehbiel@stanford.edu
Adam Meirowitz
Affiliation:
Department of Politics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544. e-mail: ameirowi@princeton.edu
Thomas Romer
Affiliation:
Department of Politics and Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544. e-mail: romer@princeton.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Political parties are active when citizens choose among candidates in elections and when winning candidates choose among policy alternatives in government. But the inextricably linked institutions, incentives, and behavior that determine these multistage choices are substantively complex and analytically unwieldy, particularly if modeled explicitly and considered in total, from citizen preferences through government outcomes. To strike a balance between complexity and tractability, we modify standard spatial models of electoral competition and governmental policy-making to study how components of partisanship—such as candidate platform separation in elections, party ID-based voting, national partisan tides, and party-disciplined behavior in the legislature—are related to policy outcomes. We define partisan bias as the distance between the following two points in a conventional choice space: the ideal point of the median voter in the median legislative district and the policy outcome selected by the elected legislature. The study reveals that none of the party-in-electorate conditions is capable of producing partisan bias independently. Specified combinations of conditions, however, can significantly increase the bias and/or the variance of policy outcomes, sometimes in subtle ways.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Political Analysis , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , Spring 2005 , pp. 113 - 138
Copyright
Copyright © The Author 2005. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Political Methodology 

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.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Aldrich, John H., Berger, Mark M., and Rohde, David W. 2002. “The Historical Variability in Conditional Party Government, 1877–1994.” In Party, Process, and Political Change in Congress, ed. Brady, D. and McCubbins, M. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 17–35.Google Scholar
Ansolabehere, Stephen, de Figueiredo, John, and Snyder, James M. Jr. 2003. “Why is There So Little Money in U.S. Politics?” Journal of Economic Perspectives 17: 105–130.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ansolabehere, Stephen, and Snyder, James M. Jr. 2000. “Soft Money, Hard Money, Strong Parties.” Columbia Law Review 100: 598–619.Google Scholar
Ansolabehere, Stephen, Snyder, James M. Jr., and III, Charles Stewart. 2001. “Candidate Positioning in U.S. House Elections.” American Journal of Political Science 45: 136–159.Google Scholar
APSA Committee on Political Parties. 1950. “Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System: A Report of the Committee on Political Parties.” American Political Science Review 44: Supplement.Google Scholar
Aragones, Enriqueta, and Palfrey, Thomas. 2002. “Mixed Equilibrium in a Downsian Model with a Favored Candidate.” Journal of Economic Theory 103: 131–161.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Austen-Smith, David. 1987. “Parties, Districts, and the Spatial Theory of Elections.” Social Choice and Welfare 4: 9–23.Google Scholar
Austen-Smith, David, and Banks, Jeffrey S. 1988. “Elections, Coalitions, and Legislative Outcomes.” American Political Science Review 82: 405–422.Google Scholar
Bartels, Larry M. 2000. “Partisanship and Voting Behavior, 1952–1996.” American Journal of Political Science 44: 35–50.Google Scholar
Black, Duncan. 1958. The Theory of Committees and Elections. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Brady, David, and Volden, Craig. 1998. Revolving Gridlock. Boulder, CO: Westview.Google Scholar
Calvert, Randall. 1985. “Robustness of the Multidimensional Voting Model: Candidate Motivations, Uncertainty, and Convergence.” American Journal of Political Science 29: 69–95.Google Scholar
Campbell, Angus, Converse, Philip E., Miller, Warren E., and Stokes, Donald E. 1960. The American Voter. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Cox, Gary W., and McCubbins, Mathew D. 1993. Legislative Leviathan: Party Government in the House. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Cox, Gary W., and McCubbins, Mathew D. 2002. “Agenda Power in the U.S. House of Representatives, 1877–1986.” In Party, Process, and Political Change in Congress, ed. Brady, D. and McCubbins, M. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 107–145.Google Scholar
Cox, Gary W., and McCubbins, Mathew D. 2004. Setting the Agenda. Unpublished manuscript, UCSD.Google Scholar
Damore, David F., and Hansford, Thomas G. 1999. “The Allocation of Party Controlled Campaign Resources in the House of Representatives, 1989–1996.” Political Research Quarterly 52: 371–385.Google Scholar
Downs, Anthony. 1957. An Economic Theory of Democracy. New York: Harper Collins.Google Scholar
Erikson, Robert S., MacKuen, Michael B., and Stimson, James A. 2002. The Macro Polity. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Erikson, Robert S., and Wright, Gerald C. 1997. “Voters, Candidates, and Issues in Congressional Elections.” In Congress Reconsidered, 6th ed., ed. Dodd, L. and Oppenheimer, B. Washington DC: Congressional Quarterly Press. 132–161.Google Scholar
Groseclose, Tim. 2001. “A Model of Candidate Location When One Candidate Has a Valence Advantage.” American Journal of Political Science 45: 862–886.Google Scholar
Herrnson, Paul S. 1989. “National Party Decision Making, Strategies, and Resource Distribution in Congressional Elections.” Western Political Quarterly 42: 301–323.Google Scholar
Hotelling, Harold. 1929. “Stability in Competition.” Economic Journal 39: 41–57.Google Scholar
Jacobs, Lawrence R., and Shapiro, Robert Y. 2000. Politicians Don't Pander: Political Manipulation and the Loss of Democratic Responsiveness. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Jacobson, Gary C. 1985–86. “Party Organization and Distribution of Campaign Resources: Republicans and Democrats in 1982.” Political Science Quarterly 100: 603–625.Google Scholar
Jacobson, Gary C. 2001. The Politics of Congressional Elections, 5th ed. New York: Longman.Google Scholar
Kazee, Thomas A., and Thornberry, Mary C. 1990. “Where's the Party? Congressional Candidate Recruitment and American Party Organizations.” Western Political Quarterly 43: 61–80.Google Scholar
Krehbiel, Keith. 1993. “Where's the Party?” British Journal of Political Science 23: 235–266.Google Scholar
Krehbiel, Keith. 1996. “Committee Power, Leadership, and the Median Voter: Evidence from the Smoking Ban.” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 12: 234–256.Google Scholar
Krehbiel, Keith. 1998. Pivotal Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krehbiel, Keith, and Meirowitz, Adam. 2002. “Minority Rights and Majority Power: Theoretical Consequences of the Motion to Recommit.” Legislative Studies Quarterly 27: 191–218.Google Scholar
Londregan, John, and Romer, Thomas. 1993. “Polarization, Incumbency, and the Personal Vote.” In Political Economy: Institutions, Competition, and Representation, ed. Barnett, W., Hinich, M., and Schofield, N. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 355–378.Google Scholar
Mann, Thomas, Malbin, Michael, and Ornstein, Norman, eds. 2001. Vital Statistics on Congress, 2000–01. Washington, DC: AEI.Google Scholar
Meirowitz, Adam. 2004. “Models of Electoral Campaigns.” Unpublished manuscript, Princeton University.Google Scholar
Miller, Warren E., and Shanks, Merrill J. 1996. The New American Voter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Osborne, Martin J. 1995. “Spatial Models of Political Competition under Plurality Rule: A Survey of Some Explanations of the Number of Candidates and the Positions They Take.” Canadian Journal of Economics 28: 261–301.Google Scholar
Schecter, D. L., and Hedge, D. M. 2001. “Dancing with the One Who Brought You: The Allocation and Impact of Party Giving to State Legislators.” Legislative Studies Quarterly 26: 437–456.Google Scholar
Schickler, Eric, and Rich, Andrew. 1997. “Controlling the Floor: Parties as Procedural Coalitions in the House.” American Journal of Political Science 41: 1340–1375.Google Scholar
Schofield, Norman. 2004. “Divergence in the Spatial Stochastic Model of Voting.” Unpublished manuscript, Washington University.Google Scholar
Shepsle, Kenneth A., and Weingast, Barry R. 1987. “The Institutional Foundations of Committee Power.” American Political Science Review 81: 85–104.Google Scholar
Snyder, James M. 1994. “Safe Seats, Marginal Seats, and Party Platforms: The Logic of Platform Differentiation.” Economics and Politics 6: 201–213.Google Scholar
Snyder, James M., and Ting, Michael. 2002. “An Informational Rationale for Political Parties.” American Journal of Political Science 46: 90–110.Google Scholar
Stokes, Donald, and Miller, Warren. 1962. “Party Government and the Saliency of Congress.” Public Opinion Quarterly 26: 531–546.Google Scholar
Wiseman, Alan. 2004. “A Theory of Partisan Support and Entry Deterrence in Electoral Competition.” Unpublished manuscript, Ohio State University.Google Scholar
Wittman, Donald. 1977. “Candidates with Policy Preferences: A Dynamic Model.” Journal of Economic Theory 14: 180–89.Google Scholar
Wittman, Donald. 1983. “Candidate Motivation: A Synthesis of Alternative Theories.” American Political Science Review 77: 142–157.CrossRefGoogle Scholar