Nolan Mccarty
Biographic Data
| ID | 1080528 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Nolan Mccarty |
| GIVEN NAMES | Nolan |
| FAMILY NAME | Mccarty |
| SIGNATURE | MCCARTY N |
| AFFILIATIONS | Princeton University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0538-1928 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 49 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1951 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 48 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1996 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 17 |
Agenda Control under Policy Uncertainty
Models of agenda setting are central to the analysis of political institutions. Elaborations of the classical agenda‐setting model of Romer–Rosenthal have long been used to make predictions about policy outcomes and the distribution of influence among political actors. Although the canonical model is based on complete and perfect information about preferences and policy outcomes, some extensions relax these assumptions to include uncertainty abou…
Four Threats: The Recurring Crises of American Democracy
Learning from each other: Causal inference and American political development
Polarization: What Everyone Needs to Know®
The 2016 election of Donald J. Trump invoked a time for reflection about the state of American politics and its deep ideological, cultural, racial, regional, and economic divisions. But one aspect that the contemporary discussions often miss is that these fissures have been opening over several decades and are deeply rooted in the structure of American politics and society. Nolan McCarty's Polarization: What Everyone Needs to Know® is an accessib…
Can America Govern Itself?
Can America Govern Itself? brings together a diverse group of distinguished scholars to analyze how rising party polarization and economic inequality have affected the performance of American governing institutions. It is organized around two themes: the changing nature of representation in the United States; and how changes in the political environment have affected the internal processes of institutions, overall government performance, and poli…
Can America Govern Itself
Geography, Uncertainty, and Polarization
Using new data on roll-call voting of US state legislators and public opinion in their districts, we explain how ideological polarization of voters within districts can lead to legislative polarization. In so-called “moderate” districts that switch hands between parties, legislative behavior is shaped by the fact that voters are often quite heterogeneous: the ideological distance between Democrats and Republicans within these districts is often g…
Pivotal Politics, Partisan Polarization, and Policy Predictability
Traditional political economy models such as those founded on the work of Duncan Black and Anthony Downs cannot capture certain important features of the dynamics of policy outcomes in the United States. Because these models assume that policy change is directly responsive to the median voter, they cannot address questions about policy gridlock and drift. Because the Black-Downs model assumes that only the median matters, it assumes away other ch…
On the Theory of Parties
The theory of parties put forward by scholars associated with the University of California at Los Angeles argues that political parties are best viewed as coalitions of intense policy demanders. These policy demanders use their control of nomination processes to select candidates loyal to the groups’ shared policy priorities. By highlighting the role of groups, this theory has made a major contribution to our understanding of party politics, brea…
The Regulation and Self-Regulation of a Complex Industry
I develop a model of policy making in complex domains where bureaucrats find it very difficult to establish autonomous sources of expertise, so regulators are highly dependent on the regulated industry and its willingness to engage in self-regulation. In the model, a legislative principal decides whether to delegate the power to an agency to regulate the activities of a firm or industry. The policy domain is complex in that knowledge of the impli…
Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches
In Defense of DW-Nominate
Several of the articles in this volume criticize the use of DW-NOMINATE in historical work in American politics and suggest alternative approaches to the use of roll call voting data. While many of criticisms are certainly valid, their practical implications are often overstated. Moreover, the suggested alternatives are either impractical for most historically oriented scholars and or do not adequately address the underlying problems. Almost all …
Causes and Consequences of Polarization
Rarely these days does a news cycle pass without new stories of political dysfunction in Washington, D.C. Reports of stalemates, fiscal cliffs, and failed grand bargains have begun to erode the public confidence in the ability of our representative institutions to govern effectively. In May 2013, only one American in six approved of the way Congress has handled its job. Sadly, that level of support was a major improvement from the previous summer…
Congressional Polarization and Its Connection to Income Inequality: An Update
This essay updates our findings on political polarization in Congress and elite political actors who work through Congress to affect public policy. We also link various threads of our research with the other essays in this volume. We begin with a discussion of the methodologies that enabled us to identify the emergence of political polarization in Congress, and then turn to substantive results.
Solutions to Political Polarization in America
Political polarization dominates discussions of contemporary American politics. Despite widespread agreement that the dysfunction in the political system can be attributed to political polarization, commentators cannot come to a consensus on what that means. The coarseness of our political discourse, the ideological distance between opposing partisans, and, most of all, an inability to pass much-needed and widely supported policies all stem from …
Inaugural Mena Workshop Held
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A Primary Cause of Partisanship? Nomination Systems and Legislator Ideology
Many theoretical and empirical accounts of representation argue that primary elections are a polarizing influence. Likewise, many reformers advocate opening party nominations to nonmembers as a way of increasing the number of moderate elected officials. Data and measurement constraints, however, have limited the range of empirical tests of this argument. We marry a unique new data set of state legislator ideal points to a detailed accounting of p…
Why Hasn’t Democracy Slowed Rising Inequality?
Political Bubbles: Financial Crises and the Failure of American Democracy
Why Hasn't Democracy Slowed Rising Inequality
During the past two generations, democratic forms have coexisted with massive increases in economic inequality in the United States and many other advanced democracies. Moreover, these new inequalities have primarily benefited the top 1 percent and even the top .01 percent. These groups seem sufficiently small that economic inequality could be held in check by political equality in the form of "one person, one vote." In this paper, we explore fiv…
Does the US Media Have a Liberal Bias: A Discussion of Tim Groseclose's Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind
In Left Turn: How Liberal Bias Distorts The American Mind, Tim Groseclose argues that media effects play a crucial role in American politics. His case rests on three arguments: (1) that journalists tend overwhelmingly to be liberal rather than conservative; (2) that their innate political bias slants their views in empirically measurable ways; and (3) that this bias fundamentally shapes American politics, by bringing US citizens further to the le…
The Political Economy of Inequality and Redistribution
The literature on the politics of inequality and redistribution in advanced democracies has become very large in recent years. This article focuses on several areas where important new arguments are being put forward. It reviews recent work on the interaction of unions and employers, the role of political parties and electoral institutions, and the effects of racial and religious diversity. It also discusses the implications of recent work in beh…
Going to Extremes: How Like Minds Unite and Divide by Cass Sunstein
The Ideological Mapping of American Legislatures
The development and elaboration of the spatial theory of voting has contributed greatly to the study of legislative decision making and elections. Statistical models that estimate the spatial locations of individual decision-makers have made a key contribution to this success. Spatial models have been estimated for the U.S. Congress, the Supreme Court, U.S. presidents, a large number of non-U.S. legislatures, and supranational organizations. Yet …
Political fortunes: On finance & its regulation
Both during and after bubbles, political outcomes reflect the same forces that operate even in normal times. Such forces include decision-making based on ideologies – free market conservatism, egalitarianism, and populism. Political decisions (and non-decisions) also reflect checks and balances across branches of the federal government, across layers of government in a federal system, and institutional checks, such as bicameralism and filibusters…
Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches
The Ideological Mapping of American Legislatures
The development and elaboration of the spatial theory of voting has contributed greatly to the study of legislative decision making and elections. Statistical models that estimate the spatial locations of individual decision-makers have made a key contribution to this success. Spatial models have been estimated for the U.S. Congress, the Supreme Court, U.S. presidents, a large number of non-U.S. legislatures, and supranational organizations. Yet …
The Politics of Blame: Bargaining before an Audience
An important class of bargaining problems involve two negotiators who send signals to a third party. We show that these signaling incentives significantly influence (1) the proposals that they offer and (2) their decisions to accept or reject proposals. Consider the following case: Congress makes a take-it-or-leave-it offer (a bill) to the president, who either signs or vetoes it. A third party is uninformed about the president's preferences; how…
Bureaucratic Capacity, Delegation, and Political Reform
We analyze a model of delegation and policymaking in polities where bureaucratic capacity is low. Our analysis suggests that low bureaucratic capacity diminishes incentives for bureaucrats to comply with legislation, making it more difficult for politicians to induce bureaucrats to take actions that politicians desire. Consequently, when bureaucratic capacity is low, standard principles in the theoretical literature on delegation no longer hold. …
The Hunt for Party Discipline in Congress
We analyze party discipline in the House of Representatives between 1947 and 1998. The effects of party pressures can be represented in a spatial model by allowing each party to have its own cutting line on roll call votes. Adding a second cutting line makes, at best, a marginal improvement over the standard single-line model. Analysis of legislators who switch parties shows, however, that party discipline is manifest in the location of the legis…
Advice and Consent: Senate Responses to Executive Branch Nominations 1885- 1996
The fact that presidential nominations to executive branch positions are routinely approved by the Senate obscures great variance in the length of time that the confirmation process requires. Nominees can expect to wait anywhere from a few days to several months to learn their fates. We argue that long delays are made possible by Senate procedures that allow and encourage partisan and ideological opponents of the nomination to engage in dilatory …
Does Gerrymandering Cause Polarization
Both pundits and scholars have blamed increasing levels of partisan conflict and polarization in Congress on the effects of partisan gerrymandering. We assess whether there is a strong causal relationship between congressional districting and polarization. We find very little evidence for such a link. First, we show that congressional polarization is primarily a function of the differences in how Democrats and Republicans represent the same distr…
Why Hasn't Democracy Slowed Rising Inequality
During the past two generations, democratic forms have coexisted with massive increases in economic inequality in the United States and many other advanced democracies. Moreover, these new inequalities have primarily benefited the top 1 percent and even the top .01 percent. These groups seem sufficiently small that economic inequality could be held in check by political equality in the form of "one person, one vote." In this paper, we explore fiv…
A Primary Cause of Partisanship? Nomination Systems and Legislator Ideology
Many theoretical and empirical accounts of representation argue that primary elections are a polarizing influence. Likewise, many reformers advocate opening party nominations to nonmembers as a way of increasing the number of moderate elected officials. Data and measurement constraints, however, have limited the range of empirical tests of this argument. We marry a unique new data set of state legislator ideal points to a detailed accounting of p…
Presidential Pork: Executive Veto Power and Distributive Politics
It is often argued that executive powers such as the veto serve to reduce particularistic spending by the legislature. I argue that the effect of the executive veto depends strongly on assumptions about both the nature of executive preferences and the institutional structure of executive-legislative bargaining. To support these claims, I develop a model of distributive policymaking subject to an executive veto. This framework incorporates variati…
A Bridge to Somewhere: Mapping State and Congressional Ideology on a Cross‐institutional Common Space
Researchers face two major problems when applying ideal point estimation techniques to state legislatures. First, longitudinal roll‐call data are scarce. Second, even when such data exist, scaling ideal points within a single state is an inadequate approach. No comparisons can be made between these estimates and those for other state legislatures or for Congress. Our project provides a solution. We exploit a new comparative dataset of state legis…
Commitment and the Campaign Contribution Contract
Theory: Commitment problems make establishing long-term relationships between members of Congress and organized interests extremely difficult. Hypothesis: Political action committees whose contribution behavior is unfavorable to an election winner are not forced to pay for their mistakes in the subsequent election to get back into the representative's good graces. In other words, strong punishment strategies are not employed to enforce what we la…
The Appointments Dilemma
In a separation of powers political system, effective bureaucratic control may be undermined by the fact that the power to appoint bureaucrats is controlled by a different set of principals from those that may control them through statutory or budgetary means. In particular, executives have proposal power over bureaucratic appointments and removals while legislators have proposal power over laws. In this article, I explore the consequences of thi…
Models of Vetoes and Veto Bargaining
Models of veto bargaining have become an important tool for formal institutional analysis. This chapter reviews the core model of veto bargaining and some of its more interesting and useful extensions, focusing on one of the best developed applications, the presidential veto over legislation. One of the primary attractions of these models is that they often produce crisp, testable empirical predictions. Our review focuses on 18 such predictions. …
Proposal Rights, Veto Rights, and Political Bargaining
Formal models of political bargaining generally emphasize the importance of the allocation of prerogatives such as proposal and veto rights among the bargainers. However, despite the importance of these arguments for the study of political institutions, little work has been done to clarify precisely what general roles each of these prerogatives play in generating political outcomes. In this article, I develop a sequential-choice bargaining model …
On the Theory of Parties
The theory of parties put forward by scholars associated with the University of California at Los Angeles argues that political parties are best viewed as coalitions of intense policy demanders. These policy demanders use their control of nomination processes to select candidates loyal to the groups’ shared policy priorities. By highlighting the role of groups, this theory has made a major contribution to our understanding of party politics, brea…
An Empirical Spatial Model of Congressional Campaigns
Testing and estimating formal models of political behavior has not advanced as far as theoretical applications. One of the major literatures in formal theory is the spatial model of electoral competition which has its origins in the work of Black (1948) and Downs (1957). These models are used to make predictions about the policy positions candidates take in order to win elections. A lack of data on these candidate positions, especially challenger…
Presidential Vetoes in the Early Republic: Changing Constitutional Norms or Electoral Reform
Historians, political scientists, and legal scholars have long debated the origins and development of the executive veto in the early United States. Some scholars argue that the power was originally conceived as quite limited. These scholars argue that until Andrew Jackson used the veto against the recharter of the Bank of the United States, the veto was limited to unconstitutional or administratively unworkable legislation. Others argue that no …
Four Threats: The Recurring Crises of American Democracy
In Defense of DW-Nominate
Several of the articles in this volume criticize the use of DW-NOMINATE in historical work in American politics and suggest alternative approaches to the use of roll call voting data. While many of criticisms are certainly valid, their practical implications are often overstated. Moreover, the suggested alternatives are either impractical for most historically oriented scholars and or do not adequately address the underlying problems. Almost all …
The Regulation and Self-Regulation of a Complex Industry
I develop a model of policy making in complex domains where bureaucrats find it very difficult to establish autonomous sources of expertise, so regulators are highly dependent on the regulated industry and its willingness to engage in self-regulation. In the model, a legislative principal decides whether to delegate the power to an agency to regulate the activities of a firm or industry. The policy domain is complex in that knowledge of the impli…
Geography, Uncertainty, and Polarization
Using new data on roll-call voting of US state legislators and public opinion in their districts, we explain how ideological polarization of voters within districts can lead to legislative polarization. In so-called “moderate” districts that switch hands between parties, legislative behavior is shaped by the fact that voters are often quite heterogeneous: the ideological distance between Democrats and Republicans within these districts is often g…
The Time to Give: PAC Motivations and Electoral Timing
There has been much discussion about how members of Congress desire money early in the campaign season. However, theoretical models of how contributions are allocated during the electoral cycle have been lacking. Our analysis attempts to remedy this gap by providing and testing a model which specifies how the process of bargaining between members of Congress and organized interests produces the pattern of donations observed over the course of the…
Agenda Control under Policy Uncertainty
Models of agenda setting are central to the analysis of political institutions. Elaborations of the classical agenda‐setting model of Romer–Rosenthal have long been used to make predictions about policy outcomes and the distribution of influence among political actors. Although the canonical model is based on complete and perfect information about preferences and policy outcomes, some extensions relax these assumptions to include uncertainty abou…
Political fortunes: On finance & its regulation
Both during and after bubbles, political outcomes reflect the same forces that operate even in normal times. Such forces include decision-making based on ideologies – free market conservatism, egalitarianism, and populism. Political decisions (and non-decisions) also reflect checks and balances across branches of the federal government, across layers of government in a federal system, and institutional checks, such as bicameralism and filibusters…
Commitment and the Campaign Contribution Contract
Theory: Commitment problems make establishing long-term relationships between members of Congress and organized interests extremely difficult. Hypothesis: Political action committees whose contribution behavior is unfavorable to an election winner are not forced to pay for their mistakes in the subsequent election to get back into the representative's good graces. In other words, strong punishment strategies are not employed to enforce what we la…
An Empirical Spatial Model of Congressional Campaigns
Testing and estimating formal models of political behavior has not advanced as far as theoretical applications. One of the major literatures in formal theory is the spatial model of electoral competition which has its origins in the work of Black (1948) and Downs (1957). These models are used to make predictions about the policy positions candidates take in order to win elections. A lack of data on these candidate positions, especially challenger…
Advice and Consent: Senate Responses to Executive Branch Nominations 1885- 1996
The fact that presidential nominations to executive branch positions are routinely approved by the Senate obscures great variance in the length of time that the confirmation process requires. Nominees can expect to wait anywhere from a few days to several months to learn their fates. We argue that long delays are made possible by Senate procedures that allow and encourage partisan and ideological opponents of the nomination to engage in dilatory …
The Time to Give: PAC Motivations and Electoral Timing
There has been much discussion about how members of Congress desire money early in the campaign season. However, theoretical models of how contributions are allocated during the electoral cycle have been lacking. Our analysis attempts to remedy this gap by providing and testing a model which specifies how the process of bargaining between members of Congress and organized interests produces the pattern of donations observed over the course of the…
Proposal Rights, Veto Rights, and Political Bargaining
Formal models of political bargaining generally emphasize the importance of the allocation of prerogatives such as proposal and veto rights among the bargainers. However, despite the importance of these arguments for the study of political institutions, little work has been done to clarify precisely what general roles each of these prerogatives play in generating political outcomes. In this article, I develop a sequential-choice bargaining model …
Presidential Pork: Executive Veto Power and Distributive Politics
It is often argued that executive powers such as the veto serve to reduce particularistic spending by the legislature. I argue that the effect of the executive veto depends strongly on assumptions about both the nature of executive preferences and the institutional structure of executive-legislative bargaining. To support these claims, I develop a model of distributive policymaking subject to an executive veto. This framework incorporates variati…
The Politics of Blame: Bargaining before an Audience
An important class of bargaining problems involve two negotiators who send signals to a third party. We show that these signaling incentives significantly influence (1) the proposals that they offer and (2) their decisions to accept or reject proposals. Consider the following case: Congress makes a take-it-or-leave-it offer (a bill) to the president, who either signs or vetoes it. A third party is uninformed about the president's preferences; how…
The Hunt for Party Discipline in Congress
We analyze party discipline in the House of Representatives between 1947 and 1998. The effects of party pressures can be represented in a spatial model by allowing each party to have its own cutting line on roll call votes. Adding a second cutting line makes, at best, a marginal improvement over the standard single-line model. Analysis of legislators who switch parties shows, however, that party discipline is manifest in the location of the legis…
Collective Action Under the Articles of Confederation
Journal Article Collective Action Under the Articles of Confederation Get access Collective Action under the Articles of Confederation by Keith L. Dougherty. New York, Cambridge University Press, 2001. 211 pp. $49.95. Nolan McCarty Nolan McCarty Princeton University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Political Science Quarterly, Volume 117, Issue 1, Spring 2002, Pages 173–174, https://doi.org/10.2307/798128 P…
Political Polarization and Income Inequality
The Appointments Dilemma
In a separation of powers political system, effective bureaucratic control may be undermined by the fact that the power to appoint bureaucrats is controlled by a different set of principals from those that may control them through statutory or budgetary means. In particular, executives have proposal power over bureaucratic appointments and removals while legislators have proposal power over laws. In this article, I explore the consequences of thi…
Models of Vetoes and Veto Bargaining
Models of veto bargaining have become an important tool for formal institutional analysis. This chapter reviews the core model of veto bargaining and some of its more interesting and useful extensions, focusing on one of the best developed applications, the presidential veto over legislation. One of the primary attractions of these models is that they often produce crisp, testable empirical predictions. Our review focuses on 18 such predictions. …
The Appointments Dilemma
In a separation of powers political system, effective bureaucratic control may be undermined by the fact that the power to appoint bureaucrats is controlled by a different set of principals from those that may control them through statutory or budgetary means. In particular, executives have proposal power over bureaucratic appointments and removals while legislators have proposal power over laws. In this article, I explore the consequences of thi…
Bureaucratic Capacity, Delegation, and Political Reform
We analyze a model of delegation and policymaking in polities where bureaucratic capacity is low. Our analysis suggests that low bureaucratic capacity diminishes incentives for bureaucrats to comply with legislation, making it more difficult for politicians to induce bureaucrats to take actions that politicians desire. Consequently, when bureaucratic capacity is low, standard principles in the theoretical literature on delegation no longer hold. …
Political Game Theory: An Introduction
Political Game Theory is a self-contained introduction to game theory and its applications to political science. The book presents choice theory, social choice theory, static and dynamic games of complete information, static and dynamic games of incomplete information, repeated games, bargaining theory, mechanism design and a mathematical appendix covering, logic, real analysis, calculus and probability theory. The methods employed have many appl…
Chapter Nine. The Policy Effects of Political Polarization
Party Wars: Polarization and the Politics of National Policy Making by Barbara Sinclair
Journal Article Party Wars: Polarization and the Politics of National Policy Making by Barbara Sinclair Get access Party Wars: Polarization and the Politics of National Policy Makingby Barbara Sinclair. Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 2006. 424pp. Cloth, $34.95; paper, $19.95. Nolan McCarty Nolan McCarty Princeton University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Political Science Quarterly, Volume 122, Iss…
Political Game Theory: An Introduction (Analytical Methods for Social Research)
Political Game Theory is a self-contained introduction to game theory and its applications to political science. The book presents choice theory, social choice theory, static and dynamic games of complete information, static and dynamic games of incomplete information, repeated games, bargaining theory, mechanism design, and a mathematical appendix covering logic, real analysis, calculus, and probability theory. The methods employed have many app…
American Politics X: Polarization and Its Discontents
Does Bicameralism Matter?
This article reviews and analyzes many arguments that are made on behalf of bicameralism. The tools used to make these arguments are the spatial model, the multilateral bargaining theory, and a game of incomplete information. The article attempts to distinguish the effects of bicameralism from the effects of other institutional features that often accompany it, such as differing terms of office and super-majoritarian requirements.
Party Polarization in Congress by Sean Theriault
Journal Article Party Polarization in Congress by Sean Theriault Get access Party Polarization in Congress by Sean Theriault. New York, Cambridge University Press, 2008. 254 pp. Cloth, $80.00; paper, $24.99. Nolan McCarty Nolan McCarty Princeton University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Political Science Quarterly, Volume 124, Issue 3, Fall 2009, Pages 551–552, https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1538-165X.2009.tb0…
Presidential Vetoes in the Early Republic: Changing Constitutional Norms or Electoral Reform
Historians, political scientists, and legal scholars have long debated the origins and development of the executive veto in the early United States. Some scholars argue that the power was originally conceived as quite limited. These scholars argue that until Andrew Jackson used the veto against the recharter of the Bank of the United States, the veto was limited to unconstitutional or administratively unworkable legislation. Others argue that no …
Does Gerrymandering Cause Polarization
Both pundits and scholars have blamed increasing levels of partisan conflict and polarization in Congress on the effects of partisan gerrymandering. We assess whether there is a strong causal relationship between congressional districting and polarization. We find very little evidence for such a link. First, we show that congressional polarization is primarily a function of the differences in how Democrats and Republicans represent the same distr…
Political fortunes: On finance & its regulation
Both during and after bubbles, political outcomes reflect the same forces that operate even in normal times. Such forces include decision-making based on ideologies – free market conservatism, egalitarianism, and populism. Political decisions (and non-decisions) also reflect checks and balances across branches of the federal government, across layers of government in a federal system, and institutional checks, such as bicameralism and filibusters…
A Bridge to Somewhere: Mapping State and Congressional Ideology on a Cross‐institutional Common Space
Researchers face two major problems when applying ideal point estimation techniques to state legislatures. First, longitudinal roll‐call data are scarce. Second, even when such data exist, scaling ideal points within a single state is an inadequate approach. No comparisons can be made between these estimates and those for other state legislatures or for Congress. Our project provides a solution. We exploit a new comparative dataset of state legis…
Political science (44 works) · Politics (41 works) · Law (39 works) · Economics (27 works) · Law (27 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (24 works) · Political economy (17 works) · Law and economics (16 works) · Sociology (15 works) · Public Administration (14 works)