James Coleman Battista
Biographic Data
| ID | 4386613 |
|---|---|
| NAME | James Coleman Battista |
| GIVEN NAMES | James Coleman |
| FAMILY NAME | Battista |
| SIGNATURE | BATTISTA J C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University at Buffalo, State University of New York |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 10 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 103 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 10 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Estimating the locations of voters, politicians, policy outcomes, and status quos on a common scale
How well are voters represented and what explains how well voters are represented? Answering these questions requires unpacking the mechanisms by which voters choose elected officials and elected officials implement policies. Though spatial theories of voting and legislative bargaining provide a broad framework for understanding these mechanisms, testing these theories involves a measurement problem where multiple political actors and outcomes mu…
Financial Interests and Economic Diversity in State Legislatures
Objective I examine how the prevalence of U.S. state legislators economically connected to an industry, and the diversity of economic connections in a legislature, vary in response to the employment share of that industry in the state, the partisan split of the legislature, and professionalization (or its components). Methods I use conflict‐of‐interest filings for 1999–2000, 2000 Census employment data, and related data to examine the prevalence …
Common-Space Ideal Points, Committee Assignments, and Financial Interests in the State Legislatures
We present a new unified dataset of common-space ideal points, committee assignments, and financial interests for all state legislators in 1999. We describe the compilation of the dataset and offer a few possible applications
State Legislative Committees and Economic Connections: Expertise and Industry Service
American state legislators commonly remain connected to the market, giving them the potential for unique expertise on how policy affects the industries they are connected to and the opportunity to help enact laws favoring those industries. This paper describes the extent to which state legislative committees are populated by legislators with economic connections to their jurisdiction, and analyzes appointment patterns to help distinguish stacking…
Formal and Perceived Leadership Power in U.S. State Legislatures
While there is a growing literature on the factors linked to the power held by leaders in state legislatures, the complexity of leadership power as a concept makes assessing it difficult. The author demonstrates that measures of formal leadership power derived from the written rules are uncorrelated with survey measures capturing legislators' own assessments of their leader's strength. These differences have practical importance, with each type o…
Party Pressure in the U.S. State Legislatures
We extend Ansolabehere, Snyder, and Stewart's (2001) method of measuring party influence over roll‐call voting to the comparative state legislative context. Examining 27 state lower chambers, we find that overall parties exert detectable influence on 44% of all roll calls and 69% of close votes, but that the incidence of party influence varies strongly across chambers. Taking advantage of the comparative leverage the state context brings, we find…
Why Information? Choosing Committee Informativeness in U.S. State Legislatures
Using a new dataset drawn from American state legislatures, I modeled the informativeness of legislative committees as a choice over institutions. I found higher informativeness to be associated with better preparedness for information transfer, morepartisan chambers, and higher demand for information combined with greater incentives to control committee assignments. These associations shed light on congressional committee informativeness. A simp…
Committee Theories and Committee Votes: Internal Committee Behavior in the California Legislature
Previous tests of theories of legislative committee development have relied on floor behavior and votes, data which is one step removed from committee behavior itself. I test these prominent theories of committees by looking directly at legislative behavior in committee. I examine the patterns of committee votes in the 2000-01 sessions of the California Legislature to assess the distributive, informational, and partisan theories of committee deve…
Jurisdiction, Institutional Structure, and Committee Representativeness
I model the ideological representativeness of state legislative committees and their majority-party slates, testing hypotheses derived from extant models of committees and institutional choice. Committee representativeness and the representativeness of majority-party slates vary across states as a function of their effective number of parties and professionalization, but the jurisdiction of a committee has little discernible effect on representat…
Re-examining Legislative Committee Representativeness in the States
I re-examine theories of legislative committee organization by using simulation to assess how representative state legislative committees are of their parent bodies. I find that clearly unrepresentative committees are rare and concentrated in a few chambers. I also find that comparing committee and chamber medians leads to very different conclusions about representativeness than does comparing means. My findings tend to confirm the informational …
Party Pressure in the U.S. State Legislatures
We extend Ansolabehere, Snyder, and Stewart's (2001) method of measuring party influence over roll‐call voting to the comparative state legislative context. Examining 27 state lower chambers, we find that overall parties exert detectable influence on 44% of all roll calls and 69% of close votes, but that the incidence of party influence varies strongly across chambers. Taking advantage of the comparative leverage the state context brings, we find…
Why Information? Choosing Committee Informativeness in U.S. State Legislatures
Using a new dataset drawn from American state legislatures, I modeled the informativeness of legislative committees as a choice over institutions. I found higher informativeness to be associated with better preparedness for information transfer, morepartisan chambers, and higher demand for information combined with greater incentives to control committee assignments. These associations shed light on congressional committee informativeness. A simp…
Formal and Perceived Leadership Power in U.S. State Legislatures
While there is a growing literature on the factors linked to the power held by leaders in state legislatures, the complexity of leadership power as a concept makes assessing it difficult. The author demonstrates that measures of formal leadership power derived from the written rules are uncorrelated with survey measures capturing legislators' own assessments of their leader's strength. These differences have practical importance, with each type o…
Common-Space Ideal Points, Committee Assignments, and Financial Interests in the State Legislatures
We present a new unified dataset of common-space ideal points, committee assignments, and financial interests for all state legislators in 1999. We describe the compilation of the dataset and offer a few possible applications
Jurisdiction, Institutional Structure, and Committee Representativeness
I model the ideological representativeness of state legislative committees and their majority-party slates, testing hypotheses derived from extant models of committees and institutional choice. Committee representativeness and the representativeness of majority-party slates vary across states as a function of their effective number of parties and professionalization, but the jurisdiction of a committee has little discernible effect on representat…
Re-examining Legislative Committee Representativeness in the States
I re-examine theories of legislative committee organization by using simulation to assess how representative state legislative committees are of their parent bodies. I find that clearly unrepresentative committees are rare and concentrated in a few chambers. I also find that comparing committee and chamber medians leads to very different conclusions about representativeness than does comparing means. My findings tend to confirm the informational …
State Legislative Committees and Economic Connections: Expertise and Industry Service
American state legislators commonly remain connected to the market, giving them the potential for unique expertise on how policy affects the industries they are connected to and the opportunity to help enact laws favoring those industries. This paper describes the extent to which state legislative committees are populated by legislators with economic connections to their jurisdiction, and analyzes appointment patterns to help distinguish stacking…
Estimating the locations of voters, politicians, policy outcomes, and status quos on a common scale
How well are voters represented and what explains how well voters are represented? Answering these questions requires unpacking the mechanisms by which voters choose elected officials and elected officials implement policies. Though spatial theories of voting and legislative bargaining provide a broad framework for understanding these mechanisms, testing these theories involves a measurement problem where multiple political actors and outcomes mu…
Committee Theories and Committee Votes: Internal Committee Behavior in the California Legislature
Previous tests of theories of legislative committee development have relied on floor behavior and votes, data which is one step removed from committee behavior itself. I test these prominent theories of committees by looking directly at legislative behavior in committee. I examine the patterns of committee votes in the 2000-01 sessions of the California Legislature to assess the distributive, informational, and partisan theories of committee deve…
Financial Interests and Economic Diversity in State Legislatures
Objective I examine how the prevalence of U.S. state legislators economically connected to an industry, and the diversity of economic connections in a legislature, vary in response to the employment share of that industry in the state, the partisan split of the legislature, and professionalization (or its components). Methods I use conflict‐of‐interest filings for 1999–2000, 2000 Census employment data, and related data to examine the prevalence …
Re-examining Legislative Committee Representativeness in the States
I re-examine theories of legislative committee organization by using simulation to assess how representative state legislative committees are of their parent bodies. I find that clearly unrepresentative committees are rare and concentrated in a few chambers. I also find that comparing committee and chamber medians leads to very different conclusions about representativeness than does comparing means. My findings tend to confirm the informational …
Committee Theories and Committee Votes: Internal Committee Behavior in the California Legislature
Previous tests of theories of legislative committee development have relied on floor behavior and votes, data which is one step removed from committee behavior itself. I test these prominent theories of committees by looking directly at legislative behavior in committee. I examine the patterns of committee votes in the 2000-01 sessions of the California Legislature to assess the distributive, informational, and partisan theories of committee deve…
Jurisdiction, Institutional Structure, and Committee Representativeness
I model the ideological representativeness of state legislative committees and their majority-party slates, testing hypotheses derived from extant models of committees and institutional choice. Committee representativeness and the representativeness of majority-party slates vary across states as a function of their effective number of parties and professionalization, but the jurisdiction of a committee has little discernible effect on representat…
Why Information? Choosing Committee Informativeness in U.S. State Legislatures
Using a new dataset drawn from American state legislatures, I modeled the informativeness of legislative committees as a choice over institutions. I found higher informativeness to be associated with better preparedness for information transfer, morepartisan chambers, and higher demand for information combined with greater incentives to control committee assignments. These associations shed light on congressional committee informativeness. A simp…
Formal and Perceived Leadership Power in U.S. State Legislatures
While there is a growing literature on the factors linked to the power held by leaders in state legislatures, the complexity of leadership power as a concept makes assessing it difficult. The author demonstrates that measures of formal leadership power derived from the written rules are uncorrelated with survey measures capturing legislators' own assessments of their leader's strength. These differences have practical importance, with each type o…
Party Pressure in the U.S. State Legislatures
We extend Ansolabehere, Snyder, and Stewart's (2001) method of measuring party influence over roll‐call voting to the comparative state legislative context. Examining 27 state lower chambers, we find that overall parties exert detectable influence on 44% of all roll calls and 69% of close votes, but that the incidence of party influence varies strongly across chambers. Taking advantage of the comparative leverage the state context brings, we find…
State Legislative Committees and Economic Connections: Expertise and Industry Service
American state legislators commonly remain connected to the market, giving them the potential for unique expertise on how policy affects the industries they are connected to and the opportunity to help enact laws favoring those industries. This paper describes the extent to which state legislative committees are populated by legislators with economic connections to their jurisdiction, and analyzes appointment patterns to help distinguish stacking…
Financial Interests and Economic Diversity in State Legislatures
Objective I examine how the prevalence of U.S. state legislators economically connected to an industry, and the diversity of economic connections in a legislature, vary in response to the employment share of that industry in the state, the partisan split of the legislature, and professionalization (or its components). Methods I use conflict‐of‐interest filings for 1999–2000, 2000 Census employment data, and related data to examine the prevalence …
Common-Space Ideal Points, Committee Assignments, and Financial Interests in the State Legislatures
We present a new unified dataset of common-space ideal points, committee assignments, and financial interests for all state legislators in 1999. We describe the compilation of the dataset and offer a few possible applications
Estimating the locations of voters, politicians, policy outcomes, and status quos on a common scale
How well are voters represented and what explains how well voters are represented? Answering these questions requires unpacking the mechanisms by which voters choose elected officials and elected officials implement policies. Though spatial theories of voting and legislative bargaining provide a broad framework for understanding these mechanisms, testing these theories involves a measurement problem where multiple political actors and outcomes mu…
Law (10 works) · Legislature (10 works) · Political science (10 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (9 works) · Law (9 works) · Public Administration (8 works) · Public Administration (8 works) · State (computer science (8 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Political Influence and Corporate Strategies (5 works)