Justin H Kirkland
Biographic Data
| ID | 635795 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Justin H Kirkland |
| GIVEN NAMES | Justin H |
| FAMILY NAME | Kirkland |
| SIGNATURE | KIRKLAND J H |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Houston |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5837-3606 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 33 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 467 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 33 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1895 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
Partisans' evaluations of unconstitutional legislative activity
In this research note, we examine whether public evaluations of a policy depend on the constitutionality of the process by which that policy was passed. We observe whether people's views depend on accusations that a policy was passed in violation of a state constitution's single subject rule, and whether the effect of that accusation depends on the party making the accusation. Results from two survey experiments—one using a low salience issue and…
Perceptions of Party Incongruence and Nascent Political Ambition
Party Competition, Personal Votes, and Strategic Disloyalty in the U.S. States
Legislators will sometimes vote against their party’s position on roll-call votes to differentiate themselves from the party mainstream and to accrue a “personal vote.” Research suggests that the use of rebellion to generate a personal vote is more common (1) among majority party members and (2) among ideological extremists. But these majority party extremists only have a strong incentive to rebel in situations where the accrual of a personal vot…
Do Elections Keep the Compassionate out of the Candidate Pool
Political candidates must possess not only a desire for a position in government, but also a tolerance for the electoral process typically required to attain it. Recent works suggest that this latter requirement may keep certain types of people out of the potential candidate pool. We contend that individuals high in empathic concern are one such type. While compassion for others may make certain aspects of public service attractive, it should als…
Legislative Transparency and Credit Risk
Open governance requirements are designed to improve accountability, which implies that transparent governments are more trustworthy stewards of their publicly invested power. However, transparency may also reduce institutional effectiveness and inhibit political compromise, diminishing the capacity to manage resources responsibly. We assess empirical support for these competing perspectives in the context of American state legislatures, many of …
Does Transparency Inhibit Political Compromise
Governments around the world face an apparent tension when considering whether to allow public access to the governing process. In principle, transparent institutions promote accountability and good governance. However, politicians and scholars contend that such reforms also constrain politicians' capacity to negotiate and compromise, producing inefficiency and gridlock. This argument—that transparency inhibits compromise—is widely accepted, but …
The Sound of Rebellion: Voting Dissent and Legislative Speech in the UK House of Commons
Using data on the content of debate associated with votes in the UK House of Commons from 1992–2015, this article examines how government party MPs employ language in legislative speech when they vote against the party line. We find a robust statistical association between dissent on votes and the use of first‐person pronouns, simpler language, and giving longer speeches. Using a random forest algorithm for classification, we find that these lang…
How Empathic Concern Fuels Political Polarization
Over the past two decades, there has been a marked increase in partisan social polarization, leaving scholars in search of solutions to partisan conflict. The psychology of intergroup relations identifies empathy as one of the key mechanisms that reduces intergroup conflict, and some have suggested that a lack of empathy has contributed to partisan polarization. Yet, empathy may not always live up to this promise. We argue that, in practice, the …
Perceived Ideological Distance and Trust in Congress
Objectives We evaluate whether citizens’ trust in Congress is influenced by perceptions of ideological distance between themselves and their representatives. We argue that citizens view members as the “face” of Congress, and thus trust the institution more when the face of that institution is more ideologically proximal to themselves. Methods We test our hypotheses using responses to survey questions regarding both trust in Congress and perceptio…
How Dispositional Empathy Influences Political Ambition
Political representation is fundamentally about advancing the needs and interests of others. Empathy—the ability to share others' feelings and perspectives—ought to be a critical skill for effective representation. Yet the conflict, negativity, and competition that are endemic to politics may prevent empathetic individuals from seeking office. Using an original national survey with an oversample of people who have run for office, we explore how c…
Rivals or Allies? A Multilevel Analysis of Cosponsorship within State Delegations in the U.S. Senate
The coordinated behavior of members of a state delegation to the U.S. Senate can provide constituents in a state greater representation in Congress. Despite this potentially improved level of representation through coordination, popular and scholarly accounts of the U.S. Senate often feature senators from the same state at odds with one another on a variety of policy issues. In this research, we investigate competing expectations regarding the fr…
Legislative Party Polarization and Trust in State Legislatures
We argue that citizens’ trust attitudes are inversely related to party polarization because polarization tends to encourage political conflict, which most people dislike. We further posit that partisans trust attitudes are driven by the ideological extremity of the opposing and their own parties for similar reasons. Using roll-call-based estimates of state legislative party polarization and public opinion data collected in 2008, we show strong ev…
The Financial Crisis, Fiscal Federalism, and the Creditworthiness of US State Governments
This study examines why credit rating agencies offered optimistic assessments of some US states during the 2008–2009 financial crisis. Focusing on the creditworthiness of state governments, we argue that because states are procyclic spenders, growth in a state’s economy is actually harmful to that state’s ability to maintain its fiscal promises. As the federal government spends more heavily in a state, however, the procyclic tendencies of that st…
Ideology, Grandstanding, and Strategic Party Disloyalty in the British Parliament
Strong party discipline is a core feature of Westminster parliamentary systems. Parties typically compel members of Parliament (MPs) to support the party regardless of MPs' individual preferences. Rebellion, however, does occur. Using an original dataset of MP votes and speeches in the British House of Commons from 1992 to 2015, coupled with new estimations of MPs' ideological positions within their party, we find evidence that MPs use rebellion …
Companion Bills and Cross-Chamber Collaboration in the U.S. Congress
The U.S. House and Senate were designed to have an adversarial relationship. Yet, House members and senators often collaborate on the introduction of “companion” bills. We develop a theory of these cross-chamber collaborations, which asserts that companion bill introductions are driven by legislators’ desire to increase the probability of bill passage and the relational difficulties in developing companion bill partnerships. To test the expectati…
Ideology and strategic party disloyalty in the US house of representatives
Do Campaign Donors Influence Polarization? Evidence from Public Financing in the American States
Does the source of campaign funds influence legislative polarization? We develop competing theoretical expectations regarding the effects of publicly financed elections on legislative voting behavior. To test these expectations, we leverage a natural experiment in the New Jersey Assembly in which public financing was made available to a subset of members. We find that public financing exerts substantively negligible effects on roll‐call voting. W…
Representation, Competing Principals, and Waffling on Bills in US Legislatures
Legislators are often placed in the position of representing the interests of their constituents against the preferences of their own party leaders. We develop a theoretical framework indicating that these cross‐pressured legislators are more likely to initially support legislation and subsequently change their minds than are legislators whose constituents and leaders share similar preferences. Moreover, we expect this pattern to be most pronounc…
Measurement Error and Attenuation Bias in Exponential Random Graph Models
Exponential Random Graph Models (ERGMs) are becoming increasingly popular tools for estimating the properties of social networks across the social sciences. While the asymptotic properties of ERGMs are well understood, much less is known about how ERGMs perform in the face of violations of the assumptions that drive those asymptotic properties. Given that empirical social networks rarely meet the strenuous assumptions of the ERGM perfectly, pract…
Holding Steady on Shifting Sands
Empirical claims that US Supreme Court decisions tend to follow public opinion raise important questions about the countermajoritarian role of the American judiciary. Yet, for the vast majority of federal cases, the de facto court of last resort is actually a US court of appeals. We examine the role of public opinion in shaping decisions on these courts. We argue that the courts of appeals' position in the judicial hierarchy, lack of docket contr…
Measurement and theory in legislative networks: The evolving topology of Congressional collaboration
Partisanship and Reciprocity in Cross-Chamber Legislative Interactions
The bicameral nature of most U.S. legislatures implies that it is often in the interest of legislators to collaborate on legislation across chamber lines. In this research, we offer a novel theory of collaboration between upper and lower chamber members in U.S. legislatures. We expect that exogenous characteristics like party, constituency, and joint committee membership characterize collaboration across legislative chambers. Additionally, we exp…
Ideological Heterogeneity and Legislative Polarization in the United States
The responsiveness of individual legislators to their constituents creates an indirect electoral connection between the aggregate preferences of citizens and the behavior of legislative parties. In this research, I argue that legislators from moderate districts are the least likely to support their parties and most likely to vote moderately during roll call votes. I also argue that states with low ideological variance among citizens are the most …
Chamber Size Effects on the Collaborative Structure of Legislatures
The collective nature of legislating forces legislators to rely on one another for information and support. This collaborative activity requires a choice about partnerships in an environment of uncertainty. The basic size and organization of a legislature amplifies this uncertainty in relational choices. Analysis of collaborative patterns between all the U.S. state legislators in 2007 corroborates this expectation, indicating that large legislatu…
Wallet-Based Redistricting: Evidence for the Concentration of Wealth in Majority Party Districts
This article examines the role of wealth in the redistricting process in state legislative contests. I argue that the decision by state redistricting mapmakers to pursue a “seatswing” or “protection” strategy involves more than just a choice between where to move partisan voters. Redistricting may also allow parties to consider wealth as an additional resource to be concentrated or dispersed across legislative districts. To test this wealth-based…
The Relational Determinants of Legislative Outcomes: Strong and Weak Ties Between Legislators
In the repeated interactions of a legislative session, legislators develop working relationships that can be used in the pursuit of legislative goals. I develop a theory of influence diffusion across a legislative network of relations based on strategic actors building relationships in order to increase legislative success. Building on sociological theory initially developed by Granovetter, my research indicates that it is the weak ties between l…
How Empathic Concern Fuels Political Polarization
Over the past two decades, there has been a marked increase in partisan social polarization, leaving scholars in search of solutions to partisan conflict. The psychology of intergroup relations identifies empathy as one of the key mechanisms that reduces intergroup conflict, and some have suggested that a lack of empathy has contributed to partisan polarization. Yet, empathy may not always live up to this promise. We argue that, in practice, the …
Ideology, Grandstanding, and Strategic Party Disloyalty in the British Parliament
Strong party discipline is a core feature of Westminster parliamentary systems. Parties typically compel members of Parliament (MPs) to support the party regardless of MPs' individual preferences. Rebellion, however, does occur. Using an original dataset of MP votes and speeches in the British House of Commons from 1992 to 2015, coupled with new estimations of MPs' ideological positions within their party, we find evidence that MPs use rebellion …
Toward a Network Theory of Alliance Formation
We propose a network-based theory of alliance formation. Our theory implies that, in addition to key state and dyad attributes already established in the literature, the evolution of the alliance network from any given point in time is largely determined by its structure. Specifically, we argue that closed triangles in the alliance network—where i is allied with j is allied with k is allied with i — produce synergy effects in which state-level ut…
Chamber Size Effects on the Collaborative Structure of Legislatures
The collective nature of legislating forces legislators to rely on one another for information and support. This collaborative activity requires a choice about partnerships in an environment of uncertainty. The basic size and organization of a legislature amplifies this uncertainty in relational choices. Analysis of collaborative patterns between all the U.S. state legislators in 2007 corroborates this expectation, indicating that large legislatu…
Multimember Districts' Effect on Collaboration between U.S. State Legislators
In this article, I demonstrate that multimember districts form a basis for collaboration between two legislators. In order to maximize the limited incumbency advantages they possess, legislators from multimember districts form coalitions in an effort to generate greater credit‐claiming opportunities and policy benefits for their district. In order to test this conception, I utilize a natural experiment and an opportunity to observe institutional …
The Sound of Rebellion: Voting Dissent and Legislative Speech in the UK House of Commons
Using data on the content of debate associated with votes in the UK House of Commons from 1992–2015, this article examines how government party MPs employ language in legislative speech when they vote against the party line. We find a robust statistical association between dissent on votes and the use of first‐person pronouns, simpler language, and giving longer speeches. Using a random forest algorithm for classification, we find that these lang…
Legislative Party Polarization and Trust in State Legislatures
We argue that citizens’ trust attitudes are inversely related to party polarization because polarization tends to encourage political conflict, which most people dislike. We further posit that partisans trust attitudes are driven by the ideological extremity of the opposing and their own parties for similar reasons. Using roll-call-based estimates of state legislative party polarization and public opinion data collected in 2008, we show strong ev…
Representation, Competing Principals, and Waffling on Bills in US Legislatures
Legislators are often placed in the position of representing the interests of their constituents against the preferences of their own party leaders. We develop a theoretical framework indicating that these cross‐pressured legislators are more likely to initially support legislation and subsequently change their minds than are legislators whose constituents and leaders share similar preferences. Moreover, we expect this pattern to be most pronounc…
Partisanship and Reciprocity in Cross-Chamber Legislative Interactions
The bicameral nature of most U.S. legislatures implies that it is often in the interest of legislators to collaborate on legislation across chamber lines. In this research, we offer a novel theory of collaboration between upper and lower chamber members in U.S. legislatures. We expect that exogenous characteristics like party, constituency, and joint committee membership characterize collaboration across legislative chambers. Additionally, we exp…
Does Transparency Inhibit Political Compromise
Governments around the world face an apparent tension when considering whether to allow public access to the governing process. In principle, transparent institutions promote accountability and good governance. However, politicians and scholars contend that such reforms also constrain politicians' capacity to negotiate and compromise, producing inefficiency and gridlock. This argument—that transparency inhibits compromise—is widely accepted, but …
How Dispositional Empathy Influences Political Ambition
Political representation is fundamentally about advancing the needs and interests of others. Empathy—the ability to share others' feelings and perspectives—ought to be a critical skill for effective representation. Yet the conflict, negativity, and competition that are endemic to politics may prevent empathetic individuals from seeking office. Using an original national survey with an oversample of people who have run for office, we explore how c…
Ideology and strategic party disloyalty in the US house of representatives
Ideological Heterogeneity and Legislative Polarization in the United States
The responsiveness of individual legislators to their constituents creates an indirect electoral connection between the aggregate preferences of citizens and the behavior of legislative parties. In this research, I argue that legislators from moderate districts are the least likely to support their parties and most likely to vote moderately during roll call votes. I also argue that states with low ideological variance among citizens are the most …
Generalist Interest Organizations and Interest System Density: A Test of the Competitive Exclusion Hypothesis
Objective We examine the effects of interest community density on generalist interest organizations. A core element of population ecology theory is competitive exclusion, which suggests two hypotheses. First, through niche partitioning of the issue space among similar organizations and the comparative advantages of specialist organizations, generalists in heavily populated systems struggle to secure members more than their counterparts in less de…
Hypothesis Testing for Group Structure in Legislative Networks
Scholars of social networks often rely on summary statistics to measure and compare the structures of their networks of interest. However, measuring the uncertainty inherent in these summaries can be challenging, thus making hypothesis testing for network summaries difficult. Computational and nonparametric procedures can overcome these difficulties by allowing researchers to generate reference distributions for comparison directly from their dat…
Understanding the Relationship between Health PACs and Health Lobbying in the American States
We examine how health PAC activity in the states is connected to lobbying. Is the political money that health interest organizations bring to the policy process a powerful, independent means of influence or is it better understood narrowly as a tactic used to support lobbying? We examine the relationship between campaign contributions and lobby activity and the limited work that has been conducted on them and raise a number of questions about the…
Companion Bills and Cross-Chamber Collaboration in the U.S. Congress
The U.S. House and Senate were designed to have an adversarial relationship. Yet, House members and senators often collaborate on the introduction of “companion” bills. We develop a theory of these cross-chamber collaborations, which asserts that companion bill introductions are driven by legislators’ desire to increase the probability of bill passage and the relational difficulties in developing companion bill partnerships. To test the expectati…
Do Campaign Donors Influence Polarization? Evidence from Public Financing in the American States
Does the source of campaign funds influence legislative polarization? We develop competing theoretical expectations regarding the effects of publicly financed elections on legislative voting behavior. To test these expectations, we leverage a natural experiment in the New Jersey Assembly in which public financing was made available to a subset of members. We find that public financing exerts substantively negligible effects on roll‐call voting. W…
Do Elections Keep the Compassionate out of the Candidate Pool
Political candidates must possess not only a desire for a position in government, but also a tolerance for the electoral process typically required to attain it. Recent works suggest that this latter requirement may keep certain types of people out of the potential candidate pool. We contend that individuals high in empathic concern are one such type. While compassion for others may make certain aspects of public service attractive, it should als…
Mediated Density: The Indirect Relationship between U.S. State Public Policy and PACs
How does the demand for lobbying reflected by government policy activity influence the use of lobbying strategies and tactics? The authors examine this question by assessing how the complexity of the policy space affects the political action committee (PAC) system. They hypothesize that the complexity of the policy space indirectly affects the size and activity of the PAC system through its direct effect on interest organization density. The auth…
Perceived Ideological Distance and Trust in Congress
Objectives We evaluate whether citizens’ trust in Congress is influenced by perceptions of ideological distance between themselves and their representatives. We argue that citizens view members as the “face” of Congress, and thus trust the institution more when the face of that institution is more ideologically proximal to themselves. Methods We test our hypotheses using responses to survey questions regarding both trust in Congress and perceptio…
Rivals or Allies? A Multilevel Analysis of Cosponsorship within State Delegations in the U.S. Senate
The coordinated behavior of members of a state delegation to the U.S. Senate can provide constituents in a state greater representation in Congress. Despite this potentially improved level of representation through coordination, popular and scholarly accounts of the U.S. Senate often feature senators from the same state at odds with one another on a variety of policy issues. In this research, we investigate competing expectations regarding the fr…
Perceptions of Party Incongruence and Nascent Political Ambition
Legislative Transparency and Credit Risk
Open governance requirements are designed to improve accountability, which implies that transparent governments are more trustworthy stewards of their publicly invested power. However, transparency may also reduce institutional effectiveness and inhibit political compromise, diminishing the capacity to manage resources responsibly. We assess empirical support for these competing perspectives in the context of American state legislatures, many of …
Bread Laws and the Price of Bread
Understanding the Relationship between Health PACs and Health Lobbying in the American States
We examine how health PAC activity in the states is connected to lobbying. Is the political money that health interest organizations bring to the policy process a powerful, independent means of influence or is it better understood narrowly as a tactic used to support lobbying? We examine the relationship between campaign contributions and lobby activity and the limited work that has been conducted on them and raise a number of questions about the…
Mediated Density: The Indirect Relationship between U.S. State Public Policy and PACs
How does the demand for lobbying reflected by government policy activity influence the use of lobbying strategies and tactics? The authors examine this question by assessing how the complexity of the policy space affects the political action committee (PAC) system. They hypothesize that the complexity of the policy space indirectly affects the size and activity of the PAC system through its direct effect on interest organization density. The auth…
The Relational Determinants of Legislative Outcomes: Strong and Weak Ties Between Legislators
In the repeated interactions of a legislative session, legislators develop working relationships that can be used in the pursuit of legislative goals. I develop a theory of influence diffusion across a legislative network of relations based on strategic actors building relationships in order to increase legislative success. Building on sociological theory initially developed by Granovetter, my research indicates that it is the weak ties between l…
Toward a Network Theory of Alliance Formation
We propose a network-based theory of alliance formation. Our theory implies that, in addition to key state and dyad attributes already established in the literature, the evolution of the alliance network from any given point in time is largely determined by its structure. Specifically, we argue that closed triangles in the alliance network—where i is allied with j is allied with k is allied with i — produce synergy effects in which state-level ut…
Generalist Interest Organizations and Interest System Density: A Test of the Competitive Exclusion Hypothesis
Objective We examine the effects of interest community density on generalist interest organizations. A core element of population ecology theory is competitive exclusion, which suggests two hypotheses. First, through niche partitioning of the issue space among similar organizations and the comparative advantages of specialist organizations, generalists in heavily populated systems struggle to secure members more than their counterparts in less de…
Multimember Districts' Effect on Collaboration between U.S. State Legislators
In this article, I demonstrate that multimember districts form a basis for collaboration between two legislators. In order to maximize the limited incumbency advantages they possess, legislators from multimember districts form coalitions in an effort to generate greater credit‐claiming opportunities and policy benefits for their district. In order to test this conception, I utilize a natural experiment and an opportunity to observe institutional …
Wallet-Based Redistricting: Evidence for the Concentration of Wealth in Majority Party Districts
This article examines the role of wealth in the redistricting process in state legislative contests. I argue that the decision by state redistricting mapmakers to pursue a “seatswing” or “protection” strategy involves more than just a choice between where to move partisan voters. Redistricting may also allow parties to consider wealth as an additional resource to be concentrated or dispersed across legislative districts. To test this wealth-based…
Hypothesis Testing for Group Structure in Legislative Networks
Scholars of social networks often rely on summary statistics to measure and compare the structures of their networks of interest. However, measuring the uncertainty inherent in these summaries can be challenging, thus making hypothesis testing for network summaries difficult. Computational and nonparametric procedures can overcome these difficulties by allowing researchers to generate reference distributions for comparison directly from their dat…
Measurement and theory in legislative networks: The evolving topology of Congressional collaboration
Partisanship and Reciprocity in Cross-Chamber Legislative Interactions
The bicameral nature of most U.S. legislatures implies that it is often in the interest of legislators to collaborate on legislation across chamber lines. In this research, we offer a novel theory of collaboration between upper and lower chamber members in U.S. legislatures. We expect that exogenous characteristics like party, constituency, and joint committee membership characterize collaboration across legislative chambers. Additionally, we exp…
Ideological Heterogeneity and Legislative Polarization in the United States
The responsiveness of individual legislators to their constituents creates an indirect electoral connection between the aggregate preferences of citizens and the behavior of legislative parties. In this research, I argue that legislators from moderate districts are the least likely to support their parties and most likely to vote moderately during roll call votes. I also argue that states with low ideological variance among citizens are the most …
Chamber Size Effects on the Collaborative Structure of Legislatures
The collective nature of legislating forces legislators to rely on one another for information and support. This collaborative activity requires a choice about partnerships in an environment of uncertainty. The basic size and organization of a legislature amplifies this uncertainty in relational choices. Analysis of collaborative patterns between all the U.S. state legislators in 2007 corroborates this expectation, indicating that large legislatu…
Holding Steady on Shifting Sands
Empirical claims that US Supreme Court decisions tend to follow public opinion raise important questions about the countermajoritarian role of the American judiciary. Yet, for the vast majority of federal cases, the de facto court of last resort is actually a US court of appeals. We examine the role of public opinion in shaping decisions on these courts. We argue that the courts of appeals' position in the judicial hierarchy, lack of docket contr…
Do Campaign Donors Influence Polarization? Evidence from Public Financing in the American States
Does the source of campaign funds influence legislative polarization? We develop competing theoretical expectations regarding the effects of publicly financed elections on legislative voting behavior. To test these expectations, we leverage a natural experiment in the New Jersey Assembly in which public financing was made available to a subset of members. We find that public financing exerts substantively negligible effects on roll‐call voting. W…
Representation, Competing Principals, and Waffling on Bills in US Legislatures
Legislators are often placed in the position of representing the interests of their constituents against the preferences of their own party leaders. We develop a theoretical framework indicating that these cross‐pressured legislators are more likely to initially support legislation and subsequently change their minds than are legislators whose constituents and leaders share similar preferences. Moreover, we expect this pattern to be most pronounc…
Measurement Error and Attenuation Bias in Exponential Random Graph Models
Exponential Random Graph Models (ERGMs) are becoming increasingly popular tools for estimating the properties of social networks across the social sciences. While the asymptotic properties of ERGMs are well understood, much less is known about how ERGMs perform in the face of violations of the assumptions that drive those asymptotic properties. Given that empirical social networks rarely meet the strenuous assumptions of the ERGM perfectly, pract…
Companion Bills and Cross-Chamber Collaboration in the U.S. Congress
The U.S. House and Senate were designed to have an adversarial relationship. Yet, House members and senators often collaborate on the introduction of “companion” bills. We develop a theory of these cross-chamber collaborations, which asserts that companion bill introductions are driven by legislators’ desire to increase the probability of bill passage and the relational difficulties in developing companion bill partnerships. To test the expectati…
Ideology and strategic party disloyalty in the US house of representatives
Rivals or Allies? A Multilevel Analysis of Cosponsorship within State Delegations in the U.S. Senate
The coordinated behavior of members of a state delegation to the U.S. Senate can provide constituents in a state greater representation in Congress. Despite this potentially improved level of representation through coordination, popular and scholarly accounts of the U.S. Senate often feature senators from the same state at odds with one another on a variety of policy issues. In this research, we investigate competing expectations regarding the fr…
Legislative Party Polarization and Trust in State Legislatures
We argue that citizens’ trust attitudes are inversely related to party polarization because polarization tends to encourage political conflict, which most people dislike. We further posit that partisans trust attitudes are driven by the ideological extremity of the opposing and their own parties for similar reasons. Using roll-call-based estimates of state legislative party polarization and public opinion data collected in 2008, we show strong ev…
The Financial Crisis, Fiscal Federalism, and the Creditworthiness of US State Governments
This study examines why credit rating agencies offered optimistic assessments of some US states during the 2008–2009 financial crisis. Focusing on the creditworthiness of state governments, we argue that because states are procyclic spenders, growth in a state’s economy is actually harmful to that state’s ability to maintain its fiscal promises. As the federal government spends more heavily in a state, however, the procyclic tendencies of that st…
Ideology, Grandstanding, and Strategic Party Disloyalty in the British Parliament
Strong party discipline is a core feature of Westminster parliamentary systems. Parties typically compel members of Parliament (MPs) to support the party regardless of MPs' individual preferences. Rebellion, however, does occur. Using an original dataset of MP votes and speeches in the British House of Commons from 1992 to 2015, coupled with new estimations of MPs' ideological positions within their party, we find evidence that MPs use rebellion …
Perceived Ideological Distance and Trust in Congress
Objectives We evaluate whether citizens’ trust in Congress is influenced by perceptions of ideological distance between themselves and their representatives. We argue that citizens view members as the “face” of Congress, and thus trust the institution more when the face of that institution is more ideologically proximal to themselves. Methods We test our hypotheses using responses to survey questions regarding both trust in Congress and perceptio…
How Dispositional Empathy Influences Political Ambition
Political representation is fundamentally about advancing the needs and interests of others. Empathy—the ability to share others' feelings and perspectives—ought to be a critical skill for effective representation. Yet the conflict, negativity, and competition that are endemic to politics may prevent empathetic individuals from seeking office. Using an original national survey with an oversample of people who have run for office, we explore how c…
Political science (29 works) · Law (26 works) · Law (24 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (22 works) · Politics (21 works) · Legislature (19 works) · Economics (15 works) · Public Administration (15 works) · Public Administration (14 works) · Computer Science (13 works)