Ideological Warriors and Constituent Servants
Understanding the Determinants of Participation on Health Care Legislation in the Polarized Senate
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6182360 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Mark Charles Hines (Georgetown University, corresponding author), Michele L Swers (0000-0001-6457-9662, Georgetown University) |
| Year | 2015 |
| Volume | 42 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 147-180 |
| Publication date | 2015-05-04 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Congress & the Presidency (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0734-3469 • E-ISSN: 1944-1053 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/07343469.2015.1030802 |
| OpenAlex | W2160789154 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 28 |
Recent scholarship on the Senate indicates that partisanship and polarization have fundamentally changed the dynamics and the nature of policy making in the institution. To understand how senators balance their roles as constituent servants and partisan warriors, we examine senators’ participation in floor amending on major health legislation over a 10-year period (2000–2010). Health care is central to the ideological divide over the nature of the welfare state and has a significant impact on constituents. Unlike previous studies, we develop a fuller picture of the factors that motivate senators to participate by analyzing both amendments filed to a bill and amendments considered on the floor. We find that minority party status and ideology, both the liberal-conservative dimension and ideological extremism, are important indicators of participation. Furthermore, senators elevate ideology in comparison to constituent need when an issue is a presidential priority. Finally, the influence of constituency factors varies by party. For Democrats, their ideological commitment to the social welfare state makes them more likely to participate on health issues regardless of constituent need. However, Republican senators become more likely to sponsor amendments as the level of observable constituent factors increases
Health care · Ideology · Legislation · Polarization (electrochemistry · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Presidential system · Scholarship · Sociology · State (computer science · Welfare · Welfare state · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Gender Politics and Representation · Law · Policy Transfer and Learning · Public Administration
The Floor in Congressional Life
Party Polarization in Congress
Congressmen's Voting Decisions
Partners and Rivals
The Gingrich Senators
Partisan Priorities
Party Influence in Congress
The Transformation of the U.S. Senate
Optimal effort allocation by U.S. Senators
Congress, The Electoral Connection
Congress
Sizing Up the Senate
Women in the Club
Variance Specification in Event Count Models
Cycles of Spin
Position Taking and Cosponsorship in the U.S. House
Dividers, Not Uniters
Representation and Public Policy
Measuring Changes in American Party Reputations, 1939—2004
Modeling Certainty with Clustered Data
Agreeing to Disagree
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,25 |
| Citation span | 2018 - 2021 (4) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |