Goals of this exercise

• Define “party voting” and “party unity” as measures of partisanship in Congress.
• Examine how members’ multiple goals sometimes provide consonant- and cross-pressures that affect congressional voting.
• Illustrate the rise of congressional party voting over recent years and consider some potential causes of the fluctuation of congressional partisanship.

Measuring Congressional Partisanship

Party Voting and Party Unity scores are measures of institutional partisanship commonly used by scholars.

A party vote is one in which at least 50 percent of the Members of one party vote against at least 50 percent of the Members of the other party. Thus in any given year we can calculate the percentage of all congressional votes that meet this measure of partisanship. (For example, in 1972, only 27.1 percent of House roll call votes were party votes.)

In addition, the average party unity score measures the internal cohesion of each party on such partisan votes.

Examining Rationality Principle #1

What goals do members of Congress pursue?

Most Congress scholars follow Richard Fenno’s observation that Members of Congress pursue three main goals:

• re-election
• influence in Washington
• good public policy

Still, the presence of multiple goals means that members often must choose among competing demands and reconcile contradictions among their goals.

Answer the following questions.

Question 1: Whereas most scholars acknowledge that members have multiple goals, many nevertheless argue the “re-election” is the main pursuit of Members of Congress. Why is “re-election” often considered the “primary” goal of members?

Question 2: Can you think of ways in which members’ re-election, influence and policy goals might come into conflict? How might such conflicts affect members’ partisan voting behavior?

Party Followership and Members’ Goals

In some instances, a member’s policy and re-election goals might be consonant with party followership. Still, in other cases, a member or Senator’s goals for re-election and achieving good public policy might best be forwarded by defying party leaders.

Consonant Pressures. When constituent views, a member’s policy views, and broader party goals are aligned, they all provide consonant pressures on members to support the party.

Cross-Pressures. When constituency views, policy views, and party are at odds, we can think of members as “cross-pressured” and as facing difficult choices where they will sometimes follow party but, in other instances, will vote against the party.

A contemporary example: Republican members who represent conservative districts and states are more likely to support conservative party policy, whereas Republican members who represent more moderate districts and states are more likely than their conservative colleagues to vote with Democrats.

The district-level basis of partisanship

In the 1950s, many Democratic Members of Congress were “cross-pressured” by the differing interests and ideological orientations of their congressional districts and the interests and ideological orientations of their national parties.

Southern Democrats, for example, represented congressional districts that were consistently conservative though their national party was increasingly liberal.

Issues such as civil rights, labor legislation, Lyndon Johnson’s “great society” programs, and Vietnam divided liberal Democrats from the conservative Southern base of the party.

As a result of these cross-pressures and the consequent divisions within the majority party, party voting in the House and Senate declined from the 1950s to the 1970s.

The rise of partisanship in the House and Senate.

The contemporary Congress – both the House and Senate – has become much more partisan since the 1980s.

Key to the development of partisanship in Congress is how the increased “nationalization” of partisanship in states and districts have increased the consonant pressures on many House members and Senators.

According to scholars like David Rohde, changes in congressional districts and states, most notably in the South where the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act empowered African American voters, led both to a strengthened Republican Party in the South and to Southern Democrats (those that remained, at least) to become more liberal.

Thus, as the Democratic Party was losing its conservative wing and becoming more liberal, the Republican Party was gaining many conservative southern seats thus increasing the power of conservatives in the GOP.

As the House and Senate parties became more ideologically homogeneous, there was a greater basis for collective partisan action and congressional partisanship (both in terms of party voting and party unity) began to rise.

With more consistently partisan districts and states, members’ re-election goals, policy preferences, and party followership provide increasingly consonant pressures to support party initiatives.

Examining Principles #2 and #3

Principles of Politics #2 and #3: All politics is collective action and Institutions routinely solve collective action problems.

Thinking of the legislative parties in the House and Senate as organizations designed to solve collective action problems that arise among goal-oriented members of Congress, answer the following questions.

Question 3: What are the incentives for members of Congress to be free riders in party efforts? Do some members of Congress have greater incentives to free ride than others?

Question 4: How might party leaders and organizations help alleviate or “solve” these collective action problems?

Citations

• CQ Almanac 2004 (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 2005).
• Joseph Cooper and David W. Brady, “Institutional Context and Leadership Style: The House from Cannon to Rayburn” American Political Science Review 75 (1981): 411-25.
• Richard F. Fenno, Jr., Congressmen in Committees (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973).
• David W. Rohde, Parties and Leaders in the Postreform House (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).