Keith T. Poole and Howard Rosenthal have analyzed 16 million individual roll call votes spanning the two centuries since the two Houses of Congress began recording votes in 1789. By tracing the voting patterns of Congress throughout the country's history, Poole and Rosenthal find that, despite a wide array of issues facing legislators, over 80% of a legislator's voting decisions can be attributed to a consistent ideological position ranging from ultraconservatism to ultraliberalism.The authors utilize roll call voting as a framework for a novel interpretation of important episodes in American political and economic history. Using a simple geometric model of voting, Congress demonstrates that roll call voting has a very simple structure and that, for most of American history, roll call voting patterns have maintained a core stability based on two great issues: the extent of government regulation of, and intervention in, the economy; and race. With the exception of the Civil War period, the major political parties have been organized around the issue of government intervention in the economy. Although political parties are the critical element in promoting stable voting alignments, these stable patterns are more than just the result of party alliances. Not only do new stable patterns of voting precede the emergence of new parties, there are also very important distinctions within parties. Race, the second great source of stable voting patterns, has almost always divided the two major parties internally and, in the post World War II era, has split the Democratic party along North-South lines leading to a three-party system. Congress documents the history of race-related issues in Congress and how race has an indirect effect on many other issues such as minimum wages and food stamps. Congress also examines alternative models of roll call voting and finds them lacking. In several detailed case studies, the authors demonstrate that constituency interest or pocket-book voting models fail to account for voting on issues such as minimum wages, strip mining, food stamps, and railroad regulation. Because of its scope and controversial findings which challenge established political and economic models used to explain Congressional behavior, Congress will be essential reading for political scientists, economists, and historians.

Congress: A Political-Economic History of Roll Call Voting

Politics & Social Sciences

Poole, Keith T.

Rosenthal, Howard

Politics & Government

Oxford University Press

Keith T. Poole and Howard Rosenthal have analyzed 16 million individual roll call votes spanning the two centuries since the two Houses of Congress began recording votes in 1789. By tracing the voting patterns of Congress throughout the country's history, Poole and Rosenthal find that, despite a wide array of issues facing legislators, over 80% of a legislator's voting decisions can be attributed to a consistent ideological position ranging from ultraconservatism to ultraliberalism. The authors utilize roll call voting as a framework for a novel interpretation of important episodes in American political and economic history. Using a simple geometric model of voting, Congress demonstrates that roll call voting has a very simple structure and that, for most of American history, roll call voting patterns have maintained a core stability based on two great issues: the extent of government regulation of, and intervention in, the economy; and race. With the exception of the Civil War period, the major political parties have been organized around the issue of government intervention in the economy. Although political parties are the critical element in promoting stable voting alignments, these stable patterns are more than just the result of party alliances. Not only do new stable patterns of voting precede the emergence of new parties, there are also very important distinctions within parties. Race, the second great source of stable voting patterns, has almost always divided the two major parties internally and, in the post World War II era, has split the Democratic party along North-South lines leading to a three-party system. Congress documents the history of race-related issues in Congress and how race has an indirect effect on many other issues such as minimum wages and food stamps. Congress also examines alternative models of roll call voting and finds them lacking. In several detailed case studies, the authors demonstrate that constituency interest or pocket-book voting models fail to account for voting on issues such as minimum wages, strip mining, food stamps, and railroad regulation. Because of its scope and controversial findings which challenge established political and economic models used to explain Congressional behavior, Congress will be essential reading for political scientists, economists, and historians.

Business & Money

Economics

The idea of America as politically polarized--that there is an unbridgeable divide between right and left, red and blue states--has become a cliché. What commentators miss, however, is that increasing polarization in recent decades has been closely accompanied by fundamental social and economic changes--most notably, a parallel rise in income inequality. In Polarized America, Nolan McCarty, Keith Poole, and Howard Rosenthal examine the relationships of polarization, wealth disparity, immigration, and other forces, characterizing it as a dance of give and take and back and forth causality.Using NOMINATE (a quantitative procedure that, like interest group ratings, scores politicians on the basis of their roll call voting records) to measure polarization in Congress and public opinion, census data and Federal Election Commission finance records to measure polarization among the public, the authors find that polarization and income inequality fell in tandem from 1913 to 1957 and rose together dramatically from 1977 on; they trace a parallel rise in immigration beginning in the 1970s. They show that Republicans have moved right, away from redistributive policies that would reduce income inequality. Immigration, meanwhile, has facilitated the move to the right: non-citizens, a larger share of the population and disproportionately poor, cannot vote; thus there is less political pressure from the bottom for redistribution than there is from the top against it. In "the choreography of American politics" inequality feeds directly into political polarization, and polarization in turn creates policies that further increase inequality.

Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology And Unequal Riches (Waltras-Pareto Lectures)

McCarty, Nolan M.

Mit Pr

Updated analysis of how the increasing polarization of American politics has been accompanied and accelerated by greater income inequality.
The idea of America as politically polarized―that there is an unbridgeable divide between right and left, red and blue states―has become a cliché. What commentators miss, however, is that increasing polarization has been closely accompanied by fundamental social and economic changes―most notably, a parallel rise in income inequality. In this second edition of Polarized America, Nolan McCarty, Keith Poole, and Howard Rosenthal use the latest data to examine the relationships of polarization, wealth disparity, immigration, and other forces. They find that inequality feeds directly into political polarization, and polarization in turn creates policies that further increase inequality. 
Paul Krugman called the first edition of Polarized America “Important.... Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand what's happening to America.” The second edition has been thoroughly brought up to date. All statistical analyses, tables, and figures have been updated with data that run through 2012 or 2014, and the text has been revised to reflect the latest evidence. The chapter on campaign finance has been completely rewritten (with Adam Bonica as coauthor); the analysis shows that with so much “soft” money coming from very wealthy ideological extremists, there is even greater campaign contribution inequality than income inequality.

Polarized America, second edition: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches (Walras-Pareto Lectures)

McCarty, Nolan

MIT Press]

Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches (Walras-Pareto Lectures)

Analyzing Spatial Models of Choice and Judgment (Chapman & Hall/CRC Statistics in the Social and Behavioral Sciences)

Computers & Technology

Bakker, Ryan

Carroll, Royce

Hare, Christopher

Armstrong, David A.

Software

Chapman and Hall/CRC

This book presents a geometric voting model for analyzing parliamentary roll call data. Each legislator is represented by one point and each roll call is represented by two points that correspond to the policy consequences of voting Yea or Nay. On every roll call each legislator votes for the closer outcome point, at least probabilistically. These points form a spatial map that summarizes the roll calls. In this sense a spatial map is much like a road map because it visually depicts the political world of a legislature. These maps can be used to study a wide variety of topics related to legislative voting.

Spatial Models of Parliamentary Voting (Analytical Methods for Social Research)

Cambridge University Press

Women, Public Opinion, and Politics: The Changing Political Attitudes of American Women

Women's Studies

Longman Publishing Group

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