For years, political scientists have explained this seeming paradox by pointing out that members of Congress can win reelection by running against Congress. A representative can urge his voters to send him back time after time so that he can keep working to fix the broken system. As Fenno wrote in Home Style, “It is easy for each Congressman to explain to his own supporters why he cannot be blamed for the performance of the collectivity . . . because the internal diversity and decentralization of the institution provide such a wide variety of collegial villains to flay before one’s supporters at home” (1978, 167).²

In his textbook on Congressional elections, Gary Jacobson sums up the dominant view among political scientists: “Members are not held individually responsible for their collective performance in governing.” (2004, 227).

David Jones has a recent article in AJPS that challenges this long held view. Jones looks back 60 years to a report commissioned in 1950 by the American Political Science Association Toward a More Responsive Two-Party System. That report urged “greater party cohesion in Congress,” suggesting that the presence of liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats makes it more difficult for individual voters to hold their representative accountable for Congress’s collective activities.

Jones argues that the APSA report was correct: If the two parties become more distinct (i.e. polarized), then it should be easier for voters to blame members of the majority party for Congress’s collectively bad (or good) performance. And, as it happens, there’s been quite a bit of research in recent years showing that Congress has, in fact, become more polarized.

If Jones is right, then we’re in a new era. It may have been true 20, 30, or 40 years ago that members of Congress could evade accountability for Congress’s overall activities, but rising polarization has enabled voters to punish or reward Representatives for Congress’s collective performance.

Evidence that Overall Congressional Approval Matters

To test this possibility, Jones compiled each incumbent Representative’s electoral margin going back decades, producing thousands of data points. He then regressed those vote margins on a variety of independent variables. Among others, he regressed vote margins on Congress’s overall approval ratings. More importantly, he also interacted those approval ratings with measures of polarization (party unity).

Take a look at Figure 1 from Jones’s article (below). Along the X axis, Jones shows each year back through 1976. Along the Y axis, he shows that estimated effect of overall Congressional approval on individual incumbents’ vote margins for that year.³ By the end of the series, the estimated effect of overall approval rises above 0.50 (for members of the majority party). In other words, a one percentage point drop in Congressional approval (perhaps from 40 to 39) leads us to expect a 0.50+ drop in each incumbent’s vote margin. This is a powerful effect, subject to a powerful interaction.

Figure 1, Jones 2010

It’s worth noting that there is not similar interaction for members of the minority. Back in the days of low polarization, minority members could win reelection by running against Congress, just like members of the majority. Rising polarization has not prevented minority party members from continuing to run against Congress–and why should it? Minority party members can continue to win by running against Congress, citing all the majority’s misdeeds. Nothing has changed for the minority.

Comment and Criticism

This is an interesting and worthwhile article. It leaves me wondering, though, why 90+% of incumbents continue to win reelection. I began this review by pointing out a seeming paradox from 2008–not from 1976. Even in the most recent Congressional elections, 36% of voters said that most members did not deserve reelection, yet 94% of members won reelection. More generally, we continue to observe Congress (overall) receiving markedly low approval while individual members receive very high approval from their constituents.

If Jones is correct, then we ought not to observe this pattern so strongly anymore, yet we do. I’m not sure how to respond to Jones’s analysis given this continuing disconnect between overall and individual Congressional approval. Perhaps Jones has a serious problem in his statistical analysis that I’m not seeing resulting in an inflated estimate of the interaction. Or perhaps Congressional elections are sufficiently different from Congressional approval that this paradox can persist in approval data even as it evaporates in election results. I’m at a loss to resolve this puzzle.

Broad bills ensure that general state policies remain current and fair, but legislators might avoid them for two reasons. First, they are technically complicated; if you wish to revise the state highway code, for example, you will need expert advice and probably a few studies. Second, they are politically difficult to pass; since they influence the entire state, you’ve got to work to bring a coalition of legislators on board with your proposal. By contrast, “district” bills are technically less complicated; the process of campaigning generally gives legislators all the information they need about some pressing local problem. District bills are also politically easier to pass; since they don’t have any impact outside of a small geographical area, other legislators have no reason to oppose most district bills.

By examining every bill introduced in 13 states in 1881, 1901, 1921, 1941, 1961, 1981, and 1997–that’s over 165,000 bills–Gamm and Kousser try to explain why some states produce so many more district bills than others. In Alabama, only 53% of bills had statewide impact; in Nebraska, 77% did. In general, Gamm and Kousser find that states pass more district bills when legislators have incentives to build up their reelection constituency or to make themselves stand out as an individual, but they pass more statewide bills when legislators have incentives to develop their influence and power within the state legislature. There’s more to it than that, though.

Hypotheses and Findings

Gamm and Kousser identify specific conditions under which legislators might prefer to introduce district bills or statewide bills.

Hypothesis 1 (one-party dominance): When the major parties are evenly balanced in a state, you’ll see more statewide bills; when one party dominates, you’ll see more district bills. This prediction is based on Key’s seminal 1949 book, Southern Politics in State and Nation. Key wrote that two-party competition produces “conditions favorable to government according to rule or general principle” (e.g. statewide bills); by contrast,  “in a loose, catch-as-catch-can [one-party] politics highly unstable coalitions must be held together by whatever means is available…. A loose factional system lacks the power to carry out sustained programs of action [e.g. statewide bills]” (pages 305, 308). In other words, two-party competition creates strong incentives for each party to form a statewide brand name by competing over statewide policies; in a one-party system, unstable factional coalitions within the supermajority party need to be held together with pork and other district bills. This hypothesis is confirmed in the analysis.

Hypothesis 2 (legislative salary): Legislators will introduce more district bills if they are paid more. California’s legislators earn six-figure salaries each year; Montana’s earn less than $10,000. Higher salaries create higher incentives to hold onto your job. Thus, higher salaries create incentives to deliver pork and other particularistic bills to voters in your district, even at the expense of pursuing the state’s general interest. This hypothesis is also confirmed in the analysis.

Hypothesis 3 (session length): Legislators will introduce more statewide bills if they are in session longer. California’s legislators are in session almost year round; in other states, legislators meet only one or two months per year. Because statewide bills are more complicated to write and pass than district bills, you will see fewer statewide bills in states with shorter sessions. As it happens, however, the data do not bear out this expectation; session length appears to have no relationship with the types of bills that pass.

Hypothesis 4 (turnover): Legislators can increase their statute within the legislature by building coalitions and passing statewide bills. As turnover decreases and legislators serve longer, they gain incentives to develop their stature within the legislature. As such, decreased turnover should lead to increased statewide bills. That’s the expectation, anyway. In the analysis, Gamm and Kousser find the opposite: Higher turnover leads to more focus on statewide bills. Perhaps their logic was off. Perhaps what’s really going on is this: Legislators who know they won’t stay long have less need to build up their reelection constituency (with district bills), so they can instead focus on statewide needs. I’m sure Kousser would rather not say this, but…score one for term limits?

Hypothesis 6 (district size): If districts are larger, legislators will focus more on statewide bills. Larger districts include more cities and towns, meaning that an individual district bill will reach a smaller portion of the district. In this situation, a more effective way to show the entire district that their legislator is attentive to their needs might be to pass statewide bills rather than district bills. This hypothesis is confirmed in the analysis.

Yes, I skipped hypothesis 5. I found it unpersuasive, and it ended up being statistically insignificant in the final analysis.

Punchline: If you want your legislators to pass general policies that benefit the state as a whole, pay them less, make districts bigger, and strive for partisan balance. If you want your legislators to pass pork and other district-focused bills, pay them more, make districts smaller, and promote one-party government.

Comment and Criticism

Gamm and Kousser are right to look to state legislatures to answer this question. Too often, folks think that they have to look at Congress if they want to study legislative process. The trouble with that is that there are no cross-sectional variations in the variables that we might expect to matter. In any given year, the majority party margin is the same for every member of the U.S. House; so is the salary, session length, average turnover, and so on. Sure, these things vary over time–but ALL of them vary from year to year, making it hard to tell which over-time variation is influencing the results.

Sometimes, folks who give up on Congress try instead to compare countries to one another. This approach is useful, but it introduces a host of other complications (variations in culture, constitutions, voting rules, etc.). The state legislatures are the perfect venue for this research question. The authors are able to study all the variables they care about, but all their observations are similar by virtue of their status as members of a common political system.

Masket takes this a step further, arguing that local informal party organizations control nominations and through those nominations exert control over the legislative behavior of politicians.  He argues that “parties control the public behavior of their office holders by acting as gatekeepers to political office.”  While agreeing with Aldrich (1995), that parties help organizing the legislature, Masket argues that parties, and in conjunction party nominations, are primarily a mechanism by which concerned citizens hold legislators accountable for their actions.

Testing and Results

To test these arguments, Masket uses roll-call analysis of the California Assembly prior and subsequent to the 1953 decision to mandate party labels on primary ballots, effectively eliminating the ability of legislators to cross-file in both political primaries.  His analysis of roll call votes as well as votes for the Speaker of the Assembly shows that the imposition of these new regulations on primary elections had a marked effect of increasing a the partisan nature of the legislature, as politics became less bipartisan after the change, which Masket argues was not the desire of those within the legislature.

Inside the Smoke-Filled Rooms and Thoughts on the How

In addition to his quantitative analysis of legislator behavior, Masket also details the structure of 5 different local party organizations: Orange County Republicans, South Los Angeles Democrats, East Side LA County Democrats, West LA Democrats, and the local party organizations of Fresno County.  Through interviews, Masket details the ways in which party organizations exercise their influence using things such as donor networks, sample ballot mailings, and the mobilization of activist networks.

Unfortunately, none of these items that come out through interviews are easily testable, and while Masket presents ample evidence of local influence on the nomination process, it is difficult to determine how much influence these organizations have on the outcome of nominations.

Small Qualms

While Masket’s work shows clearly the change in the influence of parties after the change in primary election law, he doesn’t give any solid quantitative evidence as to how exactly those mechanisms work.  Is it the fundraising network?  Is it the power of mobilization?   While the interviewees claimed to have influence in all of these aspects, the heads of a campaign or a campaign organization has an incentive to make their role as significant as possible in order to increase their status as the gatekeeper.  Masket clearly demonstrates to the reader that local party organizations influence nominations, but falls a little short on convincing the reader as to the mechanism through which these organizations control nominations.