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The Hunt for Party Discipline in Congress

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 January 2002

Nolan McCarty ,
Keith T. Poole  and
Howard Rosenthal
Nolan McCarty
Affiliation:
Princeton University
Keith T. Poole
Affiliation:
University of Houston
Howard Rosenthal
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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Abstract

We analyze party discipline in the House of Representatives between 1947 and 1998. The effects of party pressures can be represented in a spatial model by allowing each party to have its own cutting line on roll call votes. Adding a second cutting line makes, at best, a marginal improvement over the standard single-line model. Analysis of legislators who switch parties shows, however, that party discipline is manifest in the location of the legislator's ideal point. In contrast to our approach, we find that the Snyder-Groseclose method of estimating the influence of party discipline is biased toward exaggerating party effects.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 95 , Issue 3 , September 2001 , pp. 673 - 687
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2001

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