Abstract
The importance of party affiliation in the United States may seem difficult to establish. Legislative parties in the United States are rather loose confederations of individuals who share a common party label but lack the discipline and uniformly high levels of party cohesion of their counterparts in many parliamentary systems. As a consequence of the primary system for selecting candidates to carry the party label in legislative election campaigns, party leaders lack an important tool for disciplining their rank and file. Moreover, the sizable contingent of independent and unaligned voters in the electorate may contribute to the relatively weak legislative parties in the United States (Wattenberg 1994, 1998). Given relatively loose legislative party discipline and relatively fluid party identification in the electorate, one might expect to observe frequent party switching among strategic political actors as they try to capture the benefits associated with membership in whichever party enjoys greater support among voters. Yet shifts in party affiliation among US House and Senate members have been rare. Specifically, only 38 Senators and 160 House members switched parties over a 163-year period (Nokken and Poole 2004).1
I would like to thank Mike Crespin, Maria Escobar-Lemmon, Chuck Finocchiaro, Craig Goodman, Keith Poole, Lucio Renno, and the Research Group on Legislative Party Switching for helpful comments and suggestions. I would also like to acknowledge Keith Poole and David Rohde for providing data utilized in this chapter. Special thanks to Keith Poole for his generous help in calculating the DW-NOMINATE scores utilized in this analysis. I also want to recognize Carol Mershon and William Heller for their work in creating the Research Group on Legislative Party Switching and spurring me to think hard about placing party switching in the United States within a larger comparative framework.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
4.8 References
Aldrich, John H., and William T. Bianco. 1992. “A Game-Theoretic Model of Party Affiliation of Candidates and Office Holders.” Journal of Mathematical and Computer Modelling 16: 103–116.
Aldrich, John H., and David W. Rohde. 2000. “The Consequences of Party Organization in the House: The Role of the Majority and Minority Parties in Conditional Party Government.” In Polarized Politics: Congress and the President in a Partisan Era, Ed. Jon R. Bond and Richard Fleisher. Washington, DC: CQ Press.
Aldrich, John H., and David W. Rohde. 2001. “The Logic of Conditional Party Government: Revisiting the Electoral Connection.” In Congress Reconsidered, 7th Edition, ed. Lawrence C. Dodd and Bruce I. Oppenheimer. Washington, DC: CQ Press.
Asher, Herbert B., and Herbert F Weisberg. 1978. “Voting Change in Congress: Some Dynamic Perspectives on an Evolutionary Process.” American Journal of Political Science 22 (May): 391–425.
Bach, Stanley, and Steven S. Smith. 1988. Managing Uncertainty in the House of Representatives: Adaptation and Innovation in Special Rules. Washington, DC: Brookings.
Brady, David, and Edward P. Schwartz. 1990. “Ideology and Interests in Congressional Voting: The Politics of Abortion and the U.S. Senate.” Public Choice 84 (July): 25–48.
Canon, David T. 1992. “The Emergence of the Republican Party in the South, 1964–1988.” In The Atomistic Congress: An Interpretation of Congressional Change, ed. Allen D. Hertzke and Ronald M. Peters, Jr. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.
Canon, David T., and David J. Sousa. 1992. “Party System Change and Political Structures in the U.S. Congress.” Legislative Studies Quarterly 17: 347–363.
Castle, David, and Patrick Fett. 1996. “A Predictive Model of Congressional Party Switching.” Manuscript. Beaumont, TX: Lamar University.
Castle, David, and Patrick Fett. 2000. “Member Goals and Party Switching in the US Congress.” In Congress on Display, Congress at Work, ed. William T. Bianco. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Cox, Gary W., and Mathew D. McCubbins. 1993. Legislative Leviathan: Party Government in the House. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Cox, Gary W., and Mathew D. McCubbins. 2002. “Agenda Power in the US House of Representatives, 1877–1986.” In Party, Process, and Political Change in Congress: New Perspectives on the History of Congress, ed. David W. Brady and Mathew D. McCubbins. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Cox, Gary W., and Mathew D. McCubbins. 2005. Setting the Agenda: Responsible Party Government in the U.S. House of Representatives. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Crespin, Michael H., David W. Rohde, and Ryan J. Vander Wielen. 2002. “Variations in Party Voting in the House of Representatives, 1953–2000.” Paper presented at the annual meetings of the Southern Political Science Association, Savannah, GA.
Desposato, Scott. 2006. “Parties for Rent? Careerism, Ideology, and Party Switching in Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies.” American Journal of Political Science 50 (1): 62–80.
Dougan, William R., and Michael Munger. 1989. “The Rationality of Ideology.” Journal of Law and Economics 32 (April): 119–142.
Fiorina, Morris P., Samuel J. Abrams, and Jeremy C. Pope. 2006. Culture War? The Myth of Polarized America. New York: Pearson Longman.
Goodman, Craig. 2004. Ideological Stability in Congress: Experiments in Roll Call Voting. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Houston.
Grose, Christian R. 2004. “Is It Better to Join the Majority? The Electoral Effects of Party Switching by Southern State Legislators, 1972–2000.” American Review of Politics 25: 79–98.
Grose, Christian R., and Antoine Yoshinaka. 2003. “The Electoral Consequences of Party Switching by Incumbent Members of Congress, 1947–2000.” Legislative Studies Quarterly 28 (February): 55–75.
Heller, William B., and Carol Mershon. 2005. “Party Switching in the Italian Chamber of Deputies, 1996–2001.” Journal of Politics 67 (May): 536–559.
Jacobson, Gary C., and Samuel Kernell. 1983. Strategy and Choice in Congressional Elections, 2nd Ed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
King, Gary, and Gerald Benjamin. 1986. “The Stability of Party Identification among US Representatives: Political Loyalty, 1789–1984.” Paper presented at the Midwest Political Science Association Convention.
Krehbiel, Keith. 1993. “Where’s the Party?” British Journal of Political Science 23 (April): 235–266.
Lott, John R., Jr., and Stephen G. Bronars. 1993. “Time Series Evidence on Shirking in the U.S. House of Representatives.” Public Choice 76 (June): 125–150.
Martis, Kenneth C. 1989. The Historical Atlas of Political Parties in the United States Congress 1789–1989. New York: Macmillan.
McCarty, Nolan M., Keith T. Poole, and Howard Rosenthal. 2001. “The Hunt for Party Discipline in Congress.” American Political Science Review 95 (September): 673–687.
McCarty, Nolan M., Keith T. Poole, and Howard Rosenthal. 2006. Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Mershon, Carol, and Olga Shvetsova. 2008. “Parliamentary Cycles and Party Switching in Legislatures.” Comparative Political Studies 41 (1): 99–127.
Nokken, Timothy P. 2000. “Dynamics of Congressional Loyalty: Party Defection and Roll Call Behavior, 1947–1997.” Legislative Studies Quarterly 25 (August): 417–444.
Nokken, Timothy P., and Keith T. Poole. 2004. “Congressional Party Defection in American History.” Legislative Studies Quarterly 29 (November): 545–568.
Oppenheimer, Bruce I., and Andrea C. Hatcher. 2003. “Congressional Party Switchers, 1876–2002: The Effect of Party and Constituency on Strategic behavior.” Paper presented at the annual meetings of the Midwest Political Science Association, April 3–6, Palmer House Hilton, Chicago, IL.
Poole, Keith T. 2005. Spatial Models of Parliamentary Voting. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
Roberts, Jason M., and Steven S. Smith. 2003. “Procedural Contexts, Party Strategy, and Conditional Party Voting in the US House of Representatives, 1971–2000.” American Journal of Political Science 47 (April): 305–317.
Rohde, David W. 1991. Parties and Leaders in the Postreform House. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Rohde, David W. 2004. Roll Call Voting Data for the United States House of Representatives, 1953–2002. East Lansing: Compiled by the Political Institutions and Public Choice Program, Michigan State University.
Sinclair, Barbara. 1981. “The Speaker’s Task Force in the Post-Reform House.” American Political Science Review 75 (June): 397–410.
Sinclair, Barbara. 2007. Unorthodox Lawmaking: New Legislative Processes in the U.S. Congress. Washington, DC: CQ Press.
Thames, Frank C. 2007. “Searching for the Electoral Connection: Parliamentary Party Switching in the Ukrainian Rada, 1998–2002.” Legislative Studies Quarterly 32 (May): 223–256.
Theriault, Sean M. 2007. “Procedural Polarization in the US Congress.” Manuscript. Austin: University of Texas.
Wattenberg, Martin P. 1994. “Dealignment in the American Electorate.” In Parties and Politics in American History: A Reader, ed. L. Sandy Maisel and William G. Shade. New York: Garland.
Wattenberg, Martin P. 1998. The Decline of American Political Parties, 6th ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Yoshinaka, Antoine. 2005. “House Party Switchers and Committee Assignments: Who Gets ‘What, When, How?’” Legislative Studies Quarterly 30 (August): 391–406.
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2009 William B. Heller and Carol Mershon
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Nokken, T.P. (2009). Party Switching and the Procedural Party Agenda in the US House of Representatives. In: Heller, W.B., Mershon, C. (eds) Political Parties and Legislative Party Switching. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230622555_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230622555_4
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-37425-0
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-62255-5
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political & Intern. Studies CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)