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Party Differentiation in Congress
Author(s) -
LOWRY WILLIAM R.,
SHIPAN CHARLES R.
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
legislative studies quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.728
H-Index - 54
eISSN - 1939-9162
pISSN - 0362-9805
DOI - 10.2307/3598518
Subject(s) - argument (complex analysis) , divergence (linguistics) , variation (astronomy) , democracy , dimension (graph theory) , politics , voting , convergence (economics) , political science , test (biology) , law and economics , positive economics , political economy , law , sociology , economics , paleontology , philosophy , biochemistry , chemistry , linguistics , physics , mathematics , astrophysics , pure mathematics , biology , economic growth
At times, the American political parties are so close in terms of policy positions that critics denounce the lack of a “dime's worth of difference” between them. At other times, the gap between them on a left‐right dimension is huge. How can we explain this variation? We argue that parties can behave rationally as collective units, and that shifts in divergence and convergence can be explained as rational responses to changes within governmental institutions and to shifts in conditions outside. We analyze this argument using adjusted ADA scores (Groseclose, Levitt, and Snyder 1999) to compare voting score differences between the Democratic and Republican parties in Congress from 1952 to 1996. We pose specific hypotheses for potentially important factors shaping party behavior and test them with a multivariate model. Our results support the argument that the variation in the behavioral gap between the two parties in Congress can be explained as rational party responses to internal and external stimuli.