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Congressional Leadership 1965–96: A New Look at the Extremism versus Centrality Debate
Author(s) -
GROFMAN BERNARD,
KOETZLE WILLIAM,
MCGANN ANTHONY J.
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 - 10.2307/3598520
Subject(s) - ideology , polarization (electrochemistry) , political science , democracy , centrality , political economy , public administration , law , sociology , politics , chemistry , mathematics , combinatorics
Abstract An examination of the differences between the ideological positions of leaders and other members in the U.S. House of Representatives (1965–96) demonstrates that Republican leaders tend to be significantly to the right of the median Republican member and Democratic leaders tend to be significantly to the left of the median Democratic member. Furthermore, leaders from both parties tend to be ideologically located near the mode of their party's ideological distribution. These empirical results have implications for issues such as party polarization, conditional party government, and the possibility of separating out party and ideology.