IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/now/jlqjps/100.00016073.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Ideological Extremists in the U.S. Congress: Out of Step but Still in Office

Author

Listed:
  • Bonica, Adam
  • Cox, Gary W.

Abstract

In the last generation, congressional moderates have become ideologically more extreme over the course of their careers. We explain this ideological migration of moderates as a side effect of close partisan competition for control of the US House since 1994. Competition for the House caused activists, donors and, indirectly, voters to focus on the battle for majority status. Increased attention to partisan competition reduced individual members’ ability to escape blame for their parties’ actions. Equivalently, it meant that members could deviate from their district preferences and pay a lower electoral penalty; they would be blamed in any event. Our empirical analysis shows that party-centeredness abruptly and dramatically increased after 1994, with the electoral penalty members paid for being out of step with their constituents correspondingly declining. This contributed to an important, albeit complicated, shift from local/personal to national/party representation.

Suggested Citation

  • Bonica, Adam & Cox, Gary W., 2018. "Ideological Extremists in the U.S. Congress: Out of Step but Still in Office," Quarterly Journal of Political Science, now publishers, vol. 13(2), pages 207-236, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:now:jlqjps:100.00016073
    DOI: 10.1561/100.00016073
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1561/100.00016073
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1561/100.00016073?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:now:jlqjps:100.00016073. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Lucy Wiseman (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nowpublishers.com/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.