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The Majority-Party Disadvantage: Revising Theories of Legislative Organization

Author

Listed:
  • Feigenbaum, James J.
  • Fouirnaies, Alexander
  • Hall, Andrew B.

Abstract

Dominant theories of legislative organization in the U.S. rest on the notion that the majority party arranges legislative matters to enhance its electoral fortunes. Yet, we find little evidence for a short-term electoral advantage for the majority party in U.S. state legislatures. Furthermore, there appears to be a pronounced downstream majority-party disadvantage . To establish these findings, we propose a technique for aggregating the results of close elections to obtain as-if random variation in majority-party status. We argue that the results from this approach are consistent with a phenomenon of inter-temporal balancing, which we link to other forms of partisan balancing in U.S. elections. The article thus necessitates revisions to our theories of legislative organization, offers new arguments for balancing theories, and lays out an empirical technique for studying the effects of majority-party status in legislative contexts.

Suggested Citation

  • Feigenbaum, James J. & Fouirnaies, Alexander & Hall, Andrew B., 2017. "The Majority-Party Disadvantage: Revising Theories of Legislative Organization," Quarterly Journal of Political Science, now publishers, vol. 12(3), pages 269-300, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:now:jlqjps:100.00015112
    DOI: 10.1561/100.00015112
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    Cited by:

    1. Cox, Gary W. & Fiva, Jon H. & Smith, Daniel M., 2020. "Measuring the Competitiveness of Elections," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 28(2), pages 168-185, April.
    2. De Magalhães, Leandro, 2021. "Estimating slim-majority effects in US state legislatures with a regression discontinuity design under local randomization assumptions," Political Science Research and Methods, Cambridge University Press, vol. 9(3), pages 665-674, July.
    3. Joshua D. Clinton, 2020. "The effect of majority party agenda setting on roll calls," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 185(3), pages 459-483, December.
    4. Sarah Binder, 2020. "How we (should?) study Congress and history," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 185(3), pages 415-427, December.
    5. Mahadevan, Meera & Shenoy, Ajay, 2023. "The political consequences of resource scarcity: Targeted spending in a water-stressed democracy," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 220(C).
    6. Raff, Zach & Meyer, Andrew & Walter, Jason M., 2022. "Political differences in air pollution abatement under the Clean Air Act," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 212(C).
    7. Shenoy, Ajay & Zimmermann, Laura V., 2021. "The Workforce of Clientelism: The Case of Local Officials in the Party Machine," GLO Discussion Paper Series 916, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    8. Benoît Le Maux & Kristýna Dostálová & Fabio Padovano, 2020. "Ideology or voters? A quasi-experimental test of why left-wing governments spend more," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 182(1), pages 17-48, January.

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