IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/9315.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Credibility and Policy Convergence: Evidence from U.S. House Roll Call Voting Records

Author

Listed:
  • David S. Lee
  • Enrico Moretti
  • Matthew J. Butler

Abstract

Traditional models of politician behavior predict complete or partial policy convergence, whereby electoral competition compels partisan politicians to choose positions more moderate than their most-preferred policies. Alternatively, if politicians cannot overcome the inability to make binding pre-commitments to policies, the expected result is complete policy divergence. By exploiting a regression discontinuity (RD) design inherent in the Congressional electoral system, this paper empirically tests the strong predictions of the complete divergence hypothesis against the alternative of partial convergence within the context of Representatives' roll call voting behavior in the U.S. House (1946-1994). The RD design implies that which party wins a district seat is quasi-randomly assigned among elections that turn out to be 'close'. We use this variation to examine if Representatives' roll call voting patterns do not respond to large exogenous changes in the probability of winning the election, the strong prediction of complete policy divergence. The evidence is more consistent with full divergence and less consistent with partial convergence, suggestive that the difficulty of establishing credible commitments to policies is an important real-world phenomenon.

Suggested Citation

  • David S. Lee & Enrico Moretti & Matthew J. Butler, 2002. "Credibility and Policy Convergence: Evidence from U.S. House Roll Call Voting Records," NBER Working Papers 9315, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:9315
    Note: PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w9315.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alesina, Alberto & Spear, Stephen E., 1988. "An overlapping generations model of electoral competition," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 359-379, December.
    2. Aldrich, John H., 1983. "A Downsian Spatial Model with Party Activism," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 77(4), pages 974-990, December.
    3. Alesina, Alberto, 1988. "Credibility and Policy Convergence in a Two-Party System with Rational Voters," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(4), pages 796-805, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Per G. Fredriksson & Le Wang & Patrick L Warren, 2013. "Party Politics, Governors, and Economic Policy," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 80(1), pages 106-126, July.
    2. Gilles Saint‐Paul & Davide Ticchi & Andrea Vindigni, 2016. "A Theory of Political Entrenchment," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 126(593), pages 1238-1263, June.
    3. Antonio Merlo, 2005. "Whither Political Economy? Theories, Facts and Issues," PIER Working Paper Archive 05-033, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, revised 01 Dec 2005.
    4. Jason DeBacker, 2012. "Political parties and political shirking," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 150(3), pages 651-670, March.
    5. Braendle, Thomas, 2013. "Do Institutions Affect Citizens' Selection into Politics?," Working papers 2013/04, Faculty of Business and Economics - University of Basel.
    6. Menegatti, Mario, 2005. "Political Cycles and International Interdependence," Economia Internazionale / International Economics, Camera di Commercio Industria Artigianato Agricoltura di Genova, vol. 58(3), pages 353-365.
    7. Alberto Alesina & Guido Tabellini, 2005. "Why do Politicians Delegate?," Levine's Bibliography 784828000000000470, UCLA Department of Economics.
    8. Massimo Morelli, 2004. "Party Formation and Policy Outcomes under Different Electoral Systems," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 71(3), pages 829-853.
    9. Berdugo, Binyamin, 2008. "What It Takes to Be a Leader: Leadership and Charisma in a Citizen-Candidate Model," MPRA Paper 11408, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Kalandrakis, Tasos, 2009. "A Reputational Theory of Two-Party Competition," Quarterly Journal of Political Science, now publishers, vol. 4(4), pages 343-378, December.
    11. Miettinen, Topi & Poutvaara, Panu, 2006. "Political Parties and Rent-seeking through Networks," Munich Reprints in Economics 19204, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    12. Costas Roumanias, 2008. "Auctioning Public Office," Discussion Paper Series 2008_08, Department of Economics, University of Macedonia, revised Sep 2008.
    13. John Jackson, 2014. "Location, location, location: the Davis-Hinich model of electoral competition," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 159(1), pages 197-218, April.
    14. Binyamin Berdugo, 2006. "What It Takes to Be a Leader: Leadership and Charisma in a Citizen-Candidate Model," Working Papers 0612, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Department of Economics.
    15. Topi Miettinen & Panu Poutvaara, 2006. "Political Parties and Network Formation," CESifo Working Paper Series 1663, CESifo.
    16. Kristin Kanthak, 2002. "Top-Down Divergence," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 14(3), pages 301-323, July.
    17. Amihai Glazer, 2010. "Ideological externalities, social pressures, and political parties," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 144(1), pages 53-62, July.
    18. Cecilia Testa, 2004. "Party Polarization and Electoral Accountability," Econometric Society 2004 Latin American Meetings 130, Econometric Society.
    19. Howitt, Peter & Wintrobe, Ronald, 1995. "The political economy of inaction," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(3), pages 329-353, March.
    20. James E Monogan III, 2013. "Strategic party placement with a dynamic electorate," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 25(2), pages 284-298, April.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H0 - Public Economics - - General
    • K0 - Law and Economics - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:nbr:nberwo:9315. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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.