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The Role of the Party Record in Elections for the House of Representatives, 1970-2008

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The Role of the Party Record in Elections for the House of Representatives, 1970-2008 University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 8-2012 The Role of the Party Record in Elections for the House of Representatives, 1970-2008 Matthew Thomas Gross [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Part of the American Politics Commons Recommended Citation Gross, Matthew Thomas, "The Role of the Party Record in Elections for the House of Representatives, 1970-2008. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2012. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/1440 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Matthew Thomas Gross entitled "The Role of the Party Record in Elections for the House of Representatives, 1970-2008." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in Political Science. Anthony Nownes, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Patricia Freeland, Nathan J. Kelly, Benjamin Feldmeyer Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) The Role of the Party Record in Elections for the House of Representatives, 1970-2008 A Dissertation Presented for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Matthew Thomas Gross August 2012 ii Copyright © 2012 by Matthew T. Gross All Rights Reserved iii Abstract Much scholarly attention has been devoted to the role of political parties in Congress. One of the major theories of party legislative organization is cartel theory. Cartel theory assumes that each legislative party possesses a party record or reputation, which influences the election prospects for all members of the party. It provides an electoral incentive to encourage cooperation among party members in a single chamber of Congress. Congressional scholars have paid little attention to the party record. In the following chapters, I bring together the desultory scholarly research on the party record and examine the impact of the party record on aggregate challenger entry, aggregate retirements, and seat change for the United States House of Representatives from 1970-2008. Two party record components, integrity and ideology, are taken from previous research on the party record. I develop and test a third measure, aggregate party-level negative integrity, based on television evening news coverage of each party‘s scandals in the House. Using ordinary least squares regression, I find that two components of the party record, competence and integrity, influence aggregate challenger entry but not aggregate quality challenger entry. The party record does not impact aggregate retirements. However, in a logistic regression model of individual retirements of House members accused of scandal, I find that party leaders are successful at pressuring certain party members to resign or retire from the House. Moreover, in a negative binomial regression model of evening news stories attributable to each member‘s scandal, when party leaders are successful at forcing a member to quit, he or she generates less negative publicity for the party Finally, using OLS regression, I find that the party record does not impact seat change in the House except in open seat races. In open seat iv races, the ideological component of the party record positively impacts seat change. I conclude by describing the impact of these results on theories of legislative organization. I then describe the impact of these results on democratic theory as it relates to collective responsible via responsible parties. v Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 2: The Party Record and Challenger Entry ..................................................................... 20 Chapter 3: The Party Record and Retirements from the House of Representatives ..................... 61 Chapter 4: The Party Record in Elections .................................................................................... 97 Chapter 5: Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 122 List of References ....................................................................................................................... 141 Vita .............................................................................................................................................. 150 vi List of Tables Table 2.1: Key Differences and Similarities Between National Tides and the Party Record ....... 34 Table 2.2: Summary Statistics for Democratic and Republican Negative Integrity ..................... 48 Table 2.3 Independent Variables and Hypothesized Relationships with DCR and DQR ............. 52 Table 2.4: OLS Regression of Democratic Challenger Rate ........................................................ 55 Table 2.5: OLS Regression of Democratic Quality Challenger Rate ........................................... 58 Table 3.1: Punishments and Their Impact on Member Goals....................................................... 75 Table 3.2: Logistic Regression of House Scandal Retirements .................................................... 84 Table 3.3: Negative Binomial Regression of Evening News Stories ........................................... 86 Table 3.4: OLS Regression of ΔDemocratic Retirement Rate...................................................... 94 Table 4.1: OLS Regression of Democratic Seat Change ............................................................ 117 Table 4.2: OLS Regression of Contested Democratic Seat Change ........................................... 118 Table 4.3: OLS Regression of Open Democratic Seat Rate ....................................................... 119 Table 5.1: Revised Table of Key Differences and Similarities Between National Tides and the Party Record ............................................................................................................................... 124 vii List of Figures Figure 2.1: Democratic and Republican Negative Integrity ......................................................... 49 Figure 2.2: Democratic Challenger and Democratic Quality Challenger Rates ........................... 54 Figure 3.1: Democratic and Republican Retirement Rates .......................................................... 93 Figure 4.1: Seat Change in the House of Representatives .......................................................... 115 viii Abbreviations and Symbols B Benefits from Office B1 Benefits of action undertaken if reelection is not achieved Bw Benefits derived from holding office CDSC Contested Democratic Seat Change CPG Conditional Party Government C Costs of running for reelection. ci Personal Characteristics (Chapter 1 only) DCR Democratic Challenger Rate DHA Democratic Heterogeneity Advantage ∆ Delta indicates variable has been differenced DNI Democratic Negative Integrity DNIA Democratic Negative Integrity Advantage DQR Democratic Quality Challenger Rate DRR Democratic Retirement Rate DSC Democratic Seat Change LDV Lagged Dependent Variable MC Member of Congress ni National Tide (Chapter 1 only) ODSR Open Democratic Seat Rate OLS Ordinary Least Squares Regression pi Party Characteristics (Chapter 1 only) ix P Probability of Winning Election to Office RNI Republican Negative Integrity R Risk in Running for Office Ri Probability of Reelection (Chapter 1 only) RRR Republican Retirement Rate U Utility of Office 1 Chapter 1: Introduction “[T]he political parties created democracy and […] modern democracy is unthinkable save in terms of political parties” (Schattschneider 1942, 1). For early party government theorists, such as E. E. Schattschneider, political parties were essential for the creation and operation of democracy. Theories of party government emphasize the importance of distinct political parties, parties which offer voters meaningful party programs. An essential element of responsible party government is collective responsibility (Ranney 1954). Collective responsibility through parties means that party members are held accountable for the actions of their political party. This concept seems to clash with modern conceptions of congressional behavior, which argue that members of Congress (MCs) act in their own self- interest rather than on behalf of the interests of Congress as an institution or their political party. They build individual reputations for constituent service, they court constituent interests, and they strengthen their incumbency advantage (Mayhew 1974a; Fenno 1978). It is their own electoral, institutional, and policy goals that are paramount, not those of Congress or their political party. In such a context, how can MCs be held collectively responsible? The party record provides a possible answer. The party record is a party's reputation in the electorate, a reputation that hurts or harms the
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