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CONGRESSIONAL CAREERS: A VIEW FROM THE SENATE
DISSERTATION
Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for
the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate
School of The Ohio State University
By
Laura W. Arnold, M.A.
*****
The Ohio State University 1997
Dissertation Committee:
Approved by Professor Samuel C. Patterson* Adviser Adviser Department of Political Science Professor Herbert F. Weisberg
Professor Janet M. Box-Steffensmeier UMI Number: 9801636
UMI Microform 9801636 Copyright 1997, by UMI Company. All rights reserved.
This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code.
UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103 ABSTRACT
Career studies focus on both the developmental and contextual aspects of political service. The developmental aspect addresses how politicians change as their public service accumulates over time, while the contextual aspect deals with a politician's interaction with the environment, especially the institution in which one serves. This study examines the political career of a United States Senator. Specifically, I am interested in discovering regularities or cycles of activity that characterize these changes. Career patterns are useful both in explaining the behavior of Senators and the development of the Senate as an institution.
In examining the Senate career, I have divided my research into four components, which build upon and extend the existing literature. These stages include: the electoral career, which examines how the electoral safety of a Senator changes as service in the Senate increases; the formal position career, which considers when members attain positions of power within the Senate; the roll call voting career, which addresses changes in voting patterns across a legislator's tenure; and the legislative formulation career, which explores changes in member's bill writing and amending patterns as well as effectiveness in passing legislation across the period of service in the Senate.
The evidence presented suggests that while there was some seniority benefit in the past/ especially for Southern Democrats, more recently there appears to be very little connection between tenure and electoral security. Senior senators receive only a slightly larger proportion of the vote than their junior colleagues. In addition, the data demonstrate that, although junior senators are finding their way to the most prestigious committees, they are still at a significant disadvantage when considering their overall a package of committee positions. In the area of voting behavior, the central concern of the study is whether a senator's voting behavior changes as reelection becomes more proximate. I find some evidence of senators becoming more moderate in their voting as reelection approaches, especially for Republicans. Finally, the data clearly demonstrate that seniority pays strong dividends in legislative formulation. Even when numerous other factors are taken into account, tenure remains a strong influence on legislative performance.
Ill Dedicated to my parents, John and Ann Arnold,
IV ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The completion of this project would not have been possible without the assistance of many people. I am greatly indebted to each of them and hope I will remember them all here.
The former senators who agreed to spend their valuable time talking with me about Senate life provided crucial context for this project. These senators include: John Danforth, Tom Eagleton, Harry Byrd, Jr., Charles Percy, William Proximire, George McGovern, Alan Dixon, Warren Rudman, John Melcher, and two who would like to remain anonymous. Their insight provide a valuable guide for this work. In addition, I would like to thank the Graduate School at the Ohio State University for funding the travel that made these interviews possible through the Graduate School Alumni Research Award program.
Additional thanks go to Mary Pat Bierle, formerly of the staff of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. For several years, she shared her Senate experience with me and tolerated the stream of questions I had about Senate life. I have benefited greatly from her expertise. I also would like to thank Christopher Deering of George Washington University. His legislative politics class started me down the road than ends here.
I owe a great debt to the faculty and graduate students of Ohio State. I could not have asked for a more supportive dissertation committee. Not only did each member provide valuable advice on the dissertation, but they were also kind enough (or foolish enough) to involve me in interesting and challenging research projects. My chair, Samuel Patterson, provided me with sage advice and guidance, while also giving me the freedom to develop the project as my own. I value that freedom highly and his willingness to let me exercise it. Herbert Weisberg and Janet Box-Steffensmeier also offered helpful advice and suggested some crucial questions that made the final product much stronger. To Jan, I owe a special thanks since she sometimes seemed to believe in my abilities more than I did myself. In addition to my dissertation committee, Gregory Caldeira, Lawrence Baum, and John Kessel provided helpful suggestions in the early stages of project development.
Many of my graduate student colleagues have also provided me with great advice and much needed moral support. Thanks go to Barry Burden, Eric Heberlig, Rorie Spill, and Rosie Clausen. Special thanks go to Zoe Oxley and Rebecca Been for going above and beyond the call of duty as a friend.
Finally, my greatest debt is to my family for their love and support. Thanks for asking about the dissertation when it was going well and distracting me when it wasn't. A simple thank you could not nearly express the gratitude that
vi I owe ray husband David. His support, encouragement, advice, and patience kept me sane through the dissertation process. Although it is not enough, thank you.
VII VITA
July 28, 1966...... Born - St. Louis, Missouri
1988...... B.A. Political Science, Northwestern University
1988-1992...... Minority Professional Staff Member U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation
1992...... M.A. Political Science, The George Washington University
1992-present...... Graduate Teaching and Research Associate, The Ohio State University
PUBLICATIONS
Research Publication
1. Janet M. Box-Steffensmeier, Laura W. Arnold, Christopher Zorn. 1997. "Strategic Position Taking and the Timing of Voting Decisions in Congress: A Study of the North American Free Trade Agreement." American Political Science Review.
2. Laura W. Arnold and Herbert F. Weisberg. 1996. "Parenthood, Family Values, and the 1992 Presidential Election." American Politics Quarterly 2 4 (April) : 194-220.
VllI 3. Laura W. Arnold and Samuel C. Patterson. 1995. "Inside the Ohio Legislature." in Government, Politics, and Public Policy in Ohio, Carl Leiberman, ed. Akron, OH: Midwest Press Inc.
FIELDS OF STUDY
Major Field: Political Science
IX TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page Abstract ...... -______ii
Dedication. .... iv
Acknowledgments ...... v
Vita...... viii
List of Tables______xiii
Chapters :
1. Introduction...... 1
2. Getting to the Senate and Staying There: The Electoral Career...... 14
Introduction...... 14 What Is Known About Senate Elections: Previous Literature...... 17 Senate Tenure and Electoral Success: Expectations and Design...... 27 Senate Tenure and Electoral Success: Results...... 29 Conclusion...... 47
3. Institutional Power: Formal Positions in the Senate...... 51
Introduction...... 51 The Distribution of Senate Formal Positions: Previous Literature...... 54 Where Do We Go From Here?...... 61 Formal Positions in the Senate: Expectations...... 64 Formal Positions in the Senate: Data...... 66
X The Distribution of Formal Positions in L» ^5 • ^5111 tz S ••••••••••••••••••••••••■••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••»••• ••••«•• 6 lus 1 cj n*« 8 4
4 . The Vote Moderation Hypothesis Revisited: Call (Z)^^^nziz*«»##»#,**,»«,#»*»*«#*««»#«#«#****«#*#*#»#«*»#*##*«#*»««*»*#«*»##»****»**#«**##»*^5
i^iz ]z du^z^^ (Z) *7 Senator Bill Bradley and Vote Moderation.______87 The Vote Moderation Hypothesis...... ~...... ~.«...... ~....«...._._.~....~..89 Vote Moderation: Previous Literature______„..90 Research Expectations and Hypotheses______101
XZ ^3 .W...... M . M . M . M ...... 7. Analysis and Discussion______10 5 Conclus ion...... 127
5. The Business of Passing Laws: The Legislative Formulation Stage...... 129
Introduction...... 129 Legislative Activity and Success in the Senate: Previous Literature...... 131 The Legislative Formulation Career: Expectations...... 142 Legislative Activity and Effectiveness...... 145 Mortality Effects and Legislative Formulation .....165 Conclusion...... 171
6. Putting It All Together: A Multivariate Model of Legislative Behavior...... 173
Introduction...... 173 Legislative Activity and Effectiveness: Previous Literature...... 175 Models of Legislative Activity and Effectiveness : Expectations...... 188 Models of Legislative Activity and Effectiveness : Data and Methods...... 196 Legislative Effectiveness and Activity in the Senate: Results...... 200 Freshmen and Legislative Activity and Effectiveness...... 212 Conclusion...... 219
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Appendix B: Committee Power Scales______232
Appendix C: Pooled Time-Series Regression.______239
Xll LIST OF TABLES
Table Page
4.1 Correlation of D-Nominate Scores and change ^5 s 10 6
4.2 Mean change score for partisan and
4.3 Difference of means tests within parties ...... Ill
4.4 Classifying the direction of moderating behavior...... 114
4.5 Classifying the direction of significant moderating behavior...... 115
4.6 Mean change scores by electoral status for democrats...... 118
4.7 Mean change scores by electoral status for republicans...... 119
4.8 Mean change scores for senators elected before and after 1969...... 122
4.9 Mean change scores by historical period for democrats...... 124
4.10 Mean change scores by historical period for republicans...... 125
4.11 First congress change scores by party, region, and historical period...... 126
5.1 Mortality effects for the majority party...... 167
5.2 Mortality effects for the minority party...... 170
Xlll 6.1 Hypothesized relationships in the
6.2 Multivariate model of legislative effectiveness: legislative batting average, 1979-1990------202
6.3 Multivariate model of legislative effectiveness: number of bills and resolutions acted upon, 1979-1990 205
6.4 Multivariate model of bill sponsorship, 1973-1990____ 208
6.5 Multivariate model of amending activity in the U.S. senate, 1977-1990...... 211
6.6 Freshmen and legislative effectiveness...... 214
6.7 Freshmen and legislative activity...... 218
B.l Committee transfer scores for the u.s. senate ... 235
B.2 Committee power index...... 236
B.3 Big four committee power scale ...... 238
C.l Hausman specification test for systematic differences in coefficients: legislative effectiveness model...... 243
C.2 Hausman specification test for systematic differences in coefficients : bill sponsorship model...... 244
C.3 Hausman specification test for systematic differences in coefficients: amendment sponsorship model...... 244
XIV LIST OF FIGURES
Figure Page
2.1 Senators reelected by election year, 1950-1990------16
2.2 The electoral career of Milton Young, 1946-1974.. 23
2.3 The electoral career of Quentin Burdick, 1960-1988...... 24
2.4 The electoral career of William Fulbright, 1950-1974...... 26
2.5 Mean vote share by tenure...... 31
2.6 Electoral careers by party, 1950-1990...... 34
2.7 Electoral competitiveness controls...... 39
2.8 Mean candidate percent by tenure: two historical periods...... 42
2.9 Mean candidate percent by tenure : candidates who received less than 80% of the vote...... 43
2.10 Mean candidate percent by tenure: southern democrats excluded...... 44
2.11 Mortality effects n the electoral career...... 46
3.1 Assignments to the big four committees : percentage of senators assigned to a big four committee...... 69
3.2 Historical variation in committee assignments, 1950-1990...... 70
3.3 Seniority and committee assignments...... 72
3.4 Formal position scales by tenure...... 73
XV 3.5 Historical variation in power scales: big
3.6 Historical variation in power scales:
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3.7 Ideological variation in position attainment, 1950-1990 79
3.8 Ideological variation in position assignment,
3.9 Ideological variation in position attainment, 1969-1990...... 82
3.10 Mortality effects in the formal position career...... 84
5.1 Bills sponsored by tenure, standardized measure..... 150
5.2 Amendments sponsored by tenure, standardized measure...... 153
5.3 Legislation Reported from committee by tenure, standardized measure...... 156
5.4 Committee batting average by tenure, standardized measure...... 158
5.5 Legislation passing the senate by tenure, standardized measure...... 160
5.6 Senate batting average, standardized measure...... 161
5.7 Legislation enacted by tenure, standardized measure...... 163
5.8 Legal batting average, standardized measure...... 164
XVI CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
Career studies focus on both the developmental and contextual aspects of political service. The developmental aspect addresses how politicians change as their public service accumulates over time, while the contextual aspect deals with a politician's interaction with the environment, especially the institution in which one serves (Fenno 1991b). This dissertation examines the political career of a United States Senator. In examining the Senate career, the study addresses how Senators change while serving in the Senate or the path they follow within the institution. Senators, like other political actors, must learn while in office and adapt to changing circumstances. They respond to success and failure, to new responsibilities and changing goals (Fenno 1991b) .
Specifically, I am interested in discovering regularities or cycles of activity that characterize these changes. Critical to the study of political careers is the concept of tenure. What does tenure mean for service in a legislative body? Do members who have served several terms in the U.S. Senate behave differently than those who have served a few terms? Is tenure at all related to a Senator's ability to attract votes? What kind of changes in institutional positions might we expect across a senatorial career? Are experienced senators likely to spend more time on legislating duties? Might they be more successful in getting legislative proposals enacted? These and other questions are addressed in the congressional career literature.
Importance of Senate Careers
The Senate holds an important place in our governmental system. No legislation can become law without the consent of its collective membership. The president cannot make important appointments without its consent. Nor can the U.S. enter into international treaties without Senate ratification. In addition, the Senate is at the top of the hierarchy of political offices, serving as an incubator for presidential aspirants (Peabody, Ornstein, and Rohde 1976). It is often referred to as "the world's greatest deliberative body," especially by those who serve in it. If it deserves the title, or even if it does not, the Senate is a crucial institution in American government. It is, however, understudied when compared to its counterpart across the Capitol. As Mezey (1993) argues, theories of legislative behavior are often based solely on the U.S. House. This makes comparison across legislative institutions impossible and may lead to incorrect inferences about senatorial behavior when findings based on House studies are simply assumed to fit the Senate case as well. Research on Senate careers would provide information to evaluate two current phenomena that could have a tremendous effect on the U.S. Senate in the near future. First, the Senate experienced a record number of retirements in 1996 with 13 senators choosing to leave the Senate. This high represents over two times the average number of post World War II retirements from the Senate, which is approximately six senators per Congress (Katz 1992). This wave of retirements follows elections in 1992 and 1994 that witnessed 14 Senate retirements. The majority of these retirees had served at least three terms in the Senate. What does this influx of new membership portend for the Senate? If tenure in the Senate provides members with some kind of advantage in experience that is manifest in legislating or constituency service, the Senate as a representative and legislative body may suffer greatly as the experience of its membership declines.
A second, and closely related phenomenon, is the potential for term limitations on Senators. While the Supreme Court has nullified state laws limiting terms for members of the U.S. Congress, supporters of term limitations have vowed to pursue their policy aim through the constitutional amendment process. As a result, there is an on-going debate about the wisdom of mandating limited Senate service. Supporters and opponents alike make claims about what effects such limits would have on the operation of the Senate and Senators' susceptibility to influence from outside forces. Term limit proponents argue that a regular turnover in membership will invigorate the legislature, bringing new ideas and energetic members. In addition, they argue that term limits will dampen the electoral incentives of members. thereby giving them some distance from special interest groups which largely finance reelection campaigns. In contrast, opponents of these limits point to a loss of experience and institutional memory that might well undermine the capacity of the legislature to govern. As Hibbing (1991) argues, both sides make their claims with very limited empirical evidence. Without clear evidence of how Senate careers develop and change over time, inferences about the effect of limiting the duration of careers are not particularly reliable. A more complete examination of Senate careers will provide some evidence to inform this debate.
A comprehensive study of Senate careers would provide a basis for several types of comparisons. The historical nature of the study would allow for comparisons of the Senate at various points in time. Such comparisons would facilitate generalizations about the interaction between the Senate as an institution and the Senate career. What influence might a changing career structure have on the internal structure of the Senate, its rules, informal norms, and procedures? What effect might institutional change have on the development of a legislator's career? As Nelson Polsby (1989) has noted, there is a general consensus among scholars that the character of the Senate has been altered in the post-war period. There is, however, still not a thorough account of how these institutional changes took place. Career based research could inform such an account.
In light of the significant work on the House of Representatives, comparisons between the careers of members of the House of Representatives and the Senate could be made. Numerous studies, which will be discussed throughout the dissertation, have shed light on the House career. Political scientists often apply empirical findings based on analysis of the House of Representatives to the Senate without recognizing the significant differences between the two chambers. While Ornstein (1981) argues that the two chambers are converging, or becoming more similar than dissimilar, significant differences remain that may influence the career structure of legislators serving in the two bodies. First, there is the difference in term length. Because senators serve six years, they are afforded the luxury of spending some time governing without the concurrent pressure of campaigning for reelection (Fenno 1982, 1991) . This allows for a period of attention to legislating not afforded members of the House. Second, the much smaller size of the Senate means that formal positions, such as committee chairs, subcommittee chairs, and ranking member positions, are more widely dispersed in the Senate as compared to the House. This means that almost from the day senators are sworn in, they are equipped with the resources to actively participate in the decision-making process. Not only do formal positions bring resources, the larger Senate staffs also give members resources to pursue policy initiatives.
Another reason to believe that the Senate may function differently from the House is the greater public scrutiny afforded its members. The media tend to cover senators more often than members of the House (Loomis 1988). Perhaps careers that are subject to greater levels of public scrutiny demonstrate more consistent patterns, since variability in behavior could be interpreted as waffling. A fourth reason to think research based on the House of Representatives cannot be easily imported to the Senate is the greater diversity of Senate constituencies. In most cases, representing a state means representing a complex mix of urban, rural, and suburban areas. It also means balancing a variety of interests throughout the state. Finally, Senate floor procedures enable any member to become active in floor consideration of legislation rather than limiting floor participation as in the House. This independence will likely influence how the Senate career develops and changes.
Previous Perspectives on the Congressional Career
The congressional career literature has largely been defined by the study of how and why legislators make decisions about their political future. Do they run for reelection, seek higher office, or retire? A burgeoning career literature has examined choices about a politician's electoral future (see Abramson et al. 1987, Black 1972, Rohde 1979, Hibbing 1982, Bullock 1972, Frantzich 1978, Kiewiet and Zeng 1993, Hall and Van Houweling 1995). My conception of the Senatorial career deals not with decisions to stay in or leave the Senate. Instead, I am interested in how the career changes as time in the Senate increases. Several scholars have proposed theories of the structure of the career within the legislature.
While most scholars have focused on a single chamber when describing the legislative career, Dodd (1977) proposes a model applicable to both Representatives and Senators. He suggests that members of Congress enter politics in a quest for personal power, where power is defined as the ability "to control policy decisions that impose the authority of the state on the citizenry" (p. 270) . This quest for power requires reelection, which allows the member to remain in Conqress and gain the advantages which help their chances for gaining power positions. These advantages include formal status within the institution, an opportunity to create an aura of personal legitimacy, and a chance to gain experience and expertise.
Based on this view, Dodd suggests four congressional career stages. The first stage focuses exclusively on shoring up the electoral base. In order to get reelected and demonstrate their membership legitimacy, members focus on casework and their work on the constituency-oriented and housekeeping committees. Even after moving to further stages, members maintain some preoccupation with this stage, since the electoral outcome is fundamental to the achievement of all additional power. In the second stage, members seek to serve on the key policy committees and begin to focus on national issues. Members will likely gain power in a particular area as they gain expertise and create "a myth of special personal authority" (p. 275) . Many members spend most of their careers in this stage because the number of power positions is very limited. In the third stage, members move to service on power committees (Rules, Ways and Means or Finance, etc.). In the final stage, members move into positions of party leadership.
In his seminal work, U.S. Senators in Their World, Matthews (1973) suggests a "political life-cycle of the senator" (p. 239) . In Matthews' estimation, once Senators are first elected, aggressive pursuit of casework creates a foundation of support. If the senator survives the early challengers and gains a second term, he or she will likely gain a relatively senior position on a committee and additional legislative responsibility by the time the third election rolls around. Pressures associated with these additional responsibilities will cause the senator to focus more on national issues and less on the concerns of his or her state. In addition, national responsibilities make trips back home more onerous, and length of service makes repairing political relationships more difficult. While the senator has shifted focus to the national arena, changes within the state make it difficult to defend positions taken and relationships which developed in earlier times. This leads to a senator who is out of touch with his or her constituency, while at the height of institutional power. Or, in Matthews' words, "Thus, as a senator's power and prominence approaches its peak, his electoral support is crumbling" (p. 242). Matthews' life cycle theory is illuminating but focuses almost exclusively on electoral concerns. It ignores the structure of the career for other aspects of legislative service.
An alternative view of the Senate career is presented by Richard Fenno (1989; 1991a; 1991b) based on a series of in- depth case studies. Fenno argues that "some regular and recognizable stages mark the normal career path of a national legislator" (1991a, p. xii).^ In Fenno's words, "the basic
^While Fenno's view of the Senate career is evident across his case studies, the most explicit discussion of his theory is found in the introduction to The Emergence of a Senate Leader: Pete Domenici and the Reagan Budget. Washington: CQ Press, 1991. 8 regularity is the sequence that begins with a period of campaigning in the home constituency, is followed by a period of governing activity in Washington, and is followed, in turn, by a reelection campaign back in the home constituency" (p. xii). Campaigning and governing activities are the principle activities of the senator's life. These two stages are not independent of one another. "Activity at one stage will have a cause-and-effeet influence on activity at the following stage" (p. xii) . Additionally, anticipation of a subsequent stage may guide behavior in the preceding stage. The most important influence, according to Fenno, will be the effect of past and future campaigns on governing behavior. In moving from the campaigning to the governing stage, the member's interpretation of his or her electoral performance will mediate the transition to governing, and affect activity in that stage. In moving from governing to campaigning for reelection, the member will anticipate the need to explain governing activity to constituents and shape behavior accordingly. Consequently, the electoral influences on governing behavior should be most evident at the beginning and end of the governing stage.
The governing stage itself demonstrates its own cycle. Initially, there is a period of adjustment to the legislature. Subsequently, "there is the production of a record of accomplishment sufficient to end the adjustment period" (p. xii). This is followed by a period in which a legislator's governing style becomes recognizable. Finally, there is a period in which the legislator acquires a legislative reputation. The meaning of each component for returning members may differ from the meaning for new members. When members are continually reelected, Fenno expects that the cycle of campaigning-governing-campaigning will regenerate and "longevity effects" (time in the legislature) will have an independent effect as tenure increases (p. xiii) . Fenno does not speculate on the effects of tenure on the career cycle he describes, however. While Fenno’s theory is intriguing, there is little empirical evidence to support his view of the career pattern. Additional examination of the Senate career should provide some information about the validity of Fenno's perspective.
Hibbing (1991) examines Matthews' "life-cycle" theory of congressional careers in the House of Representatives. As legislative responsibilities increase. Representatives reduce their attention to the district and become electorally vulnerable. Generally, Hibbing provides evidence for a more stable congressional career, one not characterized by the late career vulnerability.
Hibbing examines five components of the legislative career to see how they vary over the course of a member's tenure: (1) electoral success; (2) the attainment of formal positions of power in the House; (3) roll call voting; (4) legislative activity; and (5) attention to one's constituency. Finally, Hibbing unites the five pieces into a causal model of congressional careers. While he posits that House seniority will have a direct effect on district activity and legislative activity, he also hypothesizes that seniority will indirectly influence district and legislative activity through its effect on electoral support and formal positions, respectively. Hibbing finds a strong, statistically significant positive
10 relationship between House seniority and formal positions, and between tenure and legislative involvement, while it appears that no link from terms served to electoral support to district activity is found. Nevertheless, there is a statistically significant negative, reciprocal relationship between district activity and legislative activity. This negative relationship supports Fenno's notion of separate campaigning and governing stages.
While there are several perspectives on what the senatorial career might look like, there has not been an individual level analysis of senatorial careers since Matthews' work on the 1950's Senate. As a result, there is no thorough examination of a senator's career in the "transformed" institution. This dissertation seeks to remedy that situation.
Organization of the Dissertation
Taking the approach outlined by Hibbing (1991), I divide the Senate career into distinct components and examine each individually. In Chapter 2, the role of reelection is considered. Do senators become more or less electorally safe as their service in the Senate accumulates? Has the level of electoral security changed in the post-World War II period? The evidence presented suggests that while there was some seniority benefit in the past, especially for Southern Democrats, more recently there appears to be very little connection between tenure and electoral security. Senior senators receive only a slightly larger proportion of the vote
11 than their junior colleagues.
Chapter 3 examines the institutional position of senators. Are senators who establish lengthy careers rewarded with better committee assignments? Some have suggested that seniority no longer dominates the committee assignment process. I consider whether the relationship between committee assignments and tenure has changed over time. The data demonstrate that, although junior senators are finding their way to the most prestigious committees, they are still at a significant disadvantage when considering their overall a package of committee positions.
In Chapter 4, the focus of attention changes slightly. Rather than considering temporal changes in Senate behavior as a function of years of service, I consider how the six year term may influence voting behavior in the Senate. Of central concern is whether a senator's voting behavior changes as reelection becomes more proximate. I find some evidence of senators becoming more moderate in their voting as reelection approaches, especially for Republicans.
Chapter 5 considers the relationship between tenure in the Senate and legislative activity and effectiveness. In particular, I am interested in whether senators become more active in sponsoring bills and amendments as their time in the Senate increases. In addition, I examine whether senior senators are more effective in moving their legislation through the legislative process. The data clearly demonstrate that seniority pays strong dividends in legislative formulation.
12 Finally, Chapter 6 combines the various aspects of the Senate career into multivariate models of legislative effectiveness and activity. In this chapter, the relative effect of each of the stages discussed in the earlier chapters on legislative formulation is considered. Even when numerous other factors are taken into account, tenure remains a strong influence on legislative performance.
13 CHAPTER 2
GETTING TO THE SENATE AND STAYING THERE:
THE ELECTORAL CAREER
"The days of holding a seat for life are gone. Now a senator who has served one or two terms is as vulnerable as a senator who has served one or two weeks."
- a former Republican senator^
Introduction
One widely held belief about congressional life is that seniority reaps a member all kinds of rewards within the institution. With seniority comes more prestigious committee assignments, committee leadership positions and the additional staff that accompanies them. Senior members appear in the media more frequently. They are often given the reward of announcing grants to the state so that they may take the credit for bringing home the funds. Senior members of the president's party are closely consulted when judicial vacancies arise in their state. Senior members even get better office space in the Capitol and in the Senate office
^Interview with the author, August, 1996. 14 buildings. But what does seniority mean for the electoral prospects of a Senator? The question to be addressed in this chapter is whether seniority brings the member any electoral rewards or liabilities. Or, put more plainly, what is the relationship between tenure in the Senate and electoral success? I examine this question using information on Senate elections from 1950 to 1990.
To provide a context in which to discuss tenure's influence on electoral chances, let us first look at reelection rates of senators over time. Figure 2.1 shows the proportion of incumbent Senators reelected in each of the years covered by our data, 1950 to 1990. In general, the chances for reelection to the Senate are quite good, although not as good as the chances of members of the House of Representatives. Senators certainly have better than an even chance of returning to the Senate for an additional term, if they so desire. In fact, only in 1980, does the rate of reelection for those Senators seeking to maintain their seat drop below 60 percent. In several years, the reelection rate of Senators is over eighty-five percent.
Senators running for reelection have a reasonably good chance of winning in most years. The question to be considered for the remainder of this chapter is the degree to which tenure influences those chances. Does increased service in the institution make a good electoral picture even better? Or, does extended tenure serve to depress the reelection chances of senior senators?
15 100
ce
ee
Year Source; Omstein et al. (1994)
Figure 2.1 Proportion of Senators Reelected By Election Year, 1950-1990.
16 What Is Known About Senate Elections: Previous Literature
Voluminous research focuses on congressional elections generally and Senate elections particularly.^ What is important from this work for this study is a small body of research that illuminates the relationship between tenure and electoral success. Although there are several studies examining the question, there appears to be no scholarly consensus on the nature of the relationship between tenure and electoral success. In spite of their disparate findings, the studies in this area focus on two clear theories of the relationship between tenure and electoral chances: the political life-cycle theory, advanced by Matthews (1973); and the plateau theory, described by Hinckley (1970) .
In his seminal work on the Senate of the 1950s, Matthews (1973) advances the notion of the political life-cycle of the senator, arguing there is a curvilinear pattern to the relationship between tenure and electoral prospects. Matthews argues that once elected to the Senate, a senator is hard to defeat. Having taken office, the senator is quick to solidify the win by building a personal organization through patronage and constituent work. The senator begins to use the inherent media exposure of the office and the know-how that comes with service to reinforce his or her stature. If the senator can win a second term, then he or she becomes more safe since the
^Carmines and Champagne (1991) provide an overview of the Senate elections literature. Perhaps the most comprehensive work is Abromowitz and Segal's (1992) study which examines the reasons for the greater competitiveness of Senate elections when compared to House elections. Two recent works, Westlye (1991) and Fenno (1996), focus more closely on the role of the campaign in the electoral process.
17 organization continues to grow in strength and experience and the senator, with additional seniority, gains greater legislative responsibilities.
According to Matthews, by the end of the second term, a senator is "well on the way to becoming an important national figure, increasingly concerned with pressing national and international problems" (1973: 242). As a result, the senator devotes more time to Washington activities and less time to the home state. Consequently, over time, the senator is in danger of losing touch with changes in the constituency. This makes the most senior members electorally vulnerable. In fact, Matthews finds that beyond a third term, when a senator may appear to be out of touch, a senior senator has less of a chance of getting reelected than a freshman.
An alternative perspective on the electoral career, the plateau theory, suggests that members gain some additional electoral strength in their first reelection bid and essentially maintain a comfortable level of electoral strength until they leave the Senate. The first evidence for this trend was presented by Hinckley (1970) who found no decline in electoral success as tenure increased. Looking at races in 34 competitive states from 1948-1966, she found that 77 percent of those seeking a second term won reelection, 78 percent seeking a third term were successful, and 81 percent seeking a fourth term were returned to the Senate.
Kostroski (1978) tested these two competing patterns of the electoral career across a fifty year period (1920-1970) arguing that the two rival hypotheses and the findings which supported them were a result of the differences in their data
18 (Hinckely using selected competitive states across an 18 year period and Matthews using all races from 1947-1957). Kostroski examined his data in several ways, including by party and by seat safety. The different analysis strategies led to some very different results.
Although the data as a whole suggest the plateau pattern best fits the Senate electoral career, there is some variation between the two parties and when safe seats are removed from the analysis. Democratic senators exhibited the plateau pattern regardless of mode of analysis. Examination of Republican senators, on the other hand, supported the political-life cycle hypothesis when all were included in the analysis or when those with safe seats were removed.* When Kostroski considered Republican senators after removing those who came from "nearly safe" seats, the pattern suggested the plateau hypothesis.^ While these results do not suggest a clear conclusion, one can argue that they best support the plateau hypothesis. Once party and seat safety are taken into account, senators tend to reach a comfortable rate of reelection which is maintained as seniority increases.
A third perspective has been advanced since Kostroski's attempt to resolve the apparent inconsistencies between Matthews and Hinckley. Suggesting that Kostroski had erred in
*Safe seats were defined as those states in which all incumbents who ran won reelection. Under this definition of safety, Kostroski removed the nine confederate states and Vermont from the analysis.
^States were defined as having nearly safe seats if the sitting senator won reelection during the time period in every election but one.
19 covering such a large historical period in a single analysis, Tuckel (1983) argues that a more finely drawn examination is warranted. He contends that because the influence of political parties varies over time, the analysis should reflect changes in partisan strength. As a consequence, Tuckel examined the 1920-1958 period, which he suggests is the period of greater party strength, separately from the 1960- 1980 period. His findings supported differentiating by historical period. He found that, in the earlier period (1920-1958), senators became more secure as they increased their seniority. In contrast, during the 1960-1980 period, senators became less secure as seniority increased. His overall findings suggested that while the electoral position of junior members had been enhanced in the second historical period, the electoral position of senior senators had become more perilous. Tuckel argued that these changes could be attributed to the redistribution of power in the Senate that took place starting in the 1960's, which made it easier for junior senators to quickly establish records of legislative accomplishment, and to the increased media exposure which has made it easier for junior senators (and challengers) to get their message to the public.
The most complete analysis of the relationship between tenure and electoral success in Congress is found in Hibbing's (1991) work on the career patterns of members of the House of Representatives. Several differences between House and Senate service that suggest the electoral careers of members in the two chambers will not be identical. House members must stand for reelection much more frequently than senators. Senators have six years to build an organization, accumulate
20 experience, and develop a legislative record while Representatives must prepare themselves to run again in two short years. As was noted above, senators have been reelected at a lower rate in the past. In addition, incumbent senators are also likely to be challenged by higher quality opponents than incumbent House members (Abromowitz and Segal 1991) and Senators tend to be more visible than Congressmen (Hibbing and Alford 1982), attracting more media attention (Hershey 1984). Finally, Senate campaigns tend to be more expensive, which may influence the kinds senatorial candidates that emerge (Herrnson 1995).
Although these differences between the chambers are important, for the sake of comparison between the two chambers, it is worth briefly reviewing some of Ribbing's findings. When describing the electoral career in the House, Hibbing finds that the plateau hypothesis best describes the general pattern. His data show no significant drop off in electoral support among the most senior members. Like Tuckel, Hibbing explores the possibility of historical variation in the typical electoral career. Hibbing's strategy is to divide his data into four decades and examine the career patterns within each. He finds that the first two decades examined (1946-1954 and 1956-1964) both show evidence of the political life-cycle pattern in the electoral career. Both the findings and the historical period are consistent with Matthews' work on the Senate. The third decade examined (1966-1974) suggests that as tenure builds, electoral prospects are enhanced. In the final period (1976-1984), Hibbing finds little connection between tenure and electoral prospects. The two seem relatively independent of one another, with additional tenure
21 neither helping nor hurting electoral chances. The House of Representatives seems to have moved from a period in which the political life-cycle was apparent to an era in which electoral fortunes are unrelated to experience in Congress.
We can find examples to fit all of the patterns described. One senator who fits the political life-cycle view of the electoral career is Sen. Milton Young of North Dakota (Figure 2.2) . In his first race for the Senate, a special election to fill the remainder of a term. Young received 56 percent of the vote. Four years later, in 1950, he ran for his first full term and won nearly 68 percent of the vote. This "sophomore surge" suggests that he did put together a solid organization and used the advantages of office to solidify his electoral support. During reelection races in 1956, 1962 and 1968, Young maintained relatively stable electoral support, winning between 60 and 65 percent of the vote in each race. Running for election to his fifth full term. Young experienced a significant downswing in electoral support. He was reelected, but received only 48.4 percent of the vote. His margin of victory was a mere 186 votes. Not surprisingly, this fifth reelection bid would be his last. Young retired at the conclusion of his term in 1980.
Young's career closely approximates Matthews' political life-cycle pattern in an electoral career, although his electoral vulnerability became evident later than the third term. Once elected, he solidified his standing and subsequently maintained a comfortable vote share across four bids for reelection. Running for his fifth full term in 1974, Young experienced considerably less electoral support. Having
2 2 seen the proverbial handwriting on the wall. Young decided to retire rather than risk defeat in another closely contested race.
64. o I GO, g4> "o c I 52- £ 48.
44.
19501946 1956 1962 1968 1974
Election Year
Figure 2.2 The Electoral Career of Milton Young, 1946-1974,
The plateau pattern is nicely illustrated by the career of another North Dakotan, Sen. Quentin Burdick (Figure 2.3). Burdick's initial election to the Senate was the result of a very close race in which he won just under 50 percent of the total vote and a very slim majority of the two-party vote. Like Young, Burdick's arrival in the Senate was the result of a special election and his first race for reelection came four years after his initial victory. Seeking his first full term
23 in 1964, Burdick increased his vote share by eight percentage points, winning close to 58 percent of the vote. For the remainder of his electoral career, Burdick maintained a consistent level of electoral support— never receiving less than 59 percent of the vote or more than 63 percent of the vote. As advocates of the plateau hypothesis of Senate electoral careers would expect, once seated, Burdick initially built support and maintained it throughout the remainder of his electoral career.®
66
62'
"o 58'
5 4 .
46 19601964 1970 1976 1982 1988
Election
Figure 2.3 The Electoral Career of Quentin Burdick, 1960-1988
Burdick died in 1992 while serving in his fifth full Senate term.
24 The third electoral career pattern in the literature suggests that there is a negative relationship between tenure and electoral success. Tuckel's post-1960 finding that seniority may actually harm the electoral career is demonstrated by the career of William Fulbright of Arkansas (Figure 2.4) . Fulbright started his career with as much support as any elected official can hope for winning 100 percent of the vote in 1950. This is an impressive electoral performance even in a one-party dominated state, as Arkansas was at the time. Over the course of his career, Fulbright not only failed to match his initial success, he experienced ever declining vote strength. As his time in the Senate increased, his vote share grew smaller. In each of his elections, his share of the vote dropped 10 percent or more from the previous election. This decline was punctuated by his defeat in the Democratic primary as he sought a fifth term. At this time, he had reached the height of his institutional power, serving as Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.
25 100
80' O I o £ "5 60' I a.
1950 1956 1962 1968 1974
Election Year
Figure 2.4 The Electoral Career of William Fulbright, 1950- 1974.
It is certainly insufficient to consider anecdotal evidence alone. However, each of the examples provided above suggests that the various descriptions of the relationship between tenure and electoral performance are plausible. The remainder of this chapter seeks to examine electoral career patterns more systematically by considering the electoral performance of Senators from 1950 to 1990.
26 Senate Tenure and Electoral Success: Expectations and Design
This chapter directly tests the competing hypotheses about the relationship between tenure in the Senate and electoral success. Although they have been described in detail above, they are:
HI: {Political Life-Cycle) Senators will maintain a stable level of electoral success for several election cycles; but, very senior members will have less success electorally than more junior members.
H2: {Plateau Effect) Senators will maintain a stable level of electoral success, regardless of their level of seniority.
My approach to the question is different than the previous literature, however. In all previous studies, these theories have been tested using the proportion of senators reelected as the measure of electoral success. This means that the dependent variable, proportion of senators reelected, is an aggregate measure of success rather than an individual level measure. The two theories are really describing individual level phenomena, however. While using the aggregate measure does give us some information about the relationship between tenure and electoral success, stronger conclusions can be drawn if an individual measure of electoral success, which is more appropriate for the theories advanced, is used. In light of this, I have collected information on the share of the vote received by senators.
The data set includes all senators from 1950 through 1990 except those who were appointed to fill unexpired terms and were not subsequently elected. These senators were excluded because they inflate both the proportion of senators
27 who lost electoral bids and deflate the vote share received by senators running for reelection.^ Election returns for senators were obtained from the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) The ICPSR data were supplemented by America Votes 21 published by Congressional Quarterly.
Beyond simply testing the two competing hypotheses stated above, I examine the possibility of historical variation in the relationship between tenure and electoral success. Specifically, I examine the data in two historical periods: 1950-1968 and 1970-1990. Changes in the nature of the Senate, the role of the media, and the level of party activity suggest that Senate elections may differ across these two periods. Some argue that in the earlier historical period Senate activity was dominated by the most senior members who controlled the leadership and committee structure (Clark 1963; Foley 1980) . Senate elections in this earlier period were not subject to the same degree of media scrutiny as elections contested in the 70s and 80s. In addition, this historical division loosely coincides with the change in reporting from a relatively docile style in the earlier period to a more aggressive style in the later period (Sabato 1991). Television news became much more prominent in the later period.
^The exclusion of appointees who did not subsequently win election is common to this literature (see Tuckel 1983).
®ICPSR 7757, Candidate and Constituency Statistics of Elections in the United States, 1788-1988.
28 The passage of the Voting Rights Act led to changes in the composition of the electorate between the two periods, with more African-Americans voting in the later period (Engstrom 1988) . Finally, while the early period saw a relatively solid Democratic South, where senators faced little Republican opposition, the later historical period represents an era of greater electoral competition between the parties.
Senate Tenure and Electoral Success: Results
We now have the raw materials needed to analyze the connection between senatorial tenure and electoral success. To begin the story, I will examine this connection for all the senators serving from 1950 until 1990. This overall analysis will provide a reliable baseline for making more detailed comparisons. Next, I will explore the possibility that there is a party difference in the electoral payoff for increased tenure. Do Democratic senators fare better than, or worse than. Republican senators? Once I can answer this question of party differences, it will be important to control for variations in electoral competition. Do highly competitive senatorial races produce results different from those issuing from relatively uncompetitive races? Finally, because the Senate elections in the last two decades may look different from those held in the 1950s and 1960s, it is appropriate to contrast two historical periods, 1950-1968 and 1970-1990, within the full array of our election portfolio.
29 Vote Share
Figure 2.5 shows the mean candidate vote share by tenure in the Senate.* In their initial election, senators receive an average vote share of just over 55 percent.^* There is some evidence of a "sophomore surge" among senators. The average vote share obtained by a senator running for a second term is 59 percent, a jump of approximately four percentage points. While this increase is statistically significant, the magnitude of the increase is rather modest. Senators maintain a steady and slightly increasing vote share in their third through fifth electoral contests. The average vote share of a senator running for a sixth term increases sharply, jumping from 63 percent in the fifth election to 69 percent in their sixth election. After the sixth election, the senators share of the vote begins to decline. Senators standing for a seventh electoral bid average only 60 percent of the vote. This is a drop of nearly nine points from the sixth electoral contest.
*Number of cases for each election category: N=242 for the first election; N=231 for the second election; N=156 for the third election; N=88 for the fourth election; N=41 for the fifth election; N=23 for the sixth election; N=23 for the sixth election; N=9 for seven or more elections.
^°Senators who were appointed to fill a vacancy and subsequently won the seat in an electoral contest are included in the first election category.
“ Neither the difference in mean vote share between the fifth and sixth electoral bids nor between the sixth and seventh or more electoral bids is statistically significant. This is likely a result of the declining number of cases as seniority increases since the magnitude of the differences is greater in these later years than is the statistically significant difference between the first and second electoral contests.
30 This initial look at the data suggests limited support for a slightly modified version of Matthews political life cycle view of the electoral career of senators. While there appears to be a late career drop in proportion of the vote received, the difference between a sixth electoral bid and a seventh is not statistically significant. In addition, this drop in electoral support comes later than Matthews suggests and the most senior senators still maintain a higher share of the vote than the most junior members. While he found a decline in the electoral support following the fourth election, the results shown here suggest a decline in support comes later in the career.
65 £ (0 I I
50 1 2 5 6 734
Election
Figure 2.5 Mean Vote Share Of Senators By Tenure, 1950-1990,
31 This is not the end of the story, however. The analysis in Figure 2.5 includes senators of both parties and those running unopposed or against merely token opposition. There may be some differences between Republicans and Democrats in electoral success. For the majority of the historical period covered. Democrats controlled the Senate. Perhaps Democrats standing as the majority party helped them electorally. For example, voters may be more inclined to return a very senior member of the majority party to the Senate since these members will hold powerful committee and leadership positions that may accrue benefits to the state.
To discover any differences between the parties in the electoral career pattern. Figure 2.6 shows the proportion of the vote received by tenure for Republicans and Democrats separately.^ What is immediately striking in the figure is the degree to which Democratic senators continue to maintain a modified political life-cycle pattern. After a statistically significant sophomore surge which increases the average vote share by approximately six points, Democratic senators maintain a solid level of support through their run for a fifth term. In the sixth electoral contest, a second surge
^^Number of cases for each election category are as follows. Democrats: N=130 for the first election; N=113 for the second election; N=84 for the third election; N=54 for the fourth election; N=31 for the fifth election; N=19 for the sixth election; N=23 for the sixth election; N=9 for seven or more elections. Republicans: N=112 for the first election; N=117 for the second election; N=71 for the third election; N=34 for the fourth election; N=10 for the fifth election; N=4 for the sixth election.
^^Difference of means test for first and second election: t= -3.41, p < .001.
32 propels Democratic senators to an average vote share of over 70 percent.^" This upsurge is followed by a dramatic downturn for members who are running in their seventh electoral contest. The average vote received by a Democratic senator seeking a seventh term falls to 60 percent. Only the average vote share for the first electoral contest is lower. This downturn is statistically significant at the .10 level in a one-tailed test (t=1.55). As in considering all senators, these results give tentative support to a modified life-cycle hypothesis, although the downturn in electoral support comes later in the career than anticipated by Matthew's.
^Difference of means test for fifth and sixth election: t=-1.36, p=.ll (one-tailed test).
33 £ 5 (0 I I
Democrats
50 Republicans 1 2 3 5 6 74
Election
Figure 2,6 Electoral Careers By Party, 1950-1990.
Turning to the Republicans, there is no discernible relationship between tenure and electoral success. Republicans maintain a steady share of the vote, averaging close to 55 percent no matter how senior the member. This is consistent with the plateau theory of the electoral career, although the rise in support between the first and second elections is less than anticipated. Interestingly, there was no Republican senator who sought more than six terms in the Senate from 1950-1990 and only four Republicans ran for a sixth term. This absence of very senior Republicans may be because a political career is likely to be less attractive to members who are so often in the minority party. As we shall
34 discover, there is good reason for minority party senators to be somewhat frustrated. Their levels of legislative effectiveness and activity are a good deal lower than their majority party counterparts. Or, perhaps it is a function of the Republican party's skepticism of large-scale governmental intervention. If you are not wholly supportive of government intervention, then serving for many years in government is not likely to be very attractive.
Another interesting finding in Figure 2.6 is that the average Republican vote share never equals that of their Democratic counterparts. Only in the first election to the Senate is the Republican average vote share within five percentage points of the Democrats. This gap between Republicans and Democrats, as well as the lack of Republicans in the highest tenure category, suggests that being a member of the majority party does give senators some electoral advantages that allow them to increase the longevity of their careers. It is appropriate to note that, although Republicans were the majority party in the Senate for two periods under study (1955-60 and 1981-1986), Democrats maintained majority status for the overwhelming majority of time studied. These advantages of seniority may include membership in the leadership or a position as committee chair, which brings additional staff and discretion over the legislative agenda within committee, and more chances to obtain and announce grants to the state. Membership in the majority party may also bring a greater role in the process of governing, since your party controls the legislative agenda. For members of the minority party, some of these benefits (agenda control.
35 committee chair positions) do not apply and others (obtain state grants and more staff) may be accrued, but likely in lesser quantities.
These results seem to suggest that majority party status does make seniority a more important electoral commodity. Democrats, who for most of the period covered were the majority party in the Senate, gain some electoral benefit from increased experience. This occurs at least through their sixth electoral contest. After that sixth contest, the benefits of seniority no longer pay electoral dividends. There are two possible reasons for this. First, very senior senators may have fallen into the political life-cycle pattern described by Matthews and, having shifted focus to national matters, lost touch with their constituency. As relative strangers to their constituency, they become electorally vulnerable. A second possibility is that increased age may make voters wary of returning the most senior senators to the Senate. Since you must be 35 years of age to serve in the Senate, those seeking a seventh term are at least 71 years old. More probably, they are older, having not reached the Senate until they were older than the constitutionally defined minimum age. While Sen. Strom Thurmond's (R-SC) recent reelection at the age of 93 suggests age may not always be prohibitive, the race does indicate that age may be a serious campaign issue, especially when it coincides with questionable health.
36 Level of Electoral Competition
Before reaching the conclusion that Democrats demonstrate the political life-cycle pattern of electoral careers and Republicans illustrate the plateau effect in electoral careers, the effect of uncompetitive electoral contests must be considered. It is possible that those races in which a senator is running unopposed or with only token opposition are having undue influence on the findings. This may be especially important for Democrats since many of those running unopposed are Southern Democrats who are also among the most senior members.
Figure 2.7 shows the mean vote share by tenure for all senators, senators receiving less than 80 percent of the vote, and all senators except for Southern Democrats.The general pattern of the data when controlling for seat safety, either by excluding Southern Democrats or those who have won 80 percent of the vote, is very similar to the results when all senators are included. As one would expect, the vote totals achieved by senators running against little or no opposition inflate the mean percent of the vote received by a senator. A
^ ^Number of cases for each election category are as follows. Excluding those who won more than 80% of the vote: N=237 for the first election; N=217 for the second election; N=146 for the third election; N=80 for the fourth election; N=37 for the fifth election; N=18 for the sixth election; N=8 for seven or more elections. Excluding Southern Democrats: N=215 for the first election; N=205 for the second election; N=134 for the third election; N=69 for the fourth election; N=28 for the fifth election; N=13 for the sixth election; and 4 for the seventh election.
37 statistically significant, although relatively small, sophomore surge is still evident.^®
The most notable difference in the data is the diminished nature of the electoral surge from the fifth to the sixth election. Once seat safety has been controlled for, senators in their sixth electoral contest average approximately 60 percent of the vote versus 68 percent of the vote when all senators are included. In fact, once seat safety is controlled, there is no significant increase in vote share from the fifth to the sixth election. For our purposes, the most important finding in Figure 2.7 concerns senators running in their seventh election. There is a significant decline in electoral support for the most senior senators. When Southern Democrats are excluded, senators running for a seventh term average only 49 percent of the vote. Similarly, if members who won 80 percent or more of the vote are excluded, the mean vote share for the most senior senators falls to 55 percent. Both of these differences are statistically significant at conventional levels.
^Difference of means between sixth and seventh elections with Southern Democrats excluded: t = -3.12, p = .001. Difference of means between sixth and seventh elections with those winning 80 percent of the vote or more excluded: t = - 2.50, p = .006.
^Difference of means between sixth and seventh elections with Southern Democrats excluded: t = 3.02, p = .015. Difference of means between sixth and seventh elections with those winning 80 percent of the vote or more excluded: t = 1.47, p = .082.
38 7 0
65
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Excludes 80+ 50 No So. Democrats
45 All cases 1 2 34 56 7
Election
Figure 2.7 Electoral Competitiveness Controls.
When controlling for seat safety, we come to very similar conclusions as when considering all senators. It appears that there is some support for a modified political life-cycle hypothesis. During their first term in office, senators consolidate and expand their electoral support, resulting in a larger vote share in their second election. The mean vote share for senators remains relatively constant through the sixth election. Senators seeking election for seven or more terms experience a drop in electoral support. When seat safety is accounted for, this late career electoral decline is statistically significant. These results suggest the political life-cycle view of electoral careers is appropriate with a slight modification. While Matthews
39 expected a drop in electoral support after the third term, the data presented suggests a decline in electoral support is not evident until much later in the electoral career.
Historical Period
To this point, the data seems to suggest that a modified political life cycle view can be applied to the relationship between tenure and electoral success for U.S. senators. The next question to consider is whether this is true across the entire historical period covered or if there is some variation between senators seeking reelection in the 1950s and 1960s when compared to those seeking reelection in the 1970s and 1980s.
Figure 2.8 shows the mean vote share obtained by candidates with various levels of seniority.^ The pattern for the 1950 to 1968 period is similar to the pattern for the 1970 to 1990 period, although there are some differences of note. First, across all levels of seniority, senators in the later period receive a smaller average share of the vote than in the earlier period. This suggests that the races in the later period are more competitive than in the earlier period.
^®Number of cases for each election category are as follows. 1968 and earlier: N=116 for the first election; N=123 for the second election; N=79 for the third election; N=45 for the fourth election; N=21 for the fifth election; N=8 for the sixth election; N=5 for seven or more elections. 1970 and later: N=126 for the first election; N=108 for the second election; N=77 for the third election; N=43 for the fourth election; N=20 for the fifth election; N=15 for the sixth election; and 4 for the seventh election.
40 Second, in both historical periods, there is a statistically significant sophomore surge.” Third, once again the sixth election seems to be different from the others. While there is an increase of five and a half points in mean vote share from the fifth to the sixth electoral contest in the 1970 to 1990 era, there is a much larger and statistically significant 12 point increase from the fifth to the sixth electoral contest in the earlier historical period.Finally, there is a late career downturn in electoral support in both historical periods, although neither is statistically significant. The drop in electoral support from the sixth to the seventh election is quite a bit larger in the 1950 to 1968 period than in the later period.
Figure 2.8 suggests that, while the earlier historical period lends some support to a modified political life-cycle view, the later period is suggestive of the plateau theory. The 1950-1968 period shows relatively stable electoral success through the fifth electoral contest with significant surge in vote share in the second election and small increases in vote share in each subsequent election. There is a substantial increase in vote share for those seeking a sixth term in the Senate and a large drop in electoral support in the seventh election. This pattern does not fit Matthews' original vision of the political life cycle since the surge in support comes
” The difference between the fifth and sixth election mean vote share is statistically significant in both historical periods. 1968 and earlier: t= -2.54, p=.012 (two-tailed test). 1970 and later: t= -2.02, p=.045 (two-tailed test).
'^Difference in mean vote share from fifth to sixth election for the 1968 and earlier period: t= -1.64, p=.ll (two-tailed test) .
41 relatively late in the career and, even though there is a late career drop in electoral support, the most senior members still have a higher mean vote share than those in most other tenure categories.
• o ® 70- 4) g 0 65- 1
1968 and earlier
1970 and later 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Election
Figure 2.8 Mean Candidate Vote Percent By Tenure; Two Historical Periods.
If seat safety is controlled for by excluding those senators who won 80 percent or more of the vote, the two historical periods are less distinct. Looking at Figure 2.9, which shows the relationship between tenure and mean vote share with those winning 80 percent or more of the vote excluded, it is evident that the mean vote share for the two historical periods is nearly identical through the fifth
42 election. Once again, there is a sixth election surge in electoral support followed by a seventh election downturn. As with all senators in Figure 2.8, the sixth election surge
Mean Candidate Percent by Tenure
Less Than 80 %
■§ 65. I ë (T 60 < I a 5 55. 1968 and earlier
1970 and later 1 2 3 4 56 7
Election
Figure 2.9 Mean Candidate Vote Percent By Tenure: Candidates Who Received Less Than 80% of the Vote.
and the seventh election drop are more dramatic for elections in the 1950 to 1968 period than in the 1970 to 1990 period. In fact, in the later historical period, the changes from the fifth through seventh elections are quite small.
If seat safety is controlled for by excluding Southern Democrats, as shown in Figure 2.10, the differences between historical periods wash away entirely. Without Southern Democrats, both historical periods show stable, although
43 slightly increasing, levels of mean vote share through the sixth election and a downturn of more than five points from the sixth to the seventh election. In fact, the late career downturn is greater for the 1970 to 1990 period than the 1950 to 1968 period once the presence of Southern Democrats is controlled. In addition, for both historical periods.
65-
■5® 60-
I..I 50-
4 5 . 1968 and earlier
40 1970 and later 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Election
Figure 2.10 Mean Candidate Percent By Tenure; Southern Democrats Excluded.
the late career downswing leads to a smaller mean vote share for members seeking a seventh term than for senators in their first electoral contest. It appears that the Southern Democrats inflated the mean vote share received in both the sixth and seventh electoral bids. While our examination of all
44 senators within each historical period suggests that the two twenty year periods are distinct, once Southern Democrats are removed from the sample, these apparent differences vanish. The relationship between tenure in the Senate and electoral success has not changed from the 1950s and 1960s to the 1970s and 1980s.
Mortality Effects and the Electoral Career
An alternative process could be driving the results presented in this chapter. It is possible that senators who are not reelected or choose to retire are somehow different from senators who return to the Senate. If this is a case, then senators who gain more seniority by winning reelection may be unrepresentative. This could bias the results presented. To account for this possibility, senators who left the Senate at the end of the term, either through retirement or electoral defeat, were excluded from the analysis.^
Figure 2.11 shows the proportion of the vote received by a candidate at different levels of seniority, for senators who returned to the Senate in the following term only. The relationship between tenure and candidate vote share presented in Figure 2.11 is very similar to the relationship presented in Figure 2.5. Returning senators experience a statistically significant sophomore surge with their vote share jumping from 55.8 percent in their first electoral bid to 62.4 percent in
^Senators who died during the term were excluded from the analysis, since whether they would have returned to the Senate in the following term is impossible to determine.
45 their second electoral contest.This first to second election increase is larger than the increase in candidate vote share when all senators are included in the analysis (see
z UJ 0 Ê 70. a.
1 ■ 0 1 U 60 '
12
1 2 3 4 5 6
Tenure
Figure 2.11 Mortality Effects in the Electoral Career.
Figure 2.5). As when considering all senators, senators who return to the Senate experience a steady increase in electoral support through their fifth election. The only statistically significant difference is the seven point increase between the third and fourth electoral contests. Also consistent with the examination of all senators in Figure 2.5 is the increase in electoral support from the fifth to the sixth term for
22Mean- difference = 6.65. t-value= 5.37.
46 returning senators. Whether considering all senators or only senators who return for another term, there is an approximately six point electoral gain when moving from the fifth to the sixth run for the Senate.^* Since no senators returned to the Senate for an eight term, comparisons between the sixth and seventh electoral contests cannot be made.
The conclusion suggested by Figure 2.11 is that mortality effects are not a concern in the electoral career. If senators who are reelected are somehow different than those who leave the Senate, these differences do not appear to influence the pattern of results presented here.
Conclusion
The analysis presented suggests that perhaps Sen. Quentin Burdick's electoral fortunes provide the best, although not a perfect, illustration of the typical Senate electoral pattern. After an initial surge in vote share in the second election, Burdick's electoral fortunes remained stable throughout the remainder of his career. Two differences between Burdick's career and the typical Senate career are important to note. First, Burdick experienced a much larger sophomore surge than is typical for senators in the time period studied. Second, Burdick's late career drop in electoral support is much smaller than appears typical for
^^Although the difference between the mean candidate percent in the fifth and sixth terms is fairly large (5.7), the small number of cases in these tenure categories results in an insignificant mean difference. (N=22 in the fifth election; N=9 in the sixth election.)
47 long serving senators, although his death in office meant that he never ran in a seventh electoral contest where the late career drop in electoral support is most evident.
The examination of senators serving from 1950 to 1990 suggests that the Senate electoral career fits Matthews' life cycle pattern, albeit with an important modification. Whereas Mattehws' suggests a third term downturn in electoral support, the findings presented here suggest there is a steady increase in electoral support through the sixth election. Only in the seventh electoral contest, after 32 to 36 years in the Senate, does the pattern of building electoral support reverse. As previously noted, Matthews' suggests that this downturn in electoral support is the result of a senator losing touch with his or her constituents by turning his or her attention from the concerns of the state and focusing more attention on national issues. The results here suggest a different interpretation. If the electoral decline does not occur until the seventh electoral contest, it is unlikely that it is the result of voter response to a sudden, or even gradual, shift of attention by the senator. Matthews' reasoning seems much more plausible for a third or even fourth term downturn in support. A successful second electoral bid, especially one in which the vote share was enhanced over the first electoral bid, may suggest to a senator that the electoral base is solid enough to spend more time pursuing national issues. It is unlikely that senators who have faced election six times will suddenly feel more electorally secure after the sixth contest and pay for it in the seventh.
48 The late career downturn in support is more likely a response to the candidate's age. Senators who entered the Senate at the legally prescribed minimum age of 35 will run their seventh electoral contest at the age of 71. However, since most senators do not enter the Senate at the age of 35, those seeking a seventh term are likely to be considerably older. Questions about stamina and the ability of older senators to relate to the needs and concerns of constituents may make them more electorally vulnerable than previous elections suggest. It is important to note that even with this downturn in electoral support the mean vote share for seventh term senators is still at the 60 percent level which is generally considered safe.
The story does not end with a modified political life cycle, however. As the various controls suggest, the electoral career of Southern Democrats is somewhat different than other senators. Those differences provide a misleading view of the Senate electoral career. Throughout a large portion of the historical period considered. Southern Democrats ran in one party states. As a result, there impressive electoral totals inflate the mean vote share for all senators. Once they have been excluded from the analysis, both the second election increases in vote share and the steady improvement that seemed to occur through the sixth election diminish considerably. Although the pattern remains visually similar, the curve is much flatter indicating less variation.
Finally, although significant variation was expected between the two historical periods under study, once controls
49 for seat safety and Southern Democrats were included, the two periods (1950-1968 and 1970-1990) appear to be quite similar. The later period sees less variation in mean vote share than the earlier period. But, the pattern in each era is one of small incremental increases in vote share through the sixth election with a significant drop in support in the seventh election. This does not clearly reflect Matthews political life cycle view, since members do not show dramatic second election increases nor do they experience a large third election loss of support.
Senators ought not fear a third election slump, nor even a sophomore slump. The results presented here suggest that senators can expect steady, although small gains, in electoral support through five or six elections. This has remained consistent throughout the post World War II era. Instead, senators ought to fear what comes naturally: the passage of time. Time brings them seniority and many of its benefits, which will be explored throughout this study. But, time also means the senator is getting older and eventually forces them to run as elder statesmen and women who may be perceived as less in tune with their state's younger population.
50 CHAPTER 3
FORMAL POSITIONS IN THE SENATE
"As all new senators realize, their careers in this institution will largely be determined by the committee assignments they receive."
— Senator Robert C. Byrd'24
Introduction
Committees are the "central structural components" of the U.S. Congress (Smith and Deering 1990:1). The positions held by a member of Congress are critical in defining the career of a Representative (Hibbing 1991). As Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-WV) suggests, senators are well aware of the importance of their committee assignments and the implications they have for a senator's career. Although the norm of specialization no longer strictly constricts senators' legislative activity to their committee assignments (Rohde, Ornstein, and Peabody 1985; Sinclair 1989a, 1989b), senators' time and leadership opportunities are largely tied to their committees. A senator's day is often crowded by numerous
^^Byrd 1988: 651.
51 committee and subcommittee meetings and, in spite of the decline of the norm of specialization, much of a senator’s legislative activity is defined by committee service (Smith 1989) .
Committees, however, are not equally attractive to senators. Fenno (1973) and Bullock (1985) argue that senators pursue committee seats based on policy interest, power and prestige, previous experience, and perceived electoral benefits of service. Some Senate committees provide better opportunities for a senator to influence national policy, others may enhance the senator's influence within the institution, while still others provide opportunities to respond to constituent interests (Smith and Deering 1990). In some cases, a committee may provide an opportunity to do all three. For example. Sen. Thomas Eagleton (D-MO) credits his chairmanship of the Agriculture Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee with enhancing his power within the institution while also giving a "city boy who went to Harvard" a connection with his rural constituents in Missouri and a stake in policy that was important to them.
This differentiation in attractiveness is accompanied by a differentiation in perceived committee power and prestige. Service on the more prestigious Senate committees provides certain benefits to senators. As Sen. George McGovern (D-SD) remarked, referring to his service on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:
^^Interview with the author, August 19, 1996.
52 [Service on an important committee] increases your prestige in the Senate. It gives you more press attention. It gives you more of a sense inwardly that you are accomplishing something. That you are working in the arena where you could make a difference. I felt many times when I left committee meetings that I had really been able to do something that affected national policy. If you are on one of the lesser committees, you are not going to have that feeling very often. It is more laboring in the vineyards."*
The question to be addressed in this chapter is how committee assignments, as well as leadership positions, are distributed within the Senate. More specifically, I am interested in the way in which a senator's constellation of formal positions in the Senate (committee assignments and committee and party leadership positions) change as the Senate career proceeds. Are senior senators advantaged in their attempt to gain a seat on the more prestigious committees and, as a result, do they reap the rewards of service on a prestigious committee? Previous research suggests that while seniority confers formal position benefits, junior senators have largely closed the gap in the modern Senate. If, as Sinclair (1988: 277) argues, "the distribution of valued committee positions provides the single best observable indicator of the distribution of influence in Congress," the closing of this position gap provides clear evidence that junior members have gained additional power within the institution.
^®Interview with the author, September 17, 1996.
53 The Distribution of Senate Formal Positions: Previous Literature
There is an extensive literature examining the role of committees in Congress. Both the focus and the method of analysis of committee studies have varied widely (see Eulau and McCluggage (1986) for a review). Some studies have undertaken broad examinations of the committee system itself (Matthews 1973, Godwin 1970, Smith and Deering 1990), while others have focused their attention on individual committees.^’ Still other studies have examined the Senate assignment process (Bullock and Sprague 1969, Bullock 1985, Godwin 1959, Swanson 1969; see Eulau 1986 for a review), the relative prestige of committees (Bullock and Sprague 1969, Hunger 1988, Hunger and Torrent 1993, Endersby and McCurdy 1996), committee leaders (Collie and Roberts 1992, Evans 1991) among other things. In this chapter, I am concerned primarily with the distribution of committee and leadership positions in the Senate and with the relative prestige of individual committees.
^’There are a number of case studies of individual Senate committees. For example, Fenno (1966) and Horn (1970) on the Appropriations Committee; Huitt (1954) and Bibby and Davidson (1967) on the Banking Committee; Farnsworth (1961) on the Foreign Relations Committee. Additional case studies have considered several committees from a comparative perspective. See Fenno's (1973) comparative study of House committees; Price (1972) on the Commerce, Finance, and Labor Committees; and Hinckley (1975) which compares committees across the two chambers.
54 Committee Assignments
Research on the Senate of the 1950's paints a picture of a chamber in which the "haves" rule and the "have nots" struggle to be heard. Throughout the 1950's the Senate was dominated by its most senior members, a group often referred to as the "inner club" (Clark 1963, Foley 1980, Matthews 1973, Polsby 1968). These senior members tended to be Southern Democrats elected from electorally safe states. They derived their power both from positions earned through continuous service in the Senate and through the norms of the institution which suggested a deferential role for newer senators. The members of the inner club held committee chairs on virtually all committees. In addition, these members had disproportionate representation on some of the more prominent committees in the Senate. For example, during the 1950's and 1960's, 60 percent of the Democratic seats on the Appropriations Committee were held by chairmen of other committees or by party leaders (Sinclair 1988). On the whole, senior members were more likely to have more numerous and prestigious committee assignments than their more junior colleagues (Matthews 1973, Sinclair 1988).
The dominance of an inner club based on committee positions was solidified by the norms of behavior in the Senate during the 1950's. Matthews (1959; 1960) identified six norms or folkways that senators were expected to follow in the Senate of the 1950's. One of the most important of these norms was apprenticeship, the initial learning period new members were expected to undertake during which they would listen, show deference to their elders, and be seen working.
55 not engaging in speechmaking or amending activity. This idea of deference to one’s more experienced colleagues reinforced the dominance of the members of the "inner club," who controlled the positions of power within the chamber.
In addition to a gap between senior and junior members in committee assignments in the Senate of the 1950's, there was also a gap between northern liberals and southern conservatives within the Democratic party. The members of the inner club were largely southern conservatives whose policy goals often differed from their more liberal northern counterparts. According to Swanson (1969), the rate of advancement for conservative Democrats through the committee hierarchy was somewhat faster than moderate Democrats and much faster than liberal Democrats (see also Sinclair 1988). Liberal Democrats who did advance through the committee hierarchy were those most likely to support the inner club in their voting behavior (Swanson 1969).
Subsequent research has indicated that this dominance by the inner club came to an end as membership changed and as the Washington environment placed more demands on individual senators. The Senate moved toward a more equal distribution of power where individuals enjoyed more freedom (Ripley 1969, Foley 1980, Sinclair 1989). As a part of this democratization in the Senate, junior senators were more often placed on the most powerful committees and the ideological advantage enjoyed by conservatives diminished considerably (Sinclair 1988).
56 Committee Leadership
Committee leadership positions are highly valued commodities in the Senate. These positions provide many benefits to a senator. Committee leadership posts, both chairmanships and ranking member positions, provide a senator with additional staff, office space, and travel resources. Committee leaders, especially the chair of the committee, control the schedule of the committee and as such have a great deal of influence over the legislative agenda of that committee. They are also more likely to be thought of as someone engendering respect within the Senate (Hibbing and Thomas 1988) .
Leadership of one of the more powerful committees also enhances a senator's institutional power. Sen. Alan Dixon (D- IL) argues that:
[Service on] Finance and Appropriations are useful tools in your relationship with your colleagues from the perspective of getting that little extra margin of opportunity for things you wanted to do. This is particularly true when you rise to a powerful place on those two committees. Obviously, the chairman of Finance or the chairman of Appropriations is in a special catbird seat from the standpoint of what that individual can do.’®
The special place of leadership on the most prestigious committees was further illustrated by the decision of Sen. Robert C. Byrd to give up his position as Majority Leader in order to assume the chairmanship of the Appropriations Committee. Byrd argued that he could do more for the state of West Virginia as chair of Appropriations than as Senate
28Interview with the author, September 27, 1996. 57 Majority Leader (Calmes 1989). While one might take issue with Byrd's argument, it is clear that committee leadership positions provide numerous tangible benefits for senators.
Clearly, senior senators disproportionately hold the position of committee chair in the Senate. After all, by tradition, the most senior senator of the majority party may claim the position of chairman/chairwoman and the most senior senator of the minority party may claim the position of ranking member. Senators are limited to chairing or serving as ranking member on a single committee.The centrality of seniority in committee leadership positions has persisted across time.
Party Leadership
Sen. Mike Mansfield suggested the role of Senate Majority Leader was trying to "organize chaos. In a similar vein. Sen. John Danforth likened party leadership to "herding cats." By his estimation, the principle job of a Senate party leader was to try and bring some forward motion to 50 or so "meandering cats," who each had an idea about the way the group should m ove. Members of the Senate expect much from their leaders including reelection assistance, schedule management which facilitates electoral needs, and help in achieving policy goals through committee assignments
^^According to Sinclair (1988), a senator serving during the 1950s was allowed to hold more the position of ranking member on more than one committee. The practice declined in frequency until it all but died out in the late 1970s.
30Quoted in Davidson (1981).
31Interview with the author, September 27, 1996. 58 (Peabody 1981). However, Senate leaders have few formal powers that enable them to meet these expectations (Patterson 1989).
Although the role of party leadership can be demanding and frustrating for senators, these party offices also bring senators additional benefits in terms of power and prestige within the institution as well as an enhanced ability to shape policy. Party leaders manage the party's organizational structure in the Senate and serve as party spokesperson on important policy proposals. Leaders supervise the scheduling of legislation and serve as the party's principal liaison with the White House and the House of Representatives. Party leaders attract additional media attention (Peabody 1981) . A leader's placement at the center of Senate activity gives him an informational advantage over other members and may allow him to speed consideration of his own legislation (Oleszek 1971). While all of these advantages accrue to the party leader, party whips enjoy many of them as well (Oleszek 1971), In addition, the office of party whip has increasingly become a stepping-stone to the position of party leader (Oleszek 1971, Patterson 1989) .
Perhaps the one area in which senior southern members did not dominate the formal positions of the Senate in the 1950s was party leadership. Party leadership was (and is) less strictly tied to seniority. This was due at least in part to the rather low esteem in which party offices were held in the early 1950's (Peabody 1981). Sen. Lyndon Johnson of Texas, although a southerner himself, took over as Majority leader after only four years in the Senate. He succeeded two
59 previous Democratic party leaders who had been defeated at the polls. Sen. Scott Lucas of Illinois and Sen. Ernest McFarland of Arizona. Their electoral vulnerability suggested that party leadership did not necessarily provide an electoral advantage. Johnson was succeeded as majority leader by Sen. Mike Mansfield of Montana, who ascended to party leader midway through his second term in the Senate. The party leadership for Republicans also seemed to lack the dominance of seniority that permeated committee assignment patterns. Although Robert Taft, who served briefly as Republican party leader in the 83rd Congress, came to the position after serving 14 years in the Senate, his successor William Knowland of California became Republican leader after only a single term in the Senate.
The office of party whip^^ has not been the strict purview of senior members either. Relatively new senators have been elected to the office of party whip regularly. From 1913 to 1971, the Democratic whip averaged only 6.5 years in the Senate before election and the Republican whip average only 5.8 years in the Senate before election (Oleszek 1971). On average, then, a party whip in the Senate had served only about one term before assuming that office.
^^Although the Republican party refers to this office as that of Assistant Republican Leader, as opposed to Whip, for consistency across parties I will refer to this office as Whip.
60 Where Do We Go From Here?
Although quite a bit has been learned about the changing patterns of formal position distributions in the Senate since its "transformation" from an institution dominated by a few members to one in which power is more widely distributed in the 1960's, a few important issues remain. While there is evidence to suggest that junior members of the Senate now obtain prestigious position assignments earlier in their careers, it is not clear whether this increase is the result of a "rising tide that lifted all boats" or of a change in assignment criteria that gave junior members more attractive positions at the expense of more senior members. The central question is whether the gap between senior and junior members in number and quality of positions has closed over time or whether the gap has remained while both junior and senior members enjoy more formal positions in the Senate. If this gap remains, it suggests that the changes in Senate position assignment may have simply shifted the scale measuring position attainment rather than actually democratizing the institution.
One of the shortcomings of the previous analysis is that it has focused disproportionately on assignments to the "Big Four" committees; Appropriations, Armed Services, Foreign Relations, and Finance. While these committees are certainly prominent within the institution and some evidence suggests they were the most prestigious committees in the Senate at one time (Matthews 1973, Harris 1993) , focusing exclusively on the Big Four ignores three potential difficulties. First, there is the question whether or not the Big Four are truly the most
61 prestigious and powerful committees in the Senate. Their reputation as such derives from Matthews’ work on the Senate of the late 1950's and the special place these committees hold in the assignment process as demonstrated by the Johnson Rule. According to the Johnson Rule, instituted by Democrats in 1953 and codified for both parties in the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970, no senator may be assigned to a second committee among the Big Four until all Senators have at least one assignment to a committee among the Big Four.
It would be helpful to have a more precise measure of committee prestige based on the choices senators make about their own committee service. Such a measure would also allow for the examination of any differences in prestige among the four committees subject to the Johnson Rule. The literature to date considers assignment to any one of the four to be equally advantageous to the senator. Interviews with former senators suggest that this may not be the case. According to Sen. John Danforth (R-MO), Finance is in a "class by itself" based on its wide jurisdictional reach. As previously noted. Sen. Alan Dixon argues that Finance and Appropriations stand apart from the other committees based on their ability to enhance a senator's institutional power.
In addition, focusing exclusively on comparisons between assignment to the Big Four committees and assignment to the other committees ignores any additional power that may be gained by assignments to the most preferred committees in this "other" category. Even if we concede that the Big Four committees are the most prestigious and powerful committees
33 Interview with the author, September 27, 1996.
62 and demonstrate that assignments to these committees are more widely distributed than in the past, that does not necessarily mean that senior members are without any advantage in terms of formal position. Perhaps the changes within the Senate forced a more equitable distribution of major committee assignments while at the same time preserving a seniority advantage in assignments to the additional committees outside the most prestigious four.
For example, in the 94 th Congress, Democrat John McClellan of Arkansas, a 34 year veteran of the Senate, was assigned to the Appropriations, Judiciary, and Governmental Affairs Committees. In that same Congress, Democrat Lloyd Bentsen of Texas, in his first term in the Senate, was assigned to the Finance and Public Works Committees. McClellan's overall package of assignments is clearly more attractive. Not only is he assigned to more committees, his assignments are arguably of higher quality once we look beyond the committees subject to the Johnson Rule. Anecdotal evidence is not limited to Democrats. Senior Republican Strom Thurmond of South Carolina was assigned to the Armed Services, Judiciary, Labor, and Veteran's Affairs Committees in the 99th Congress, while junior Republican Phil Gramm of Texas was assigned to the Armed Services and Banking Committees. In these examples, both the junior and senior senators received assignments to one of the "Big Four" committees. Senior senators of both parties received a better package of assignments than their more junior colleagues, however. They had more assignments and their additional assignments beyond the prestige committees were more attractive.
63 With the development of indices which rate committee prestige based on the ratio of senators transferring onto a committee to senators transferring off a committee, relative committee prestige can be more accurately gauged. Not only can we judge if the Big Four committees are truly the most prestigious committees, we can also differentiate the level of prestige among them. While the former senators interviewed indicated that all four of the Johnson Rule committees are highly prestigious, several senators made it clear that there was a hierarchy among the four with Finance and impropriations being the most powerful. In addition, with these transfer indices, the "package” of assignments of junior members to that of senior members can more easily be compared.
Formal Positions in the Senate: Expectations
The conventional wisdom suggests that junior members now gain positions in the Senate more rapidly than their predecessors. While this may be due in large part to the number of positions available, some of the effect may be due to a true democratization process as the dominance of the "inner club" came to an end. Using more finely grained measurement than past analysis, I expect that:
HI: Tenure will be positively related to attaining formal positions of power within the Senate.
Despite indications that junior senators are narrowing the gap in tems of formal position attainment, I expect that seniority still brings some benefits to senators when
64 measuring their total package of assignments and their leadership opportunities. However, I expect that this gap between junior and senior members has narrowed over time. Thus, I expect that:
H2: The gap between junior and senior members in position attainment has grown smaller across the forty year period under study, even when controlling for the number of positions.
The previous literature has also suggested that liberal members of the Senate do not fare as well in winning of formal positions as conservative members. Since this differential in assignments has been attributed to the dominance of conservative southern Democrats, it seems likely that as the transformation of the Senate occurred in the 1960s and early 1970s ideological differences in formal position attainment became less apparent. Thus:
H3a: Conservative senators will be advantaged in formal position attainment relative to liberal senators.
H3b: The gap between liberal and conservative members in position attainment has grown smaller across the forty year period under study.
65 Formal Positions in the Senate: Data
The analysis in this chapter includes all senators serving in the 81st to 101st Congresses (1949 to 1990) who were assigned to committees. For each senator, information was collected on committee assignment, committee leadership positions, and party leadership positions
Measures of formal position assignments were created using this basic information. First, a simple additive scale was created measuring the number of standing committee assignments of a senator in a single Congress.A second scale was created that weighted committees based on their relative prestige within the Senate and gave additional points to party and committee leadership positions. This second scale, which I shall call the Big Four Power Scale, divided the committees into two categories: the four committees generally perceived as the most prestigious (Appropriations, Foreign Relations, Armed Services, and Finance) versus all other standing committee assignments. Senators who held committee leadership positions, either Committee Chair or Ranlcing Minority Member, were awarded additional credit as were the Majority and Minority Leaders and the Majority and Minority Whips. This scale is designed to replicate the common distinction between those committees subject to the Johnson Rule and those standing committees not subject to its
^Committee information was collected from Congressional Quarterly's Committees in the U.S. Congress, Volume 2.
^^If a senator moved from one committee to another in a particular Congress, only the last committee seat was coded. This coding is based on the assumption that members move to more prestigious committees.
66 restrictions. The values for individual coinmittee assignments are shown in Appendix B. The Big Four power scale is an additive scale combining the value of each committee assignment and leadership position for an individual senator in a Congress.
An additional scale was created using information about the relative prestige of individual committees rather than relying on perceptions derived from the Johnson rule. Endersby and McCurdy (1996) have calculated a pairwise transfer index for Senate committees from 1947 to 1994 based on the Bullock and Sprague formula (1969) This transfer index scores individual committees based on the ratio of senators moving onto a committee to the sum of new assignments to the committee and assignments lost by the committee as members leave it. In essence, this index is measuring the attractiveness of committees based on senators decisions to
^®Other committee transfer ratios have been calculated in addition to the Bullock and Sprague (1969) pairwise transfer ratio. Bullock and Sprague have calculated a gross transfer ratio based on all committee transfers rather than only pairwise transfers. The pairwise transfer ratio is used here since it includes only transfers in which senators leave one committee to go to another committee. Instances in which a senator gives up a committee assignment without going to another committee are excluded. This is appropriate since our use of the transfer indices is designed to measure the attractiveness of committees relative to one another. Hunger (1988) has developed a net transfer ratio, which is also calculated in Endersby and McCurdy (1996). This net transfer ratio is inappropriate for this analysis since it does not give committees individual scores. It simply provides a rank ordering. Finally, Groseclose and Stewart (1996) have developed still another transfer measure of the prestige of committees for the House of Representatives. These data are not yet available for the Senate.
67 give up a seat on one committee to attain a seat on another committee. It relies on the assumption that senators seek to move from less prestigious committees to more prestigious committees. (For a full discussion of the Endersby and McCurdy scores, see J^pendix B).
A scale was created which summed the Endersby and McCurdy committee scores for each member's committee assignments and gave additional weight to senators who held committee or party leadership positions. The committee scores and weights assigned to committee and party leadership positions are listed in Appendix B. The Committee Power Scale allows us to more clearly differentiate between the relative prestige of committees and provides a mechanism to examine the full complement of institutional positions held by a senator in a given Congress.
In addition to examining each of these scales in their raw form, each of the scales was standardized (by converting them into z-scores) within each Congress to allow for a more accurate comparison across time. If the raw scores are considered alone, differences in the number of available positions in a given Congress may distort the results. By converting the scales into z-scores, which measure individual members relative to the mean score for that Congress, more accurate comparisons across time may be made. Most of the analysis presented examines these standard scores. For a more complete discussion of standard scores, see Appendix A. All analyses were replicated using the unstandardized scale scores. The results are consistent with those presented here.
68 The Distribution of Formal Positions in the Senate
Before examining the relationship between tenure and formal position attainment, a brief overview of the formal position environment of the Senate is in order. Clearly, seats on the Big Four committees have become more widely distributed over time. While only about half of all Senators served on one of the Big Four Committees in the 81st Congress,
40% 81 83 8587 89 91 93 95 97 99 101
CONGRESS
Vertical line represents initiation of Johnson Rule for Democrats.
Figure 3.1 Assignment to the "Big Four" Committees : Percentage of Senators Assigned to a Big Four Committee.
by the 98th Congress nearly 85 percent of Senators held an assignment on one of these committees (see Figure 3.1). While the Johnson Rule certainly was the prime mover behind this trend, there is a steady increase in the distribution of these
69 assignments even after the Johnson Rule had been in place for many years. Based on this information, it is clear that junior members have more opportunities for service on the most prestigious committees now than in the past. However, the senator's average number of committee assignments has also increased over the time under study. As Figure 3.2 indicates, the mean number of committee assignments was approximately 2.2 during the 81st Congress. The mean number of committee assignments had reached nearly 3.0 by the 101st Congress.
3.0
2 8' I E 2 6' c
2 2 '
20 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100101
CONGRESS
Figure 3.2 Historical Variation in Committee Assignments, 1950-1990.
70 Taken together Figures 3.1 and 3.2 suggest that it is possible that the distribution of assignments has become more equitable over time. It is also possible that rather than becoming more equitable over time, the committee assignment process has retained its inequity but that inequity is masked by the increasing number of committee assignments per member. An examination of the mean number of standing committee assignments by level of seniority shows very little variation across the Senate career. As shown in Figure 3.3, Senators average roughly two and a half committee assignments regardless of their level of seniority. However, looking simply at the number of committee assignments fails to account for advantages accrued from assignment to more prestigious committees or from party or committee leadership positions.
71 3.0
2.1
2 ternis 4 terms 5 terms 6 terms 7 terms
Tenure in the Senate
Figure 3.3 Seniority and Committee Assignments.
In order to take into account committee prestige and leadership benefits, two scales have been created, the Big Four Power Scale and the Committee Power Scale (see Appendix B for a complete description of both scales). Whether examining the scale created from committee transfer data (Committee Power scale) or the scale which distinguishes the four committees subject to the Johnson Rule, senior senators have a much more attractive package of committee assignments and leadership opportunities (Figure 3.4) . First term senators have a mean z-score of approximately -.5 on both of the formal position scales, which increases to the mean level of 0 by the second term. The Big Four Power and Committee Power scales
72 steadily increase together through the fourth term to approximately 0.8. Across terms five through seven, the
2.0
1.5
1.0
0.0
-.5. Z-Committee Power
-1.0 J______Z-Big Four Power 1 term 2 terms 3 terms 4 terms 5 terms 6 terms 7 terms
Tenure in the Senate
Figure 3.4 Formal Position Scales By Tenure.
Big Four Power scale remains fairly steady, rising from 0.7 to approximately 1.0. The Committee Power scale, on the other hand, continues to rise rather sharply more than doubling from 0.8 in the fifth term to 1.7 in the seventh term. The difference between the two scales suggests that considering formal position in terms of membership on and leadership of one of the Big Four committees underestimates the advantage of
73 seniority. Senior senators gain additional prestige in their formal positions through the opportunities afforded for coinmittee leadership and through the more attractive assignments they receive in addition to their Johnson Rule assignment.
Historical Variation
One of the consistent findings of the previous literature was that the gap between junior and senators in assignment to the most prestigious committees has narrowed over time. Whereas senior senators dominated membership on the committees subject to the Johnson Rule in the 1950s, enforcement of the rule led to more widely dispersed membership on the four most prestigious committees. It is appropriate, then, to consider whether this gap between junior and senior senators has diminished over time when looking at a senator's full complement of committee assignments and leadership responsibilities.
Since the earlier literature so clearly distinguishes between assignment to the committees subject to the Johnson rule, it is appropriate to examine historical variation in the scale which most clearly distinguishes assignment to and leadership of one of the big four committees. If the Big Four Power Scale in the 81st to 90th Congresses (1950-1968) and the 91st to 101st Congresses (1959-1990) are contrasted, some similarities between the two time periods as well as one significant difference emerge (Figure 3.5). The relationship between tenure and the Big Four Power Scale across the two
74 time periods is nearly identical through five terms. As noted in previous sections, there is a steady increase in the mean position scale until a plateau is reached in about the fourth term and maintained through the fifth term. It is after the
2.0
i CO 3 £ OI OQ tsi 0.0.
Congress
81 St to 90th
- 1.0 91st to 101st 1 lenn 2 terms 3 terms 4 terms 5 terms 6 terms 7 terms
Tenure in the Senate
Figure 3.5 Historical Variation in Power Scales: Big Four Power Scale.
fifth term that the relationship between tenure and the position scale diverges across the two historical periods. Senators serving in the 81st through 90th Congresses continued to attain significantly higher mean scale scores as they entered their sixth and seventh terms. In contrast, senators serving in the later historical period, from the 91st to 101st Congresses, did not seem to enjoy any additional committee
75 prestige. The scale scores for these senior senators remained on the plateau reached in the fourth term in office. This is largely consistent with the previous literature, although one might have expected the plateau to have been reached earlier in the career. Even in the more democratic later period, senators must serve for approximately 24 years before attaining the upper reaches of the formal position scale.
The next question to consider is whether this historical variation in formal position attainment can be supported when examining the full complement of assignments based on the committee prestige ratings derived from the transfer data. Figure 3.6 presents some evidence to suggest there is little historical variation in committee assignment practices. Using the Committee Power Scale as our measure, we see that the relationship between formal position attainment and tenure does not vary across the two historical periods under consideration. In both historical periods, there is a consistent increase in position attainment as seniority increases, interrupted only by a plateau between the fourth and fifth terms.
76 2.0
I 1.0- IS. - E
Congress -.5 81st to 90th
- 1.0 91 St to 101st 1 term 2 terms 3 terms 4 terms 5 terms 6 terms 7 terms
Tenure in Senate
Figure 3.6 Historical Variation in Power Scales : Committee Power Scale.
Contrasting Figures 3.5 and 3.6 suggests that focusing exclusively on assignments to the Big Four committees tends to mask the consistent advantages senior senators maintain over junior senators in position attainment. While assignments to the Appropriations, Armed Services, Finance, and Foreign Relations Committees may be more widely distributed than in the past, senior senators continue to maintain a significant advantage over junior senators based on their leadership opportunities and the relative attractiveness of their assignments beyond these four committees.
77 Ideological Variation
Beyond variation in formal position attainment based on length of service in the Senate, the previous literature suggests some variation in position assignment based on the ideology of the senator. According to Swanson (1969) and Sinclair (1988), liberal senators were somewhat disadvantaged in the committee assignment process relative to their more conservative counterparts, at least in the Senate of the 1950s and early 1960s. The evidence for this disparity between liberal and conservative members is based on assignment to the four committees subject to the Johnson Rule. Is this ideological disparity in committee prestige evident when considering a senator’s full complement of committee assignments and leadership responsibilities?
Some evidence indicating differences in formal position attainment between liberal and conservative senators is found in Figure 3.7. Senators were divided into three groups based on their ideology, as measured by the Poole and Rosenthal D- Nominate score for the individual Congress.Senators with a D-Nominate score one standard deviation or more above the mean were classified as conservatives, while senators with a D- Nominate score one standard deviation or more below the mean were classified as liberals. All other senators are considered moderates in the analysis.
^^For a discussion of the D-Nominate scores and the methodology used to create them, see Chapter 4.
78 25
20
1.5 I 5 1.0 CLI .= E
I 00 Ideology N -.5 Liberal
- 1.0 Moderate
-1.5 ^_____ Conservative 1 term 2 terms 3 terms 4 terms 5 terms 6 terms 7 terms
Tenure in the Senate
Figure 3.7 Ideological Variation in Position Attainment, 1950- 1990.
There is clear evidence of ideological disparities in formal position attainment in the Senate even when controlling for seniority.
First term senators, regardless of their ideology, receive comparable assignments based on their mean Committee Power score. However, by the second term assignment disparities are beginning to surface. While liberal senators improve their mean Committee Power rating from -.54 in the first term to -.21 in the second term (a change of .33), conservative senators show even greater improvement from a mean of -.65 in the first term to a mean of .18 in the second
79 term (a change of .83) . The improvement in position attainment for conservatives is two and one-half times that of liberals. As Figure 3.7 demonstrates, the gap between liberal and conservative senators continues to widen as seniority increases. In fact, by the fifth term, conservative senators have a mean score three times that of their more liberal counterparts. While it appears that this gap continues to grow into the sixth term, generalizations are unreliable beyond the fifth term due to the small number of liberal senators that serve more than five terms.
Previous authors have suggested that this ideological disparity in the assignment process diminished in the post transformation era. Consequently, it is possible that the differences found in Figure 3.7 are driven primarily by the earlier historical period in our analysis. To evaluate this possibility, the data were separated by historical period. As Figure 3.8 demonstrates, there is strong evidence that conservative senators had a significant advantage over liberal senators in formal position attainment in the period from 1950 to 1968. While conservative senators see the highest mean level of position attainment relative to both their liberal and moderate colleagues, liberals fare as well as moderates through the third term. After the third term, however, liberals show a marked decline in position attainment that continues through the fifth term. Moderate senators, on the other hand, continue to steadily increase their position attainment as they serve in the Senate.
80 2.5
ZQ
1.5
0I 10 Q. 1 .s E O 0.0 Ideology fsj Liberal
-1.0 Moderate
-1.5 Conservative 1 term 2 terms 3 terms 4 terms 5 terms 6 terms 7 terms
Tenure in the Senate
Figure 3.8 Ideological Variation in Position Assignment, 1950-1968.
The sharpest rise is for conservative senators, who increase their mean position attainment sharply through the fifth term.^® By the fifth term, conservative senators have a committee power score that is almost three times that of moderate senators and nearly eight times that of liberal senators. Clearly, from 1950 to 1968, conservative senators maintained a remarkable advantage over liberal senators on the Committee Power Scale.
®®The results for the sixth and seventh terms are not discussed because of the small number of cases in these categories.
81 This advantage does not hold up for the later period under study. There are no significant ideological differences in the committee power scale during the period from 1969-1990. Senators of all ideological stripes experience a gradual increase in formal position attainment as they accumulate seniority, as shown in Figure 3.9. The only apparent interruption of this pattern is the decline in the committee
2.5
2.0
5I 1.0 0.
.1 .5 E
I 00 Ideology rsl Liberal
-1.0 Moderate
-1.5 Conservative 1 term 2 terms 3 terms 4 terms 5 terms 6 terms 7 terms
Tenure in the Senate
Figure 3.9 Ideological Variation in Position Attainment, 1969-1990.
power scale for liberal senators in their sixth term. This finding is based on a very small number of cases, however, and is thus not very reliable. Figure 3.9 suggests that there are no differences in assignment patterns in the transformed
82 Senate. Regardless of ideology, senators increase their committee power score as they continue to serve in the Senate.
Mortality Effects and the Institutional Position Career
An alternative process could be driving the results presented in this chapter. It is possible that senators who are not reelected or choose to retire are somehow different from senators who return to the Senate. If this is a case, then senators who gain more seniority by winning reelection may be unrepresentative. This could bias the results presented. In order to account for this possibility, senators who left the Senate at the end of the term, either through retirement or electoral defeat, were excluded from the analysis.^
There does not appear to be any evidence of mortality effects on the institutional positions attained by senators. As shown in Figure 3.10, even when only considering senators who returned to the Senate, there is a strong relationship between tenure and position attainment, regardless of which institutional position scale is used.
^’Senators who died during the term were excluded from the analysis, since whether they would have returned to the Senate in the following term is impossible to determine.
83 2 0
1.5
0.0
Z-CofTimitfee Power
- 1.0 Z-Btg Four Power 1 term 2 terms 3 terms 4 terms 5 terms 6 terms 7 terms
Tenure in the Senate
Figure 3.10 Mortality Effects in the Formal Position Career.
Conclusion
In spite of changes in the Senate which have given junior senators better committee assignments than in the past, seniority still brings senators additional benefits in the attainment of formal positions. Previous research, which focused attention on assignments to the four committees subject to the Johnson Rule, has overestimated the degree to which junior senators have closed the gap with senior members in committee assignment and leadership positions. Senior senators appear to receive better assignments in addition to their Johnson Rule committee assignment than junior senators.
84 In addition, senior senators continue to enjoy an advantage in obtaining committee leadership posts.
While there is some historical variation in the distribution of positions on the four committees subject to the Johnson Rule, there appears to be no significant historical variation in formal positions when considering a senator's full complement of assignments and leadership positions. The pattern of position attainment across the Senate career appears to be the same whether the senator served in the 1950s and 1960s or in the 1970s and 1980s.
Finally, the gap in position attainment between liberal and conservative senators seems to have closed in the more recent historical period. Liberals no longer appear to be at a disadvantage in the committee assignment process.
The findings of this chapter imply that the Senate, although certainly more democratic than in the past, remains an institution where continuous service bestows additional power on the senator. If, in fact, committee assignments and leadership positions define the ability of senators to exercise influence within the institution, senior senators continue to hold power in greater proportion than their status as one of 100 members might suggest.
85 Chapter 4
The Vote Moderation Hypothesis Revisited:
The Roll Call Voting Career
"The late Democratic Senator Richard Russell of Georgia once joked that you could watch senators walk down a hall and immediately tell what part of their six- year term they were in. Those recently elected, with a full six years ahead of them, Russell said, walked along looking up, thinking lofty thoughts. Those with four years remaining walked looking straight ahead. But senators with only two years left, Russell said, looked down as the walked, carefully watching where they stepped."
— Senator Fred Harris 40
"A senator is accountable only to his conscience and the voters of his state, and then only once every six years."
— Senator Bill Bradley41
''“Harris (1993:41).
^Bradley (1996:90).
86 Introduction
To this point, my consideration of the Senate career has focused on the accumulation of service across many years in the institution. The Senate career is not only shaped by what happens across consecutive terms in office, however. What happens within a single Senate term also plays a role in shaping the Senate career. In this chapter, I consider how the six year term may influence the voting record of a senator. As such, the focus is shifted from a temporal dimension that examines continuous service across the career to a temporal dimension that examines service within a single term in the Senate.
Senator Bill Bradley and Vote Moderation
In 1978, Sen. Bill Bradley (D-NJ) won his first race for the Senate with 56 percent of the vote. During his first Congress of service, he was the most liberal Democrat in the Senate class of '78/^ By his third Congress, he had dropped to the fourth most liberal member of the class of '78. In fact, his liberalism score had dropped 16 points, from -.54 to -.37."^ Although Bradley's mind is not known, at least one possible explanation for Bradley's change in voting is that he
■'^Liberalism is judged by Bradley's D-Nominate score in a given Congress. D-nominate scores, more thoroughly examined later in this chapter, provide a standardized measure of ideology based on all nonunanimous roll call votes (see Poole and Rosenthal 1985, 1991, 1997).
“'^While the scale of the liberalism score runs from +1 to -1, the real range of values runs from .70 to -97.
87 made a strategic decision to become more conservative as his race for reelection neared. By doing so, he might hope to appeal to the median voter in his state, a median voter that was likely to be more conservative than Bradley's very liberal voting record in his earliest years of service. If that was Bradley's strategy, it paid off. Bradley went on to win reelection easily, garnering 64 percent of the vote in 1984.
In that first Congress after reelection, Bradley continued with a relatively liberal voting record, although he was only the 10th most liberal Democrat in the class of 1984 during the 99th Congress (1985-1986) . Based on his experience in his first term, one might have expected that he once again would become less liberal in his voting as reelection approached. Bradley did just the opposite, however. By the 100th Congress (1989-1990), the third Congress of the term, Bradley's voting record was the third most liberal among Democrats. His liberalism score had increased by 45 points, from -.29 to -.74. Perhaps Bradley was thinking about a run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988 or 1992, which would have suggested establishing a particularly liberal voting record. Or, perhaps Bradley felt his seat was safe. For whatever reason, Bradley's voting record shows no evidence of movement toward a more conservative median voter. The election results that followed nearly spelled disaster for Bradley's political career. He barely held on to his Senate seat, winning just 50 percent of the vote to edge out then little known candidate Christine Todd Whitman, while outspending her at a rate of 10 to 1. While other factors undoubtedly influenced the race, for example the debate in New Jersey over then Governor Jim Florio's tax plan, one cannot
88 help but wonder what effect Bradley's increasing voting liberalism during his term in office had on the race. But, one could also conclude that Bradley's failure to moderate his voting record hurt his reelection effort.
The Vote Moderation Hypothesis
One of the primary differences between the two chambers of Congress is the length of the terms for their respective members. As most are aware. Senators are elected to six year terms, while members of the House face election after only two years. One might argue that the longer term gives senators more freedom to pursue policy aims than members of the House enjoy. For example, since most issues in Congress develop over considerable time, terms divided into six year increments allow members to pursue policy aims across a longer time period than would be possible in a single two year House term. Others have argued that this six year term gives members more freedom in their voting behavior, allowing them to pursue a voting pattern less restricted by constituency influence in the earlier portion of their term and moderating that behavior later in their term to more closely coincide with constituent interests.
There is a clear debate in the literature on Senate roll call voting about whether or not senators strategically change their voting behavior as reelection approaches. This debate is often referred to as the issue of vote moderation, since
89 some argue movement will be toward a more "moderate" political position in an effort to appeal to the median state voter.
Vote Moderation: The Previous Literature
Perhaps the best known discussion of the vote moderation hypothesis can be found in Fenno's (1982) essay on the differences between service in the House and Senate and his series of books closely examining the careers of several senators (Fenno 1989, 1991a, 1991b) According to Fenno, the Senate career is defined by its cyclical movement between periods of electoral activity and governing activity.In Fenno's words, "the basic regularity is the sequence that begins with a period of campaigning in the home constituency, is followed by a period of governing activity in Washington, and is followed, in turn, by a reelection campaign back in the home constituency" (p. xii) . These two stages are not independent of one another. "Activity at one stage will have a cause-and-effeet influence on activity at the following stage" (p. xii) . The most important influence, according to Fenno, will be the effect of past and future campaigns on governing behavior. In moving from the campaigning to the governing stage, the member's interpretation of his or her
"Although the series includes an analysis of John Glenn, that work deals less directly with the vote moderation hypothesis.
■’^While Fenno's view of the Senate career is evident across his case studies, the most explicit discussion of his theory is found in the introduction to The Emergence of a Senate Leader: Pete Domenici and the Reagan Budget, Washington: CQ Press, 1991.
90 electoral performance will mediate the transition to governing, and affect activity in that stage. In moving from governing to campaigning for reelection, the member will anticipate the need to explain governing activity to constituents and shape behavior accordingly. Consequently, the electoral influences on governing behavior should be most evident at the beginning and end of the governing stage.
One specific implication of Fenno's career cycle is that there will be some variability in a senator's behavior in the legislature that can be explained by the proximity to election. Take, for example, the level of party support by a member across his or her six year term. Fenno argues that, in the first two years of the term, an independence encouraged by the Senator's interpretation, of electoral behavior leads to relatively low levels of party support. The middle two year portion of the term is the meat of the governing stage. In this period, senators are less concerned with their past and future elections and focus more on legislating. Fenno argues that higher levels of party support will occur in this period. In the final two years of the term, the senator begins to look toward his or her reelection and modify behavior in a way that will most benefit his or her electoral chances. Consequently, behavior in this period will show less support of the party and more support for perceived constituent interests.
A similar argument can be in terms of the ideological pattern of a senator's voting record. Members may feel they have some leeway in representing constituent interests when out of the election spotlight. This leeway may allow them to vote in a more liberal or conservative direction than they
91 would when anticipating the attention that a reelection campaign brings. As Thomas (1984) notes, the idea that senators change the ideological content of their voting near reelection suggests two real suppositions. First, it suggests that senators are subject to multiple sources of motivation. Movement toward the position perceived to be most beneficial to reelection suggests the electoral motive plays a large part in senatorial behavior. An electoral motivation is not surprising in light of the academic literature on the subject (see, for example, Mayhew 1974) and the fundamental fact that legislative achievement requires a member to continue serving in the legislature.
This brings us to the second motivational component. If the electoral motive was the sole motive of the senator, vote moderation would not occur since the most profitable strategy would be to establish a voting record which is stable and closely in tune with constituent interests. As Hinich and Hunger (1994) suggest, a public official's ideological positioning provides a means for voters who lack full information to evaluate past and future behavior of candidates. As such, shifts in ideology devalue its role as a source of information and discredit the policy positions taken by members who seem willing to roam across the ideological spectrum. Thus, there is a strong incentive to be ideologically consistent both across issues and over time. This assumes, however, that senators are only interested in reelection. In contrast, the concept of vote moderation itself suggests that they are interested in other things as well.
92 other motivations of senators may include loyalty to the party, support of the president, attaining power in Washington or pursuing particular policy agendas (Kingdon 1989; Fenno 1978; Dodd 1977) If senators do stray or shirk ideologically in the middle or early portion of their term, the cause is unlikely to be some random drift which might undermine electoral success. Instead, it is likely to be a strategic behavior to facilitate goals other than reelection. What the vote moderation hypothesis argues, however, is that pursuit of goals other than reelection is relegated to a temporally defined period early in the term.
This brings us to the second supposition of the vote moderation hypothesis. If members pursue goals other than reelection in the early and middle years of their term, and then begin to move toward the middle of the ideological spectrum as election approaches, it suggests the dominance of the electoral motivation in the final two years alone. This implies that senators think that on election day voters will remember their most recent voting behavior in the Senate. Thomas (1984) suggests two plausible reasons for this view.
^®Another motivation might be progressive ambition. Politician's voting patterns might be designed to appeal to future constituencies rather than their present electoral constituencies (Schlesinger 1966, Hibbing 1986) . In this context. Senators running for president or vice-president would strategically shift their voting patterns to appeal to the relatively ideologically extreme presidential primary voters of their party. In the case of Democrats, this would likely mean becoming more liberal and for Republicans, more conservative. There is some evidence to support this. Of the Democrats with the 10 most liberal change scores, six were rumored or declared candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination.
93 First, more recent events are more likely to be remembered. Second, constituents are more attentive during the election season when they are trying to make a choice and information is more readily available. However, Box-Steffensmeier and Franklin (1995) provide evidence that voters are at least somewhat aware of their senator's ideological position even outside of the reelection period. They argue that voters acquire information throughout the term of service and use it to continually update their perception of the senator's ideological position. The authors find that there is a high correlation between constituent placement of senators on a seven-point ideological scale and a senators American Conservative Union (ACU) voting score.
While this may appear damaging to the vote moderation hypothesis at first glance, a closer look suggests the findings present less of a problem than expected. Both Hinich and Hunger (1994) and Box-Steffensmeier and Franklin (1995) seem to suggest that changes in ideological voting patterns would undermine a senator's chance for reelection because constituents would be aware of the movement. Certainly this is a reasonable conclusion if constituents are aware of changes in the ideological content of a senator's voting record. Box-Steffensmeier and Franklin's evidence rests on the use of ACU voting scores which are calculated using a small number of votes on issues which the ACU finds particularly important. The votes comprising the ACU index are relatively salient issues. These are the kinds of issues voters are likely to be aware of. The vote moderation hypothesis suggests that there is a subset of votes in which senators are likely to engage in voting behavior that is less
94 constrained by constituent interests. Most central to the hypothesis is the idea that this independence is a temporal phenomenon. It is best used in the early or middle stages of the term. I would argue that the hypothesis must also incorporate the salience of votes in question. Members who engage in moderation will not do so on issues that are highly visible or central to the local constituency. It is on those bills that their lack of consistency is most likely to be "discovered” and for those votes that they are most likely to be punished electorally.
There is some evidence that at least partially supports the theory of strategic vote moderation, although, as Fenno points out, it is not particularly strong. In a study of the California legislature, Kuklinski (1978) finds that roll call voting by most senators was more in line with district preferences in the later years of their four year term than in the early years. By contrast, members of the assembly remained relatively stable in their voting patterns across their two year term.
In his examination of voting in the U.S. Senate, Elling (1982) finds some evidence for end of the term changes in voting. He suggests that in the final two years of the term, over half of the senators "shifted their ideological position in a moderate direction" (p. 81). Broken down by party and region, Elling finds that Northern Democrats move in a conservative direction. Republicans become more liberal, and Southern Democrats become more conservative. Each of these shifts can plausibly be explained by senators' desires to move closer to the median ideological position of their
95 constituency. Elling also finds that Senators revert to more ideologically extreme voting once they are reelected. This appears to contradict Fenno's idea of a transition period in which members gradually move away from the perceived constituency opinion.
In an analysis with findings very similar to Elling, Thomas (1984) examined the vote moderation hypothesis with an important alteration. Thomas suggested that Elling and others erred in their analysis of the theory by not excluding members who did not seek reelection from their analyses. Since the theory is based at least in part on electoral motivation, senators lacking such a motivation ought not be included in general tests and can be used as a control group for empirical analysis. If a senator has chosen not to seek reelection, there is no reason to believe that he or she will make adjustments to maximize constituent support. He finds that the behavior of those running for reelection does differ significantly from those who have chosen not to run. Those not running for reelection are much less likely to engage in strategic moderation.
Wright and Berkman (1986) provide further evidence for the vote moderation hypothesis. They find that Senators running for reelection express more moderate issue positions than Senators not facing electoral pressures. In addition, they emphasize that this shift is rather subtle. In no way can it be interpreted as a wholesale shift in ideological position. Similarly, other studies using survey data (Ahuja 1994) and roll call voting data (Amacher and Boyes 1978) find that senators facing reelection are more responsive to
96 constituents than those who are not up for reelection.
In contrast to the literature supporting the vote moderation hypothesis, Bernstein (1988) argues that the whole idea of vote moderation is based on an oversimplified interpretation of spatial theories of voting. According to his argument. Senators will moderate only if they assume that the median voter in their state is (a) more moderate than they are; or (b) likely to be closer to their future opponents' ideological position than their own. Such would never be the case for conservative Democrats expecting to face more conservative Republicans or for liberal Republicans expecting to face even more liberal Democrats. Senators who are already positioned between the median voter and their potential opposition will not moderate because they would lose votes in doing so.
Bernstein's criticism highlights the secondary debate in the moderation literature. This debate centers around what the term moderation means and whether or not it captures the behavior of senators, assuming that voting shifts occur. What does moderation mean? Elling seems to suggest that moderation means movement toward the middle of the ideological spectrum within the Senate itself. Thomas (1985) and Bernstein (1988) suggest that moderation ought to mean a senator adjusts his or her voting record in anticipation of future electoral opposition. This position suggests that an examination at the level of political parties alone is not enough to understand the element of constituency ideology that is vital to the debate. Instead, a proper examination of moderation would need some measure of constituent ideology which would give a
97 rough indication of the position of the median voter. However, there is no measure of constituent ideology available for each of the years in the time period. The best known constituency ideology measure, developed by Erikson, Wright and Mclver (1993), covers only the years from 1976 to 1988. As a result, the party of the senator is left as a rough estimate of constituency ideology.Democrats are likely to face more conservative electoral opposition, while Republicans are likely to face more liberal electoral opposition.
While using party as a surrogate for ideology is less attractive than a state ideology measure, there is some evidence to support its validity. Erikson (1990) demonstrates that ideology of the median state voter is almost always in between the Democratic candidate on the left and the Republican candidate on the right. This means that measuring the direction of ideological shift within the two parties will give us some indication of movement toward (or possibly away from) the preference of the state median voter. Beyond this problem with measuring ideology, the previous analysis suffers from additional shortcomings. First, as Bernstein rightly points out, much of the literature is either a cross- sectional snapshot (Amacher and Boyes 1978, Wright and Berkman 1986, Ahuja 1994) or considers a relatively short time frame
^^The lack of a measure of constituency ideology makes the analysis that follows more difficult. Erikson, Wright, and Mclver (1993) have developed a measure of state ideology using data collected from 1976 to 1988. The historical breadth of the task here makes using their data problematic, as we would not expect state opinion to be static across the entire time period. Unfortunately, there is no available measure of constituency ideology for the duration of this study.
98 (Hibbing 1984) .‘'® As a result, it is difficult to consider change longitudinally. Rather than doing so, the authors tend to rely on comparisons between members up for reelection versus those who are not seeking reelection in a given year. Such an analysis does not really get to the fundamental question of whether or not individual senators are changing their voting patterns, since observed differences may be a result of composition of those groups rather than change over time.
Both Elling (1982) and Thomas (1984) undertake analyses of longer time frames and attempt to measure individual member change, at least in portions of their analysis. However, in each case, one might question their measures of ideology. Elling employs the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) score widely used in congressional research. Although ADA scores have been demonstrated to be relatively valid measures of ideology (Smith, Herrera and Herrera 1990), there are two potential problems with using ADA scores. First, the ADA score for each year is based on a small number of votes ADA deems important. For the years in Filing's study (1959-1978), the number of bills included in calculations of the ADA score ranged from nine to 32. As a result, his analysis is based on a relatively small number of congressional votes, most of which are on highly salient issues. Second, there is the question of comparing scores across different years and sessions of Congress. The configuration of votes in a given
^Hibbing's study is slightly different in that it examines proximity to election and changing legislative behavior in terms of voting for transfer of payments legislation rather than the ideological voting record of the senator.
99 year may influence how liberal or conservative a member is judged on the ADA scale. In other words, changes in the votes making up the rating instrument may be at least partially responsible for movement of members on the ADA scale. This makes using the scores to create a measure of change over time problematic."'®
Thomas' work tries to combat this problem by employing a measure based on Congressional Quarterly's (CQ) conservative coalition voting scores. CQ's scores are superior to ADA scores since CQ includes many more votes in developing the conservative coalition score. However, since regional variation in voting change is integral to his study of moderation, his study seems to be almost tautological. Conservative coalition scores are defined by a voting alliance between Southern Democrats and Republicans against other Democrats. Thomas then uses the differences between Southern Democrats and other Democrats as a basis for much of his evidence of moderation.
As this literature demonstrates, the question of strategic vote moderation remains open. There is some evidence to support it but no conclusive findings.
"'®Groseclose, Levitt, and Snyder (1996) provide a good summary of the difficulties in using raw ADA scores. In addition, they have developed an "inflation index" for these scores which allows for intertemporal comparisons of members.
100 H2d: Northeastern Republicans will show greater evidence of moderation (movement in the liberal direction) than Republicans from areas outside the northeast.
Since Southern Democrats and Northeastern Republicans are likely to find that loyalty to their party necessitates the furthest shift from the median voter in their state, they will be more likely to engage in moderation. In other words, the median constituent is farthest from the party median in the Senate for Southern Democrats and Northeastern Republicans. In a sense, these senators are experiencing the greatest cross-pressure from party and constituency during their term. One way to deal with this is to strategically moderate their voting behavior.
In addition, following the reasoning of the general vote moderation argument, I expect that senators running for reelection would show the tendency to alter voting patterns, while those who had chosen to leave the senate would not alter their voting patterns.
H3: Senators running for reelection will moderate their voting behavior, while senators not running for reelection will show no evidence of moderation.
There is some reason to believe that vote moderation has changed somewhat during the post World War II era. It is possible that at one point the process of vote moderation was easier for senators. Perhaps during historical periods which witnessed less media attention, senators could make
101 modifications in their voting patterns without risking having them publicly exposed. Furthermore, vote moderation may have been more likely during historical periods which witnessed more ideological diversity within the parties. With more diversity of opinion within the parties, it would not seem unusual for a Democrat to engage in relatively conservative voting behavior and a Republican to engage in relatively liberal voting behavior. Thus,
H4: Senators elected prior to 1970 are more likely to show evidence of ideological shifts in voting than those elected in the period from 1970 on.
The obvious question that follows from Hypothesis 4 is why 1968? There are several features of the historical period that make this a logical breaking point. First, by the election of 1970 the Voting Rights Act had been in place for a number of election cycles. This meant that previously disenfranchised blacks had moved into the electorate and were changing the composition of the electorate in the South (Engstrom 1988). Second, the 1960's saw enactment of legislation which had not been witnessed, in terms of its breadth and scope, since the New Deal (Sinclair 1982) . By the end of the decade most of the tough votes, which created cleavages within the political parties, had already been taken. Great Society programs had been enacted. The landmark civil rights votes, which so clearly divided Northern and Southern Democrats (see Carmines and Stimson 1989), had been cast. And by the time the class elected in 1968 had finished their term in 1974, the war in Vietnam was coming to a close.
102 Prior to the 1970's, there was greater ideological diversity in both parties. This created greater conflict between party and constituency influences for some members. Heterogeneous parties likely made it easier for senators to moderate as election approached.
Research Design
The analysis presented is based on the voting behavior of all Senators serving from the 81st Congress (beginning in 1949) through the 99th Congress (beginning in 1985) for whom ideological voting measures were available, Data were collected for 19 classes of senators. For any given Congress, approximately 33 senators were elected. The unit of analysis is a senator in a particular term.
The ideological measure employed is the senator's first dimension D-Nominate score for a particular Congress (Poole and Rosenthal 1985, 1991, 1997) D-nominate scores estimate the metric spatial distance between senators based on all roll call votes in a given Congress except for those with fewer than 2,5% of senators supporting the minority side in the vote. Because D-nominate scores place members relative to
^°There is nothing magical about the years chosen for study. I wanted to cover the post World War II period. The analysis ends in 99th Congress because the last available voting scores were from the 101st Congress, which was the last Congress in which senators elected to the 99th Congress served.
^^The first dimension score represents the ideological content of a senator's voting record, D-nominate scores are available via anonymous FTP at k7moa,gsia.cmu.edu.
103 one another in ideological space in a given Congress with a range from +1 to -1 and 0 as the midpoint, they are in a sense standardized measures. As a result, one can compare scores across different congresses. (For a complete description of D-nominate scores, see Poole and Rosenthal 1985, 1991.)^^
My measures of voting change are derived from the differences in the D-nominate scores of members in a particular two year segment of their term.^^
Four Year Change Score = average D-Nominate score for the first two congresses of the term (years one through four) minus D-nominate score for the third congress in the term (years five and six) .
Middle Congress Change Score = D-Nominate score for the second congress of the term (years three and four) minus D-nominate score for the third congress in the term (years five and six).
^’While the D-Nominate measure is superior to earlier measures of roll call voting ideology, it is not without its own difficulties. In order to identify the algorithm for D- Nominate, Poole and Rosenthal assume some members have constant ideal points. These members are then assigned fixed scores. Because some senators have fixed scores, this makes it harder to find change. This difficulty leads to underestimating the amount of change present across the term for these members.
preferable alternative would be to have D-Nominate scores for individual years within the term. Unfortunately, I am limited to using the scores by Congress.
104 First Congress Change Score = D-Nominate score for the first congress of the term (years one and two) minus D- nominate score for the third congress in the term (years five and six).
For each of these change scores, a negative value indicates increasing conservatism, while a positive value indicates increasing liberalism. The four year change score compares the change in voting patterns from the first four years of the term to the final two years of the term. The middle Congress change score compares the middle two years of the term with the final two years. The first Congress change score compares the first two years with the final two years of the term.
The analysis proceeds in several stages. First, I examine the ideological voting patterns of all senators together. Next, I take up the issue of partisan and regional variation in moderation. I then turn to the question of differences in voting behavior between senators running for reelection and those who have chosen to leave the Senate. Finally, I will consider differences in moderating behavior across the time-series of analysis.
Analysis and Discussion
Over the six year term, D-Nominate scores appear to be very stable. As shown Table 4.1, the bivariate correlations between the nominate scores during the first, second and third Congresses are nearly perfect, with the lowest correlation of .98. In addition, the mean change score measuring change from the first to the third Congresses (first Congress change score), the second to the third Congresses (middle Congress
105 change score), or an average of the first and second Congresses to the third Congress (four year change score), show little evidence of moderation. For all three measures of change, the mean is equal to zero. As aggregate measures, however, these correlations may mask some variation in particular subgroups and because we need to examine senatorial movement relative to some measure of constituency ideology, analyzing these subgroups is important. In this case, I examine cases in terms of party, region, and electoral status.
Bivariate Correlations of D-Nominate Score Second Congress Third Congress (Years 3 & 4) (Years 5 & 6) First Congress .994 .977 (Years 1 & 2) N=613 N=593 Second Congress .987 (Years 3 & 4) N=592 Mean Ideological Change Score Four Year Change .00 Score N=591 Middle Congress .00 Change Score N=592 First Congress .00 Change Score N=593
Table 4.1 Correlation of D-Nominate Scores and Mean Change Scores
Partisan and Regional Variation
The first step is to examine the two political parties separately, considering only those senators seeking reelection. Recall that I expect Democrats to become more
106 conservative in their voting patterns and Republicans to become more liberal in their voting patterns as reelection approaches.
Table 4.2 presents the mean change score comparing the first four years of the term with the final two years of the term (four year change score) and the first two years of the term with the final two years of the term (first Congress change score). For both parties, the sign is in the expected direction. Democrats do move in a conservative direction as election approaches, although for the party as a whole the mean value for each change score is not statistically significant from 0. Republicans, on the other hand, vote more liberally as reelection approaches and the mean value for the change score is highly significant, regardless of the change score used.
We can do a bit better in identifying the likely constituency ideological position if we examine senatorial voting behavior by both party and region. Southern Democrats and Northeastern Republicans are of great interest since these Senators are likely to see the greatest conflict between the median state voter and their party's legislative agenda. In this case, I expect that Southern Democrats and Northeastern Republicans will show greater evidence of moderation than the other members of their respective parties.
107 Mean t-value N
Four Year Change Score
Democrats -.001 -.32 286
Southern Democrats -.011 -2.32+* 83
Other Democrats .003 .70 203
Republicans .020 4.15*** 191
Northeastern Republicans .030 4.13*** 46
Other Republicans .016 2.82*** 145
First Congress Change Score
Democrats -.002 -.56 286
Southern Democrats -.016 -2.87*** 83
Other Democrats . 003 .67 203
Republicans .026 4.72*** 191
Northeastern Republicans .041 4.16*** 46
Other Republicans .022 3.29*** 145
*p < .10 **p < .05 p < .01
Table 4.2 Mean Change Scores for Partisan and Regional Subgroups.
108 Some evidence to support these hypotheses is found in Table 4.2. Southern Democrats become more conservative in their voting behavior as reelection approaches. Their mean first Congress change score of -.016 is statistically significant. As a group, the non-Southern Democrats show no evidence of moderation whatsoever. Not only is the mean change score for this group very small (.003), it fails to reach conventional levels of statistical significance. In addition, the sign for mean score for non-Southern Democrats is in the wrong direction: non-Southern Democrats demonstrate a more liberal voting pattern as reelection approaches.
As these results suggest, there is a statistically significant difference between the mean change score for Southern Democrats and the mean change score for the remaining Democrats (see Table 4.3). It appears from these results that the initial conclusion that Democrats do not strategically change their voting patterns as election approaches needs to be modified. The evidence suggests that most Democrats do not moderate strategically. However, Southern Democrats show some evidence of strategic moderation, although the movement is small — representing only about a one percent shift in the moderation scale.
^“l focus on Southern Democrats versus other Democrats because of the theoretical assertion that Southern Democrats are likely subject to the greatest tension between party and constituency pressures. Additional analysis suggests there is some additional regional variation within the Democratic party. Democrats from the West (the Mountain and Pacific regions) also show statistically significant changes in ideological voting levels. Like Southern Democrats, these senators tend to vote in a more conservative manner as reelection approaches.
109 Turning now to the Republicans, both the Northeastern Republicans and the remaining Republicans behave as our hypotheses expected. Both groups become more liberal as reelection approaches (Table 4.2). Also, the mean change scores for Northeastern Republicans are almost twice as large as those for the remaining Republicans. While Northeastern Republicans change scores represent a two percent shift across the scale, the movement of other Republicans is only about one percent of the scale. As these results suggest, the mean for Northeastern Republicans is significantly different from the mean for the remaining Republicans (Table 4.3) In the case of Republicans, the earlier conclusion that vote moderation occurs is given additional support. As is the case with Democrats, however, the mean change scores are small.
“Additional analysis by region suggests the regions outside the northeast demonstrate similar patterns. The single exception is the south. Southern Republicans appear to become more conservative in their voting patterns as reelection approaches (mean first Congress change score = - .016). This result is a bit misleading, however. Not only is the mean not statistically different from 0, it is driven by just a few cases. More specifically, the increased conservatism in the voting records of Jesse Helms (NC) and Thad Cochran (MS) are largely responsible for the result. In fact, only four of the 13 Southern Republicans moved in a more conservative direction as reelection approached.
110 Mean t- sig. Difference value level Southern Democrats vs. Other Democrats |N=83) (N=203) Four Year Change Score -.014 -1.91 .058 First Congress Change Score -.019 -2.24 .026 Northeastern Republicans vs. Other Republicans (N=46) (N=145) Four Year Change Score .014 1.26 .207 First Congress Change Score .019 1.44 .153
Table 4.3. Difference of Means Tests Within the Parties One potential problem with the analysis above is that it relies on the mean as the aggregate measure of change. Since the mean may be unduly influenced by outlying cases, additional analysis is warranted. One way to verify that the results obtained are not unduly influenced by outlying cases is to examine the proportion of cases which fall in the predicted direction. Tables 4.4 and 4.5 show the first Congress change score by party and region. As Table 4.4 demonstrates, 64 percent of Democrats became more conservative in their voting as reelection neared and 58 percent of Republicans became more liberal in their voting as reelection neared. For both parties then, a majority of senators behave as our hypotheses predict.
Looking at regional variation, the previous findings are reinforced. While close to 70 percent of Southern Democrats become more conservative in their voting, only around 60% of the remaining Democrats do so. On the Republican side, nearly 72 percent of Northeastern senators become more liberal in their voting, while 53 percent of the remaining Republicans do so.
It is possible that Table 4.4 overstates the case for strategic moderation. If the change score is nearly zero, then members are still classified as correctly predicted or incorrectly predicted. Table 4.5 presents the first Congress change score by party and region. However, this time a category for little or no change is included. Members who had a change score between -.01 and .01 were classified as demonstrating little or no change. About 26 percent of Democrats and 30 percent of Republicans demonstrate little or no ideological change. Of those senators who do show some
112 ideological shifting, approximately one-half of the senators from both parties behave as our hypotheses suggest. Or, put another way, 66% of Democrats and 72% of Republicans who show evidence of changes in ideological voting patterns do so in the predicted direction. Once senators who do not change their ideological voting patterns are considered in a separate category, the differences between Southern Democrats and the remaining Democrats becomes even more striking. While only 44 percent of non-Southern Democrats behave as I expect, close to 63 percent of Southern Democrats fulfill our expectations. In addition, 59 percent of Northeastern Republicans meet our expectations, while only 47 percent of Republicans from other regions do so.
Another way to check for the influence of outlying cases is to perform analysis using the median rather than the mean for the measure of change. A difference of medians test, not shown here, reinforces the findings discussed previously.
113 All Regions Democrats Republicans
Dem. Rep. South Other Northeast Other
Conservative 63.6 42.2 69.9 61.1 28.3 46.6 Change
Liberal 36.4 57.8 30.1 38.9 71.7 53.4 Change
N 286 192 83 203 46 146
Chi-Square 21.36*** 1.97 4.81**
* p < .10 ** p < .05 *** p < .01
Table 4.4 Classifying the Direction of Moderating Behavior. All Regions Democrats Republicans
Democrats Republicans South Other Northeast Other
Cons. 49.7 19.8 62.7 44.3 15.2 21.2 Change
Little or 25.5 30.2 20.5 27.6 26.1 31.5 No Change
Liberal 24.8 50.0 16.9 28.1 58.7 47.3 un Change
N 286 192 83 203 46 146
Chi- 48 .96*** 8.13** 1 .89 Square
*p < .10 ** p < .05 *** p < .00
Table 4.5 Classifying the Direction of Significant Moderating Behavior. Electoral Variation
The vote moderation hypothesis suggests that those running for reelection are likely to change their ideological voting pattern as election nears. Because this movement is motivated by electoral forces, one would not expect those who have decided not to seek reelection to change their voting behavior as their term comes to an end. To test this proposition, I compare the voting patterns of those running for reelection with those who have chosen not to seek reelection. Again, since I expect partisan and regional variation in the direction and magnitude of moderation, the analysis considers senators within partisan and regional groupings.
The results of difference of means tests for change from the first to third Congress of the term and change from the average of the first two Congresses to the third Congress of the term are presented in Tables 4.6 and 4.7. Contrary to Thomas's findings, there appears to be no difference between those Democrats who were running for reelection and those who had chosen to leave the Senate in terms of changes in ideological voting. In fact, in all three comparison groups, all Democrats, Southern Democrats, and non-Southern Democrats, the mean change score for Democrats leaving the Senate was slightly smaller than the mean change score for those running for reelection. This indicates that those running for reelection were becoming even more conservative than those running for reelection as the end of the term approached. These differences are not statistically significant, however. Why no difference between Democrats based on electoral status? One possible explanation is the timing of the retirement
116 decision. Senators who decide later in the term that they will not seek reelection are likely to behave as if they will seek reelection up until the retirement decision is made, thereby leaving the option of pursuing reelection open. As a result, they may moderate in anticipation of running. Or perhaps, senators who feel the need to moderate sense their own political vulnerability. When appeals to the median voter prove to be unsuccessful in combating this vulnerability, they may voluntarily leave office rather than expose themselves to possible defeat.
A different pattern emerges for the Republicans, however. The mean change score for those running for reelection shows movement in a more liberal direction in all three comparison groups. Those who are not running for reelection show movement in a conservative direction as the term ends. The difference of means for all comparison groups are statistically significant and, in some cases, these differences are quite large. For example. Northeastern Republicans who ran for reelection have a mean first Congress change score of .04 (representing a two percent change across the scale), while those who decided to forgo the reelection race have a mean change score of -.07 (representing approximately a three percent change across the scale).
117 i
\A
f. All Republicans Northeastern Other Republicans Republicans
Ran Did Not Ran Did Not Ran Did Not Run Run Run
Four Year .02 -.02 .03 -.06 .02 -.01 Change Score t-value -3.39*** -2.18* -1.77*
First .03 -.02 .04 -.07 .02 -.01 Congress Change Score t-value — 3.4 6* * * -2.59** -1.83*
N 192 59 48 11 147 49
*p < .10 **p < .05 ***p < .01
Table 4.7 Mean Change Scores by Electoral Status for Republicans. It appears, then, that the expected difference between those running for reelection and those voluntarily leaving office is evident for Republicans and not for Democrats. In fact, the findings for Republicans go beyond the traditional vote moderation argument. Retiring Republicans, freed from constraints of potential constituent sanction, not only did not move toward the median district voter, they moved away from them.®®
Historical Variation
There are at least two ways to compare senators elected in 1968 or earlier with those elected in 1970 or later. One way is to isolate the two groups, analyze each, and compare the results. Another way is to use historical period as an independent variable in the analysis. I incorporate both approaches in the analysis that follows.
Looking first at the results for the pre-1969 period (senators elected in 1968 or earlier), all of the partisan and regional subgroups behave as expected. As shown in Table 4.8, Democrats, from the South as well as other regions, become more conservative as reelection approaches. In contrast. Republicans, from the Northeast as well as other regions, become more liberal as reelection approaches. The mean change scores for both parties and all groups are statistically significant from zero. All of the values are relatively small, however. The largest mean change is for Northeastern
®®An analysis of predicted values, not shown here, bears out these findings.
120 Republicans, who become four points more liberal (only a two percent shift on the scale) . As expected. Southern Democrats and Northeastern Republicans engage in more movement across their terms than the other members of their respective parties.
There is a striking contrast when turning to the post- 1969 era (senators elected in 1970 or later). Members of both parties in all regions become more liberal as reelection approaches. For Democrats, this is the opposite of the effect expected under the vote moderation hypothesis. As with the pre-1969 era, values are relatively small. In fact, the mean change score for Southern Democrats, Non-Northeastern Republicans, and Republicans as a whole are not statistically different from zero.
121 elected 1968 or earlier elected 1970 or later Mean t-value* Mean t-value Democrats -.02 -6.05*** .02 2.50** (N=175) (N=110) Southern Democrats -.03 -6.74*** .02 1.63 (N=60) (N=23) Other Democrats -.01 -2.98*** .02 2.08** (N=116) (N=87) Republicans .03 6.06*** .02 1.59 (N=113) (N=79) Northeastern .04 3.18*** .05 2.63** Republicans (N=31) (N=15) Other Republicans .03 5.17*** .01 .85 (N=82) (N=64) ""Testing whether mean is different from 0. Note: Similar results found using four year change score. *p < .10 N) **p < .05 * * * p < .01
TABLE 4.8 Mean First Congress Change Scores for Senators Elected Before and After 1969. A difference of means test comparing the change scores of Democrats in the pre-1969 era with the post-1969 era provides further evidence that Democrats have behaved differently in the post-1969 era (Table 4.9). While there are differences the historical periods, Southern Democrats now behave like Democrats from other regions. They become more liberal as reelection approaches. The pattern for Republicans is consistent across historical periods. An examination of the correctly predicted cases, shown in Table 4.11, is consistent with these findings. Change in the electoral base of Southern Democrats and the homogenization of the party, coincide with a change in moderating behavior for these senators.
123 All Democrats Southern Democrats Other Democrats 1968 or 1970 or 1968 or 1970 or 1968 or 1970 or earlier later earlier later earlier later Four Year -.01 .02 -.02 .02 -.01 .02 Change score t-value 3.95*** -3.45*** -2.68*** First -.01 .02 -.03 .02 -.01 .02 Congress Change score t-value 3.08*** -3.69*** -2.91*** N 110 176 60 23 116 87 M *p < .10 **p < .05 ***p < .01
Table 4.9 Mean Change Scores By Historical Period for Democrats. All Republicans Northeastern Other Republicans Republicans 1968 or 1970 or 1968 or 1970 or 1968 or 1970 or earlier later earlier later earlier later Four Year .02 .01 .03 .03 .02 .01 Change Score t-value -1.08 -.36 1.20 First .03 .02 .04 .05 .03 .01 Congress ro Change Score en t-value -1.17 -.39 1.32 N 79 113 31 15 82 64 *p < .10 **p < .05 ***p < .01
Table 4.10 Mean Change Scores by Historical Period for Republicans. Pre-1969 Post-1969 Democrats Republicans Democrats Republicans Cons. 57.4 9.7 37.3 34.2 Change Little or 25.0 34.5 26.4 24.1 No Change Liberal 17.6 55.8 36.4 41.8 Change N 176 113 110 79 Chi- 73.26*** .57 Square *p < .10 ** p < .05 *** p < .01
Table 4.11 First Congress change score by Party, Region, and Historical Period, Conclusion
Do senators strategically moderate their voting behavior as reelection approaches? The analysis presented here suggests that some do to a very limited degree. Southern Democrats and Republicans, from both the Northeast and other regions, show some evidence of moderation as election approaches. This shift toward the median voter in their district is minimal at best, representing less than a five percent movement on the scale for all groups examined. Moderation is most evident when comparing the first two years of the term with the final two years of the term, contrary to Fenno's hypothesis that members would remain close to their constituents in the very early portion of their term.
The influence of electoral status, on the other hand, shows mixed results. Republican senators running for reelection do demonstrate different behavior than those who have chosen to leave the Senate. Those running for reelection become more liberal as election approaches, while those who have chosen to retire become more conservative as reelection approaches. This suggests that even the voting latitude gained in the early years of a Senate term is limited. Republican members freed from the bonds of electoral concern not only fail to shift toward the median voter, they move even further away from it.
On the other hand, the choice to seek reelection or retire appears to have no influence on the choice to engage in moderating behavior for Democrats. This is a real problem for the theoretical underpinnings of the moderation hypothesis. If moderating behavior is driven by an electoral motivation,
127 then there should be clear differentiation between retirees and those running for reelection. In the case of Democrats, the lack of findings regarding electoral status may be less related to the electoral status variable than the overall limited evidence of moderation. If Democrats, as a group, are not strategically moderating, as much of the evidence presented suggests, then we would not expect to find significant differences between Democrats who are seeking reelection and those who are retiring.
Finally, there is the issue of historical variation in moderating behavior. Limited evidence suggests that the vote moderation hypothesis better fits the period before 1970 than the period following that year. This is especially true for the Democratic party. Those Democrats elected through 1968 behave as we would expect, becoming more conservative as reelection approaches. Those elected in 1970 or later, however, become more liberal as reelection approaches in direct contradiction to the vote moderation hypothesis. Republicans show less historical variation. In fact. Northeastern Republicans appear to moderate even more in the later portion of the sample.
In conclusion, this chapter suggests that there is very limited variation in a senator's voting behavior across the six year term. Taken with the analysis of change presented in other chapters, this suggests that the variation in senatorial electoral, committee, and legislative activity behavior across the career is much greater than changes in roll call voting behavior across a single six year term.
128 CHAPTER 5
THE BUSINESS OF PASSING LAWS:
THE LEGISLATIVE FORMULATION STAGE
Introduction
The governing period of any senator's career is defined largely by the amount and type of legislative activity he or she undertakes and the degree to which the senator is successful in pursuing this legislative activity. In this chapter, I examine how a senator's level of legislative activity changes throughout the typical Senate career. Specifically, I address whether senators become more active legislatively as their seniority increases. In addition, I consider whether or not extended service enhances a senator's ability to shepherd bills through the legislative process.
Legislative activity may be motivated by many rather diverse goals of a senator. Fenno (1973, 1986) has argued that senators are subject to four predominant goals: reelection, good public policy, influence in Washington, and presidential aspirations. Legislative activity may serve all of these goals.
Mayhew (1974) argues that representatives undertake three types of activity in order to enhance their electoral
129 prospects: advertising, credit claiming, and position taking. This conception of reelection motivated activity can be applied to the Senate as well. Bill and amendment sponsorship can be included in all three types of reelection activity. Dropping a bill into the hopper is often accompanied by a press release explaining the benefits to be accrued by passage of the legislation. The senator, or at least the senator's press aide, anticipates that some media outlet at home or in Washington will publicize the activity. This publicity provides one vehicle for advertising. In addition, bill and amendment sponsorship allow senators to claim credit for legislative achievement, or at least legislative effort, in pursuit of constituent or national interests. Finally, bill and amendment sponsorship provide clear and concrete means for position-taking on issues. It may not matter very much whether or not these bills are actually passed. Legislators may be rewarded for proposing legislation, even if it has little chance of becoming law (Fiorina 1989).
Legislative activity is also motivated by concerns about public policy. At base, most legislation provides some policy prescription for a perceived problem, and many senators have clear policy goals they are pursuing through legislative activity. While Fiorina (1989) has argued that Congress may manufacture problems it can subsequently fix and take credit for, the intent of much legislation is to solve the problem at hand (for which a member may also take credit) . The strength of the policy motivation may be undermined somewhat by the unusual circumstance that legislators may be punished by
^^See Boucher (1995) for an examination of the factors which influence bill sponsorship as a position-taking, versus a credit claiming, exercise. 130 constituents for taking the "wrong" position, but not necessarily held accountable if their policy alternative does not achieve the intended outcome (Arnold 1990, Fiorina 1989) . While this potential punishment may make senators more cautious in their sponsorship activity, it does not invariably override the policy motivation.
In addition, legislative activity may be designed to enhance one's power within the Senate or one's fortunes in the presidential election sweepstakes. In particular, senators may offer legislation to garner support from colleagues in the Senate or potential primary supporters.
Legislative activity may be motivated by many factors. It may also be influenced by several factors. In this chapter, I address two of the factors that bear directly on senators' level of legislative activity and the degree to which they are effective in their legislative endeavors, tenure and majority party status. Before closely examining these two variables, it is appropriate to consider previous studies of activity and effectiveness in the Senate.
Legislative Activity and Success in the Senate: Previous Literature
Two aspects of the Senate literature bear directly on the examination of the legislative activity component of the Senate career. First, there is the issue of norms of behavior in the Senate. Although largely ignored today, norms once played a significant part in prescribing the level of activity undertaken by senators. Second, there is the question of
131 legislative success. Does seniority lead to higher levels of success in the legislative arena?
Determinants of Legislative Activity
Various factors may influence the degree to which senators actively participate in legislating through bill and amendment sponsorship.^® Our concern in this chapter is how legislative activity and success are related to tenure in office. Pivotal to this examination is the concept of legislative norms of behavior, which at one time greatly influenced the level of activity, as well as the degree of success, a senator might experience.
In his classic work on the Senate of the 1950's, Matthews (1960) identified six norms or folkways that members were expected to follow, and sought to measure the legislative effectiveness of norm conformists versus nonconformists. The folkways Matthews discovered were apprenticeship, the initial learning period new members were expected to undertake during which they would listen, show deference to their elders, and be seen working, not engaging in speechmaking or amending activity; legislative work, the expectation that all members would make legislative work their top priority and dig deeply into the details of the formulation and implementation of legislation rather than seek publicity; specialization, the
®®In this chapter, I consider the bivariate relationships between legislative activity and tenure as well as legislative effectiveness and tenure. Literature which examines additional factors which may influence the legislative activity or success of a senator will be treated in Chapter 6 as part of the multivariate model. 132 expectation that members focus on a few issues under the jurisdiction of the committees to which they were assigned or that directly affected their state and participate only on the matters on which they had expertise; courtesy, expectation that members separate political disagreements from personal feelings and to go out of their way to be polite to and praise other members whenever possible; reciprocity, the idea that Senators should help one another whenever possible by trading votes (implicitly or explicitly) and by refraining from exercising the vast privileges they retained that could obstruct other members' initiatives; institutional patriotism, the expectation that members revere the Senate as the world's greatest deliberative body, defend its reputation as such, and maintain a skepticism of the presidency, the House and the bureaucracy.
According to Matthews, these norms served several purposes. They motivated members to perform their legislative duties. They discouraged longwindedness and playing to the galleries, which was especially important for a body that allows virtually unlimited debate.^" They encouraged the development of expertise and the division of labor necessary to formulate and implement increasingly complicated and diverse legislation. They encouraged compromise and bargaining which allowed for action in the face of each member's great power to disrupt the process. Finally, they softened personal conflict that could easily arise out of
^^With the rise in the use of holds and filibusters, one might take issue with Matthews characterization of an institution which allows virtually unlimited debate. For a discussion of the historical changes in filibustering, see Binder and Smith (1997).
133 contentious debate. In addition, the norms reinforced and maintained the dominance of the institution by conservative, southern members (Matthews 1973, White 1956). While seniority was not itself considered a norm, but rather a practice, it was reinforced by the norms and contributed to the conservative nature of the institution.
The most substantial debate following Matthews’ article was the extent to which his findings held up in the Senate of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. For much of the 1960s, Matthews' work was taken as the definitive statement on the subject. Over time, however, the Senate changed. It became a more individualistic body in which the distribution of power was based on personal skill and institutional position. Changes in the rules and operations were made to make life more satisfying for individual members (Ripley 1969, Polsby, 1989).
One theme of much of the literature is the influence on the institution of the influx of liberal members in the late 1950s and 1960s. Foley (1980) argued that while Matthews' account is basically correct for its time, the large, predominantly liberal, freshman class of 1958 placed enough pressure on the institution to cause a modification of the folkways. Foley also argued that while liberals experienced initial hostility to the norms, after a period of norm modification and liberal acclimation to the institution, they gained new appreciation for some of the norms and supported their maintenance. Foley argued that freshman did not suffer limitations on the pursuit of their legislative interests because the period of apprenticeship was dropped as senior
®°This characterization was shared by some Senators as well (Clark, 1963).
134 members recognized that enforcing it would bring about demands for reform. In addition, Foley pointed out that while liberals were previously not known for abiding by the reciprocity norm, as the class of ' 58 gained seniority and power in the institution, they began to recognize its usefulness. In other words, when they had the opportunity to bargain from a position of strength or equality, they began to believe in the bargaining process. Foley concluded that Matthews was correct in emphasizing the durability of norms because their general form was still evident in the 1970s. They were maintained in modified form, however, and based primarily on mutual consent and perceived self-interest.
Rohde, Ornstein, and Peabody (1985) sought to update Matthews' analysis by taking into account the 1960s. Many of their conclusions were similar to those of Foley. They did, however, develop a distinction between two types of norms that helps to explain why some changed and others remained fairly stable. The authors distinguished between "general benefit norms, " those norms which accrue benefits for most members, and "limited benefit norms, " which provide benefits for a smaller subset of members (in this case the conservative Senate establishment). Legislative work, courtesy, reciprocity and institutional patriotism were classified as general benefit norms, and apprenticeship and specialization were classified as limited benefit norms. The authors expected general benefit norms to remain fairly stable unless the benefit structure was somehow altered. Without change in the structure of benefits, members had an incentive to maintain and abide by the norms.
135 In addition, Rohde, Ornstein, and Peabody delineated the circumstances under which the limited benefit norms would change. The primary condition for change was a shift in the distribution of power between those who benefit from the norm and those who do not. As was the case after the elections of the late fifties and early sixties, those who did not benefit increased in power as those who benefited declined in power. The incentive to change the norms was accompanied by the ability to do so. The authors found that apprenticeship vanished completely from the expectations of an overwhelming majority of members and that specialization had been modified in such a way as to make it a general benefit norm (demand for expertise in policy areas on which a member is active and the recognition by members that they should participate only when they know what they are talking about— no longer tied explicitly to committee assignments). In 1985, they updated their work and suggested that even the limited benefit norms were now under increasing strain (providing only anecdotal evidence, however) . They also suggested that part of the reason for the change was the diminished ability to punish members for nonconformity.
The theme of norm maintenance in light of member benefits comes to the fore most prominently in the work of Barbara Sinclair. Sinclair (1986, 1988, 1989a) examined the changes that took place in the Senate from 1955 through 1980, and in doing so measured and traced the maintenance of norms. She found that many of the norms disappeared, especially apprenticeship and specialization, and others have declined, most prominently reciprocity. Sinclair argued that their demise was due to the influx of new members in the late fifties and early sixties and members' adaptation to the 136 changing Washington policy community of the late sixties and early seventies. Sinclair's contributions were the thoroughness of her measures and her explanation of the changing environment in which the Senate operated. She documented the changes in amending activity and floor activism to measure apprenticeship and specialization. In addition, the increase in obstructionist activity (filibustering, excessive amending, rise in the number of contested bills) is documented to measure the decline in reciprocity (see also Binder and Smith 1997) . She explored the changes in the Washington policy community which gave members incentives to seek multiple, external constituencies and become more activist.
Sinclair also contributed by systematically examining norms in the Senate from the rational choice perspective (1989b). Rational choice literature on the subject of norms had examined the mechanisms that serve to support norms (Axelrod, 1986). In fact, one prominent rational choice theorist called the development of Senate norms, especially reciprocity, "a typical case of the emergence of cooperation" (Axelrod 1984). Sinclair adapted the basic Prisoner's dilemma model to the case of Senate norms in order to explain their change as well as some rules changes in the body. The fundamental question is of the compatibility between institution-regarding behavior (norm adherence) and individual members goals. If the former conflict with the latter, the former will not be sustained for long. Sinclair explained the change in the Senate as a function of norms becoming a barrier to the ability of individual members to capitalize on the possibilities presented by the developing Washington policy community. Consequently, senators altered both the formal and 137 informal institutional arrangements to better serve their individual goals. Sinclair discovered that the decline in apprenticeship, reciprocity (in terms of not being obstructionist), and specialization could be explained in these terms. Sinclair argued that those norms that remained, courtesy and reciprocity (in terms of bargaining and compromise), did so because they had both institutional and personal benefits for members. Sinclair concluded that the institution is better suited now for interest articulation, agenda setting and policy promotion, but is less efficient at decisionmaking.
My interviews with former senators reinforced these findings,^ especially those regarding apprenticeship and specialization. With a single exception, those interviewed suggested that the norms of apprenticeship and specialization did not constrain their behavior. In addition, a few senators seemed surprised that there might be any expectation that they engage in a period of low activity early in their career. Other senators, while acknowledging the practice, concluded it no was no longer applicable or had been overstated even during the 1950s.
Although the discussion to this point has considered all six of the norms delineated by Matthews, two of the norms play an especially important role in legislative activity. First and foremost is apprenticeship, which suggests that junior members will engage in less legislative activity than more senior members. Less apparent is the relationship between the
"interviews conducted by former Senator Fred Harris reached similar conclusions. See Harris (1993), especially Chapter 4.
138 reciprocity norm and legislative activity. The reciprocity norm has two distinct components. The first involves senators' willingness to help one another by implicitly or explicitly trading votes. The second component deals with a senators willingness to refrain from exercising their privileges to obstruct other senators' initiatives. It is this second component that bears most directly on the issue of legislative activity. Matthews' reference to obstruction deals most specifically with a senator's power to filibuster legislation on the Senate floor. While at the time of Matthews' writing this reference applied to the standard filibuster, which required a member or group of members to hold the floor continually and in essence talk a bill to death, the current Senate is more likely to experience threats of filibusters, holds, or delaying tactics that result from offering numerous amendments to a piece of legislation (Binder and Smith 1997) . Reciprocity, in terms of reluctant use of obstructionist tactics, discouraged the use of amendment offering as a tool of obstruction rather than as a tool of policy change. As a result, we would expect that members who conformed to the reciprocity norm would offer fewer amendments than those who did not.
There is some evidence to suggest that seniority influences the level of legislative activity even in the Senate of the 1980s and 1990s when apprenticeship has been declared dead. In her study of bill sponsorship activity, Schiller (1995) found that senior senators were likely to sponsor more bills than their junior colleagues. In addition, Schiller found that the link between sponsorship and seniority was stronger when considering bills referred to committees on which the senator had a seat. Not only do senior senators 139 sponsor more bills, but also their rate of sponsorship of bills referred to their own committees is higher. This is somewhat surprising considering the academic consensus that apprenticeship and strict specialization no longer guide senatorial behavior. Examination of the House of Representatives also show a clear relationship between seniority and legislative activity (Frantzich 1979, Hibbing 1991).
While the norm adherence literature and recent interviews suggest a more open, individualistic Senate where restraints on member behavior are few, some recent work shows a somewhat more structured Senate. As a result, I expect that tenure continue to have some effect on legislative activity, although perhaps not as strong an effect as in the 1950s.
140 Legislative Effectiveness^^
Norm adherence may not only affect the level of legislative activity, it may also influence the level of success enjoyed by a senator. Matthews (1959) found that those senators who conformed to the norms were more effective in enacting legislation. This led Matthews to conclude that, "conformity to the Senate follcways does, therefore, seem to 'pay o f f in concrete legislative results" (p. 1086) . This finding was supported by previous work, which described the Senate as an institution governed by an "inner club" composed of senior members (White 1956). According to White, membership in the inner club was determined in large part by a member's adherence to the folkways of the institution (although White did not define those folkways as explicitly as did Matthews) . If a member did not belong to the inner club, he would have a much more difficult time succeeding in the Senate." This inner club was largely composed of senior senators.
"Hibbing (1991) argues with the use of the term "legislative effectiveness," since it implies a normative evaluation. I use this term not to connote any normative evaluation of senators, but because the phrasing allows for a more intuitive understanding of the measure.
®^Huitt (1969a, 1969b) takes issue with Matthews portrait of an outsider as unable to be effective (1969a, 1969b) . Examining the career of Senator Proxmire, Huitt argued that the position of nonconformist was accepted as legitimate and tolerated by the membership of the Senate. Huitt argued that this tolerance undermined Matthews' conclusion that there was a general consensus on the role of a Senator within the body. As Matthews (1961) pointed out, Huitt provided nothing but anecdotal evidence to support his claim and Matthews' interviews provided evidence to the contrary.
141 other studies also provide evidence of a relationship between tenure and legislative effectiveness in the Senate of the 1980s and 1990s, after the demise of the inner club. Moore and Thomas (1991) find that more senior senators of the majority party are likely to have more success than their junior colleagues in getting legislation reported from committee. Boucher (1995) provides evidence that the seniority of a bill's sponsor has a significant influence on whether any legislative action is taken on that legislation. Frantzich (1979) and Hibbing (1991) demonstrate the benefits of seniority for legislative effectiveness in the House of Representatives. In addition, Hibbing and Thomas (1990) show a connection between seniority and respect within the Senate. Enhanced respect may lead to more successful legislative activity.
The Legislative Formulation Career: Expectations
If the apprenticeship norm has ceased to govern senatorial behavior, tenure should have no influence on the level of legislative activity. However, as Schiller (1995) demonstrates for the Senate and Hibbing (1991) demonstrates for the House of Representatives, there is some evidence that junior members are less legislatively active than senior members. While apprenticeship may no longer govern as a norm of behavior (meaning violators will be penalized), in practice senior members may have acquired skills that make legislative activity easier. Thus, I expect that tenure will be positively associated with legislative activity.
This may not be true for all kinds of legislative
142 activity, however. For example, although senior senators, who control the legislative process through formal positions in the Senate, may be expected to be more active in bill sponsorship, we would not necessarily expect these senior senators to be more active in amending legislation on the floor. If these senior senators control the committee process, then they are likely more satisfied with the outcomes of the committee process. This satisfaction may discourage them from offering a large number of amendments. As a result, we would not expect them to have much incentive to amend legislation as actively as their counterparts without the same formal position advantages. This suggests two hypotheses :
HI: Senior senators will be more active in sponsoring legislation than junior senators.
H2: Junior senators will be more active in offering floor amendments than senior senators.
We are interested in more than activism, however. Activism without resultant movement of legislation through the process might be characterized as sound and fury signifying little policy effect. While there may be benefits accrued to the senator for the sound and fury, as previously discussed,
^"The exception to this reasoning is the role of the bill floor manager in countering unfriendly amendments with substitute or second degree amendments designed to protect the committee position.
143 there is some expectation that senators also desire real policy development. As such, it is appropriate to consider the degree to which variation in legislative effectiveness may be related to tenure in office. As senators become more at home in the Senate and learn its rules and procedures, they may become more successful in moving their legislation through the legislative process. In addition, as members become more senior, they acquire committee positions which also may make them more successful in the legislative arena. As a result, I expect :
H3: Senior senators will be more effective in passing legislation than junior senators.
One important consideration in examining both of the hypotheses outlined above is the status of the senator as a member of either the majority or minority party in the Senate. We might expect that since the majority party controls the machinery of the Senate, committee and floor scheduling most importantly, majority party members will be more active and more successful in bill and resolution sponsorship than their counterparts in the minority party.
While we may expect members of the majority party to sponsor more bills than their counterparts in the minority party, this same expectation may not be true of amendment sponsorship. Members of the minority party may offer more amendments on the floor since they are disadvantaged in terms of committee decision-making and floor scheduling. As a result, they may view the amendment process as the most
144 effective way to have their voices heard. These majority- minority party differences suggest three additional hypotheses:
H4: Members of the minority party will be less active in bill and resolution sponsorship than members of the majority party.
H5: Members of the minority party will be more active in amendment sponsorship than members of the majority party.
H6: Members of the minority party will be less successful in moving their bills and resolutions through the legislative process than members of the majority party.
Legislative Activity and Effectiveness
In order to examine the relationship between tenure and legislative activity and effectiveness, I gathered information on senators serving from the 93rd Congress (1973-1974) through the 101st Congress (1989-1990). For these nine Congresses, I collected information on the number of bills, resolutions, and amendments sponsored from the Library of Congress Information System.*^ In addition, I collected information on the number
®^The data were collected from the Library of Congress Information System (LOCIS), which is accessible via telnet (locis.loc.gov). Amendment sponsorship information was not available for the 93rd and 94 th Congresses. One common measure of legislative activity is the number of speeches made by a senator (see Lehnen 1967, Hibbing 1991) . Due to data 145 of bills and resolutions sponsored by a senator that were reported from committee, passed in the Senate, or became law from the LEGISLATE for the 96th through 101st Congresses.®® In past chapters, I have examined change in the career stage across the post World War II era. The time consuming nature of the legislative formulation data limits me to examining only the later historical period in this chapter. In future work, I plan to include some historical comparison.
To this point, we have discussed legislative activity and legislative effectiveness in the abstract. Measuring these two concepts in a way that accurately reflects their purpose is quite challenging. Several considerations should be addressed. First, since I have different expectations about the relationship between amendment and bill sponsorship I cannot rely on a legislative activity scale the way some previous literature has (Hibbing 1991) . ®^ Since my hypotheses for the relationship between bill sponsorship and tenure and amendment sponsorship and tenure are opposite, it is possible collection restraints, I was unable to obtain speech giving information for each senator. I plan to include that information in future work.
®®LEGI-SLATE is a private company providing online governmental information to subscribers. The service begins with the 96th Congress. As a result, success data are available only for the 96th through 101st Congresses.
^Hibbing (1991) uses an activity scale in his analysis of the House of Representatives, combining bill and amendment sponsorship with speechmaking activity. This is not appropriate for the Senate, however. Representatives are much more constrained than senators in their ability to offer amendments on the floor, since many amendments must be included in the rule created under which legislation is considered.
146 that considering activity and effectiveness indices will mask some variation across the different measures. As a result, I will consider the individual measures in this chapter.
A second issue is whether legislative effectiveness should be considered in terms of the number of bills which successfully pass through one or more stages of the legislative process or as a proportion of bills passed through a particular stage relative to the total number introduced. In essence, the question is one of a raw count versus what Matthews (I960) refers to as a "batting average." The literature has largely followed Matthews' lead, using the proportional measure (Frantzich 1979, Hibbing 1991, Box- Steffensmeier and Sinclair 1996) However, the batting average may not accurately reflect the way senators or their constituents think about legislative effectiveness. Using the batting average assumes that senators or their constituents believe that in measuring effectiveness the overall number of bills (the denominator) is as important as the number of bills that actually move through various stages of the legislative process (the numerator) . This is not intuitively appealing because constituents are unlikely to have information about the number of bills and resolutions sponsored by a senator. In addition, since senators may offer bills or resolutions for symbolic purposes or as a means of position-taking with little expectation that scarce time or resources will be spent pursuing this kind of legislation, it is hard to imagine that senators themselves are concerned with the overall number of
®®One exception is Frantzich (1979) who uses the raw number of bills which passed the House or became law. For a discussion of various legislative activity and effectiveness measures, see Thomas (1991) or Olson and Nonidez (1972) .
147 bills they sponsor. However, since the batting average is often used in the literature, it is worth using for comparative purposes. Thus, my analysis will examine legislative effectiveness using both the batting average measure and the count of legislation emerging from the three stages of the legislative process outlined above.
The final measurement issue to consider is the effect historical variations in the number of bills sponsored may have on the results. The amount of legislation introduced in the Senate has varied over time. The number of bills and joint resolutions introduced in the Senate declined from 4,524 in the 93rd Congress to 3,325 in the 100th Congress, although it rebounded to 3,669 in the 101st Congress (Davidson and Oleszek 1996: 237). This variation in the amount of legislation introduced in the Senate may bias our findings. If the overall number of bills is declining over time, as it appears, then differences between junior and senior members in sponsorship levels may be masked by this general trend. Senior members may be offering fewer bills than they once did as a result of the overall trends in bill sponsorship, not because seniority is no longer important. In order to control for the difference in the amount of legislation introduced in a particular Congress, I will examine standardized measures of legislative activity and effectiveness. The raw activity and effectiveness scores have been converted into standard scores (Z-scores) . As a result, individual scores measure a senator's activity and effectiveness in standard deviation units. Consequently, the measures discussed in this chapter examine relative levels of activity and effectiveness rather
148 than raw levels of activity or effectiveness (Hibbing 1991). For a more detailed discussion of standard scores, see ^pen d i x A.
Tenure and Legislative Activity
Bill and Resolution Sponsorship
The relationship between tenure in office and bill sponsorship for majority party members is parabolic in shape, as shown in Figure 5.1, where the standardized value of the mean number of bills sponsored is plotted by term in office. There is a clear increase in the rate of bill sponsorship as tenure increases, which lasts through the fourth term in office. By the fifth term, the rate of bill and resolution sponsorship begins to decline. This decline continues through the seventh term. By the seventh term, senators of the majority party sponsor bills and resolutions at roughly the same rate as senators in their first term, although the small number of seventh term senators makes comparisons tentative. The pattern for the minority party shows much less variation across the time in office. While minority party senators show a gradual increase in bill sponsorship through the fourth term, the rate of growth does not rise as rapidly as for members of the majority party. Like their majority party counterparts, the senior members of the minority party serving in their fifth and sixth term offer fewer bills and resolutions when compared to their high activity fourth term. In fact, minority party senators in their sixth term offer fewer bills than their party's freshman. Minority party members in their seventh term rebound somewhat in their
149 1.0
w 0.0 ICO m I
Minority
- 1.0 Majority 1 term 2 terms 3 terms 4 terms 5 terms 6 terms 7 terms
Tenure
Figure 5.1 Bills Sponsored By Tenure, Standardized Measure.
legislative activity, although the low number of cases in seventh term makes generalizations difficult.®®
The differences between majority and minority party senators are likely the result of somewhat different incentives. Since the majority party controls the machinery of the institution, committee and floor scheduling, majority party members have more reason to believe that they may
69®Number. of cases for sponsorship by tenure. 1 term: majority N=218, minority N=126; 2 terms: majority N=101, minority N=145; 3 terms : majority N=106, minority N=49; 4 terms : majority N=46, minority N=40; 5 terms: majority N=25, minority N=13; 6 terms: majority N=19, minority N=9; 7 terms: majority N=3, minority N=3.
150 successfully navigate the legislative process as compared to their minority party counterparts. As a result, they are more likely to sponsor bills or resolutions, the conventional form of legislative policy pursuit. The gap between majority and minority party senators suggests that this is something senators learn while in the Senate. In their first term, the gap between majority and minority party members is not large. This gap grows steadily wider through the fourth term and remains quite large until the seventh term where it vanishes entirely. It is as if majority party senators decide that increased sponsorship activity will benefit them and act accordingly, while their minority party counterparts see little advantage to offering more bills and change their initial behavior only minimally until about the fifth term.
One of the interesting features of Figure 5.1 is the late career decline in bill and resolution sponsorship activity. This decrease may be the result of the attainment of legislative positions which facilitate member influence outside of bill sponsorship activity. Senators who have achieved party and committee positions may be less reliant on their own proposals to motivate policy change since they may use their institutional positions to shape another senator's proposal and achieve policy goals.As a result, they need not rely on bill or resolution sponsorship as their principle
^°As Huitt (1969) argued, bill passage is a collective activity. As a result, the initial sponsor does not bear sole responsibility for the form of the final legislative output. Other actors may significantly alter the initial legislative proposal.
151 means of influencing policy. Instead, they may influence policy by using their position to shape legislation sponsored by others.
Amendment Sponsorship
The pattern of amendment sponsorship across the senatorial career differs from that of bill and resolution sponsorship, as shown in Figure 5.2 where the standardized value of the mean number of amendments sponsored is plotted by tenure in office. For members of the majority party, there is a statistically significant increase in amendment sponsorship between the first and second terms. After that, the pattern is relatively flat until the fifth term where the frequency of amendment offering declines rather dramatically and continues to do so through the remainder of the senatorial career. Members of the minority party increase their amending behavior slightly through the first three terms. By the fourth term, a steady decline in amending activity has begun. This decline continues through the remainder of the career.
152 1.0
1
c m 0.0 E ■o c 0 1 I Minority
- 1.0% " " - ' r —— ' ™ - M.., . ,, Majority 1 term 2 terms 3 terms 4 terms 5 terms 6 terms 7 terms
Tenure
Figure 5.2 Amendments Sponsored By Tenure, Standardized Measure.
The predilection of senior senators of the majority party to offer fewer amendments is not surprising. We expect that those who "lose" early in the legislative process are likely to use amending as a strategy to recoup their policy losses. The "losers" in the early rounds of the policy process, primarily at the committee hearing and markup stages, are not likely to be the committee leaders. These senior majority party members are the committee leaders. They
153 control the legislative process and mold initiatives throughout that process. We do not expect that they will have as great a need to "fix" legislation on the floor.
Members of the minority party show a similar pattern of amendment sponsorship across their senatorial careers. Minority party senators very gradually increase the number of amendments offered through the third term. By the fourth term a steady decline in amending activity has begun which continues through the seventh term.
While the late career decline in amending activity may be expected for members of the majority party, it is somewhat surprising to find minority party members also decrease their amending activity late in their careers. We would expect that members of the minority party would have more incentive to try and change the output of the committee process through floor amendments. This seems to be the case in the first term as members of the minority party offer significantly more amendments than their majority party counterparts. However, by the third term this is no longer the case. Not only do minority party senators offer fewer amendments as they become more senior, senior minority party members actually offer fewer amendments than their majority party colleagues. This may be a result of the committee chair's responsibility as floor manager for most bills that are reported from committee. Senior senators of the majority party, who are the committee
^^This is not to say that committee leaders will refrain entirely from offering floor amendments. In fact, we would expect that they would offer some amendments since as bill managers they are charged with the responsibility of protecting the committee product. However, we would not expect them to offer large numbers of amendments.
154 chairs, may offer numerous amendments protecting the legislative product reported from their committee. Senior minority party members, who are Ranking Members of the committees, do not usually share the same responsibility of protecting the legislative product of the committee. While these senior minority party senators may offer amendments to bills, they do not have the same level of institutional responsibility as their majority party counterparts which may increase their amending activity.
Tenure and Legislative Effectiveness
First, I consider the relationship between tenure and legislation reported from committee, which will be referred to as committee effectiveness. Second, I examine the relationship between tenure and legislation passed by the Senate, which will be referred to as floor effectiveness. Finally, I appraise the relationship between tenure and legislation which becomes law, which will be referred to as legal success. For each of the three measures, I consider both the amount of legislation and the proportion of legislation passing through each legislative stage.
Committee Action
For members of the majority party, the pattern of the relationship between tenure and legislative effectiveness (Figure 5.3), when measured as bills reported from committee, is remarkably similar to the pattern between tenure and bill
155 sponsorship (see Figure 5.1). In both cases, the early career is marked by a steady increase in activity and effectiveness, while the later career is marked by lower levels of sponsorship and committee effectiveness.
2 5
I 20 I ’ = E p -fc 1.0 •a
I ,s O O' § 0.0 m i2 O) 5 -.5 Minority
- 1.0 Majority 1 term 2 terms 3 terms 4 terms 5 terms 6 terms 7 terms
Tenure
Figure 5.3 Legislation Reported From Committee By Tenure, Standardized Measure.
However, in the case of committee effectiveness, the peak comes in the fifth term as opposed to the fourth term peak in bill sponsorship. When considering the number of bills and resolutions reported from committee, seniority pays clear dividends through the fifth term. After the fifth term, the number of bills reported from committee declines. Our earlier discussion of the advantages of committee positions for senior
156 members may partially explain this late career decline. The most senior members of the majority party, as committee chairs, have a great deal of influence over the legislative products of their committees. As a result, they may substantially shape policy through alterations of others legislation rather than offering much of their own. The committee effectiveness, as measured here may decline, while their actual influence is increasing.
Members of the minority party show much lower levels of committee effectiveness, as expected. In addition, they do not demonstrate a seniority effect. There is little difference between junior and senior members of the minority party in the level of committee effectiveness. For members of the minority party, even the skills that develop with greater seniority cannot overcome the disadvantages of minority party status in achieving committee success.
In addition to examining committee effectiveness as a count of reported legislation, it is important to examine the committee batting average. The committee batting average represents the percentage of bills and resolutions sponsored by a senator that are reported from committee. The relationship between tenure and the committee batting average is shown in Figure 5.4. A majority party senator's committee batting average clearly improves as tenure increases. The most senior members of the majority party, those serving four terms or more, are the most successful in getting a larger proportion of their legislation reported from committee. Unlike the count of committee reported legislation, the batting average shows no late career downturn in committee effectiveness. The idea that the most senior senators are the
157 most effective is supported at the committee level with this measure.
Members of the minority party have much lower committee batting averages. In fact, only in the third term do members of the minority party even approach the mean committee batting average of 0. In addition, minority party members show little
1.5
1.0
E E o O 0.0 c a m 2 -.5 Minority
- 1.0 Majority 1 term 2 terms 3 terms 4 terms 5 terms 6 terms 7 terms
Tenure
Figure 5.4 Committee Batting Average By Tenure, Standardized Measure.
benefit of increased seniority when compared to their majority party colleagues. The early career relationship between tenure and the committee batting average shows some seniority benefit. Through the first three terms the committee batting average increases steadily. After that third term peak,
158 however, the committee batting average of minority party members actually declines. As previously mentioned, tenure does not seem to help minority party senators overcome the barriers to success constructed by minority party status.
Senate Action
The pattern for both majority and minority party senators when considering the relationship between tenure and effectiveness in getting legislation passed on the Senate floor is nearly identical to the committee effectiveness relationship with tenure. As shown in Figure 5.5, there remains a clear seniority advantage in floor effectiveness for members of the majority party through the fifth term when
159 1.5
S. 2 1.0 w
1 .= (0 0. I 0.0 3 Minority
Majority 1 term 2 terms 3 terms 4 terms 5 terms 6 terms 7 terms
Tenure
Figure 5.5. Legislation Passing the Senate By Tenure, Standardized Measure.
floor effectiveness begins to decline. Senators from the minority party show much lower levels of floor effectiveness overall and do not demonstrate any significant increase in floor effectiveness as tenure accumulates.
Turning to the relationship between tenure and the floor batting average, which is shown in Figure 5.6 there is an increase in the floor batting average as tenure increases for senators serving in the majority party. As expected, members of the majority party have a much higher floor batting average throughout their careers when compared to their
160 1.5
1.0 I W
I 0.0 c (B i
Minority
- 1.0 Majority 1 term 2 terms 3 terms 4 terms 5 terms 6 terms 7 terms
Tenure
Figure 5.6 Senate Batting Average, Standardized Measure.
minority party colleagues- As with the committee batting average, increased tenure appears to give members of the minority party little advantage when it comes to the floor batting average. Although there are small increases in the floor batting average through the third term, after that point, the batting average reaches a three term plateau and begins to decline as seniority increases. The barriers to success for minority party senators remain intact at the floor stage.
161 Enacted Laws
Seniority appears to bring advantages for enacting legislation. Figure 5.7 shows the number of bills which became law by number of terms in the Senate. For members of the majority party, seniority pays dividends in successfully enacting legislation. There is a significant increase in amount of legislation becoming law through the fourth term, where it levels off before sharply declining in the seventh term. It is interesting to note that while majority party senators have their greatest success in committee and on the Senate floor during their fifth term, it is not until the sixth term that Senators experience their highest level of success in enacting legislation. Members of the minority party show much less success in enacting legislation than their majority party counterparts. In addition, there is much less variation in effectiveness across the career, as was the case for the other measures of legislative effectiveness.
162 1.5
1.0
c o
■§ tî 0.0 (0 i5
Minority
- 1.0 Majority 1 term 2 terms 3 terms 4 terms 5 terms 6 terms 7 terms
Tenure
Figure 5.7 Measures Enacted By Tenure, Standardized Measure.
Turning now to the proportional measure, the legal batting average, there is additional evidence that increasing tenure benefits majority party senators in terms of enacting legislation. As shown in Figure 5.8, legal success steadily increases through the sixth term for members of the majority party. The only exception is a slump in the fifth term, where majority party senators lose any benefit they have gained during the fourth term. However, by the sixth term, majority party senators achieve the highest legal batting averages of their careers.
163 1.5
1.0 (A (0
wI «0 E I 0.0 •
Minofity
- 1.0 Majority 1 term 2 terms 3 terms 4 terms 5 terms 6 terms 7 terms
Tenure
Figure 5.8 Legal Batting Average, Standardized Measure,
Minority party senators again show lower legal batting averages than majority party senators. These senators do not appear to benefit from tenure in the same manner as their majority party counterparts. Senators from the minority party achieve their highest legal batting average in their third term. Then, only achieving the mean legal batting average of 0. After the third term, the batting average of these senators slowly declines through the sixth term. Clearly, being a senior member of the minority party does not benefit members in terms of having bills or resolutions that they have offered become law.
164 Mortality Effects and Legislative Formulation
An alternative explanation for the results is that seniority or tenure in office enhances senators legislative activity, and especially their legislative effectiveness. It is possible that the senators who continue to serve are somehow different from senators who choose to retire or are defeated in their reelection bids. Perhaps those senators who continue to serve are better at their jobs. Perhaps senators who return enjoy Senate life more and thus put more effort into legislative activity. If this is true, then senior senators are unrepresentative of senators as a group. As a result, it is possible that it is not seniority that explains higher level of success and activity but some other unknown characteristic that makes some senators remain in the Senate longer.
In order to control for possible mortality effects, we can compare the activity and success levels of senators who returned to the Senate with senators who left the Senate at the conclusion of their term at a given level of seniority. These comparisons are shown for the majority party in Table 5.1. Comparisons could not be made for senators serving in their sixth or seventh term. The low number of cases in these tenure categories made it impossible to maintain sufficient
^Senators who lost in a general or primary election, did not seek reelection, accepted another office (federal or otherwise), resigned, or were expelled were coded as leaving the Senate. Those who died in office are excluded from the analysis since it is impossible to predict whether they would have returned to the Senate in the next term.
165 degrees of freedom while also controlling for both majority party status and whether or not the senator remained in the Senate.
There are very few statistically significant differences between those who remained in the Senate and those who departed. This suggests that mortality effects are minimal. Of the 25 comparison groups, only four show statistically significant differences between senators who ended their career after the term and those who returned to the Senate. In addition, two of these statistically significant differences are driven by the exceptionally low bill and amendment sponsorship by a single member at the end of his four term career. Senator Stuart Syminton's (D-MO) inactivity in bill and amendment sponsorship accounts for the significance of the mean differences in fourth term bill and amendment sponsorship. After accounting for outlying cases, only two statistically significant results remain.
166 Bills Amendments Committee Senate Legal Batting Sponsored Sponsored Batting Ave. Batting Ave. Ave. Mean Mean Mean Mean Mean Term Difference Difference Difference Difference Difference (Std Error) (Std Error) (Std Error) (Std Error) (Std Error) First .041 -.002 -.168 -.131 -.113 (.112) (.081) (.192) (.172) (.220) N=161/54" N=139/40 N=122/31 N=122/31 N=122/31 Second .294 .194 .147 -.068 -.019 (.209) (.493) (.331) (.319) (.313) en N=83/15 N=72/9 N=67/7 N=67/7 N=67/7 Third -.152 .276 -.133 -.554 .274 (.292) (.178) (.291) (.438) (.249) N=62/38 N=43/25 N=39/19 N=39/19 N=39/19 Fourth .645* .563* -.587 -.068 -.768 (.349) (.328) (.605) ( .688) (.469) N=22/21 N=16/13 N=12/8 N=12/8 N=12/8 Fifth .567 .4012 -1.67*** -.916 -.789* (.514) (.524) (.600) (.725) (.442) N=18/7 N=14/3 N=12/3 N=12/3 N=12/3
^Number of cases those who remained in the Senate/those who left the Senate. "p<.10 p<.05‘ P<.01‘
Table 5.1. Mortality Effects for the Majority Party Fifth term senators who left the Senate have significantly less success in reporting legislation from committee and enacting legislation as compared to their colleagues who return to the Senate. That two significant relationships remain is not surprising. Probability alone suggests that in making 25 comparisons at least one or two will achieve statistical significance.
Turning now to possible mortality effects in the minority party, which are presented in Table 5.2, there are again find very few statistically significant differences between senators who left at the conclusion of their term and those that returned to the Senate. In only four of our 25 comparison categories are there statistically significant differences between those who remained in the Senate and those who departed at the end of the term. First term senators who return to the Senate are more successful at the committee stage than their party colleagues who leave the Senate. This provides some limited evidence for a mortality effect. Successful senators return, while less successful senators retire or loose reelection.
Surprisingly, senators in their second term who remain in the Senate sponsor fewer bills than their colleagues who depart. This may suggest that members of the minority party who are more active become frustrated and leave the Senate. This theme of frustration may also be apparent in the amending activity of third term members. Third term members who leave the Senate at the conclusion of their term are significantly more active in amending legislation than those who remain in the Senate. Since this amendment activity may be the result of dissatisfaction with committee positions, it could be
168 interpreted as an additional sign of frustration for minority party members. Those who get most frustrated appear to leave the Senate.
Taken as a whole, however, the results in Tables 5.1 and 5.2 do not indicate widespread mortality effects. In the overwhelming majority of cases, senators who leave the Senate do not significantly differ from their colleagues who return to the Senate. This is true for senators serving in both the majority and minority parties.
169 Bills Amendments Committee Senate Legal Batting Sponsored Sponsored Batting Ave. Batting Ave. Ave. Mean Mean Mean Mean Mean Term Difference Difference Difference Difference Difference (Std Error) (Std Error) (Std Error) (Std Error) (Std Error) First -.185 -.614 -.335'* -.230 -.142 (.141) (.706) (.173) (.154) (.281) N=100/26* N=82/12 N=70/9 N=70/9 N=70/9 Second .213“ -.108 .162 .165 .151 (.104) (.310) (.220) (.245) (.256) -o N=112/31 N=100/19 N=90/15 N=90/15 N=90/15 o Third -.133 .525* -.010 -.433 -.336 (.257) (.268) (.305) (.348) (.426) N=36/13 N=30/9 N=28/8 N=28/8 N=28/8 Fourth .331 -.146 .216 .566 .149 (.285) (.315) (.375) (.442) (.537) N=25/15 N=23/7 N=22/4 N=22/4 N=22/4 Fifth .111 .065 .140 1.131“ .401 (.384) (.299) (.265) (.420) (.377) N=9/4 N=8/4 N=8/4 N=8/4 N=8/4 ^Number of cases those who remained in the Senate/those who left the Senate. ‘^p<.10* p<.05** p<.Ol‘
Table 5.2. Mortality Effects for the Minority Party Conclusion
The notion that the death of apprenticeship did away with the legislative advantage of senior members appears to have been overstated. The analysis presented here demonstrates that seniority pays dividends to senators in terms of bill sponsorship and legislative effectiveness for members of the majority party. While there is a late career decline in bill sponsorship, throughout most of the Senate career as tenure accumulates bill sponsorship increases. This at least partially supports my first hypothesis. Even this late career decline may be at least indirectly related to seniority, since it occurs at about the time majority party senators achieve significant committee leadership positions. Since these positions make it easier for senators to influence legislation outside of the realm of individual sponsorship, committee chairs do not have to sponsor as many bills to have a policy effect.
For members of the majority party, success is clearly related to seniority. All three batting average measures of legislative effectiveness demonstrate that as tenure increases senators are more effective in moving their policies through the legislative process. This effectiveness is not based on quantity, since the most senior majority party members do not offer the largest number of bills and resolutions. Instead, the high level of success enjoyed by the most senior senators appears to be a matter of offering fewer, but more viable pieces of legislation. Either because of their committee positions or skills developed with service, senior members seem to be able to identify legislation with "legs, " legislation that can be moved through the different stages of
171 the process. Alternatively, they may simply be using their positions to push their bills through the process. This explanation is most attractive for the committee batting average, since committee chairs most clearly control the committee agenda. In the next chapter, I will examine whether or not tenure reaps senators rewards even when controlling for their committee positions.
The results presented also support the notion that members of the minority party are likely to find their legislative activity frustrated at every turn. Many of the measures examined here indicate that this frustration will increase during the course of their career. While majority party members become more effective as their careers continue, members of the minority party do not enjoy a similar increase in effectiveness. For nearly all of the measures examined, senior senators of the minority party are only slightly more effective than their freshman colleagues. While seniority may still matter, its advantages are accrued only by members serving in the party that controls the institutional machinery. Without the power of your party in the institution, seniority appears to have little meaning for legislative activity or effectiveness.
172 CHAPTER 6
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER:
A MULTIVARIATE EXAMINATION OF LEGISLATIVE FORMULATION
"In time I saw that perhaps a third of the senators made the institution work. They were the players. They knew what they wanted and how to get it. Another third had some idea of what they wanted but not much idea how to proceed. The rest didn't have a clue. Perhaps they were great campaigners, or good at serving home state interests, but they weren't legislators."
— Senator Warren B. Rudman^^
Introduction
To this point, I have considered the various aspects of the Senate career, reelection, institutional positions, roll call voting, and legislative activity, in relative isolation. However, these different components undoubtedly combine to define the overall career of a senator. One way to consider the relationship among these career aspects is to gauge their relative effects on a senator's institutional behavior. In addition, these relative effects cannot be adequately assessed
■'^Rudman 1996:33.
173 without a multivariate model, which allows for the examination of the influence of individual variables while others are held controlled.
According to the Rudman quotation above, some senators are effective legislators while others are not. How might we identify these effective legislators? How might we account for differences in effectiveness? Are senior members more effective than junior members as Chapter 5 suggests. Or, does seniority matter little once institutional positions held by senators are taken into account the. Are electorally safe members more effective than those who feel the reverberations of a close electoral contest and, thus, feel the need to spend more time on reelection activities? My interest is not in legislative effectiveness alone; but, also in levels of legislative activity. Are senior senators more active than their junior counterparts once we have controlled for various other factors? To consider these questions, I examine multivariate models of legislative activity and legislative effectiveness. While the multivariate models include the bivariate relationships discussed throughout the dissertation, they are not limited to these variables. An important addition to the model is a senator's previous political experience. In accordance with Matthews (1973), Fenno (1986) and Schlesinger (1966), I recognize that previous experience may influence the career structure of the senator. As a consequence, it must be accounted for in any model of senatorial activity or effectiveness.
This chapter begins with a brief review of the previous work examining senatorial activity and effectiveness as well as the ambition theory literature, which bears on the issue of
174 the effects of previous office-holding experience. After a discussion of the expected relationships and the methodology employed, evidence of the continued influence of tenure on senatorial effectiveness is presented. The evidence demonstrates that while tenure continues to show significant effects on legislative effectiveness and bill sponsorship in the multivariate model, the relationship between tenure and amending activity is weaker.
Legislative Activity and Success: Previous Literature
Legislative Activity
There have been few studies of legislative activity in the Senate. The bulk of evidence regarding legislative activity in the United States comes from examination of the House of Representatives. I review here the few works dealing specifically with the Senate as well as the most prominent works considering legislative activity in the House.
The most comprehensive examination of legislative activity in the Senate is Schiller's (1993, 1995) study of bill sponsorship in the 99th and 100th Congresses. Arguing that both institutional and political variables influenced the number of bills senators sponsored, Schiller (1995) found that liberal senators sponsored legislation at a higher rate than their conservative colleagues. In addition, senators from states with large economies and senators with large staffs were more active than their small state counterparts.^
^Schiller seems surprised to find that, on average. Democrats sponsor roughly five fewer bills than Republicans. 175 Perhaps most important for our discussion here, Schiller found that freshman senators in the first two years of their term were likely to be less active in bill sponsorship than other senators and senior senators were likely to be more active in their bill sponsorship than other senators. In the 99th and 100th Congresses, there is clear evidence of the influence of tenure on bill sponsorship activity. Finally, Schiller finds that institutional positions are also important for legislative activity. Senators with more numerous committee assignments and those in the leadership sponsored more bills than other senators.^"
While Schiller's work treats the contemporary Senate, Matthews (1973) examined the Senate of the 1950's. Although Matthews does not deal directly with bill sponsorship patterns or consider a multivariate model of sponsorship, he does consider some factors that likely influence levels of
This is contrary to her expectation that Democrats, as supporters of increased government intervention, would be more active in bill sponsorship. This finding is less surprising when recognizing that in the period under study the Republican party was in the majority in the Senate. During this period. Republicans' institutional position may have made bill sponsorship more attractive and more fruitful.
^Schiller's treatment of the four most prominent committees turns up some interesting findings. As we might expect, she finds senators serving on the Finance Committee sponsor more bills than other senators. In addition, she finds that members of the Foreign Relations Committee sponsor significantly fewer bills than other senators. Schiller argues this is due to the policy mandate of the committee, which spends a good deal of its attention on approving presidential initiatives (treaties, nominees) and overseeing executive branch implementation of foreign policy. Neither of these activities lend themselves to bill sponsorship very well.
176 legislative activity. The most important of these factors are the norms of behavior in the Senate, principally apprenticeship. Discussed in more detail in Chapter 5, apprenticeship, the notion that junior senators were to wait their turn before offering numerous bills or amendments or engaging in speechmaking on the floor, suggests that any model of legislative activity must take into account the seniority status of the senator. In addition, Lehnen (1967) found that junior senators were significantly less active in speechmaking when compared to their senior colleagues. Although speechmaking is clearly a different form of legislative activity, the finding is informative.
Less attention has been paid to the factors influencing amendment offering. Smith's (1989) study of trends in Senate floor activity includes a model of amending activity. Examining the level of amending activity targeted at committees on which a senator sits, he finds that while deference to committees is not as strong as it was in the 1950's, committee leadership positions still tend to structure amendment activity somewhat. Committee chairman show a higher level of amending activity than other senators. In addition, senators who served on committees whose bills are frequently the subject of amendments were more likely to engage in high levels of amending activity. This is likely a sign that senators from very active committees may be protecting the committee legislation. Finally, there is some suggestion that membership in the minority party leads to offering more amendments, although methodological difficulties make this merely suggestive.^® Subcommittee leadership and seniority
^®Smith is unable to separate committee and party effects in his model because of his operationalization of 177 show no significant effect on amending activity. So, when considering amendments to a senator's committee, institutional positions matter and party status may play a role.
Smith also estimated a model of amending activity targeted at measures originating in committees on which the senator did not serve, including the same variables as in his committee based analysis. None of the variables included in the model have a statistically significant effect on the propensity to sponsor amendments to non-committee bills. The lack of previous study of amending activity and the limited nature of Smith's findings suggest amending activity will be difficult to predict.
Turning now to the models of legislative activity in the House of Representatives, in an early study of legislative effectiveness in the House, Frantzich (1979) found that majority party status, party and committee leadership, seniority, previous political experience, and ideology were all significantly related to levels of bill sponsorship. Members of the majority party, leaders, and those who had longer careers in the House tended to sponsor more bills than their minority party, non-leader, and junior colleagues. In addition, Frantzich found that Representatives with previous political experience introduced less legislation than their politically experienced counterparts. He attributes this to the experienced colleagues recognizing the potential for frustration in the legislative process and refusing to engage in large amounts of futile activity. Finally, Frantzich finds that liberal Representatives are more active than conservatives in bill sponsorship. committee leadership (Smith 1989: 166). 178 Many similar findings were obtained by Box-Steffensmeier and Sinclair (1996) . In addition to the effects of committee leadership, seniority, and ideology, Box-Steffensmeier and Sinclair find that members of policy committees and Representatives with lower levels of specialization were likely to offer more bills than their House colleagues.
The previous literature suggests more than ten different factors that may play a role in the level of legislative activity. Institutional factors, such as tenure, leadership position, or party status, appear to be important for legislative activity. Individual characteristics or behavior patterns, such as ideology or previous political experience, may also influence legislative activity. Finally, constituency factors, such as state size, demonstrate some effect on levels of legislative activity, as well.
Legislative Effectiveness
As is the case with studies of legislative activity, we know more about the factors that influence legislative effectiveness in the House of Representatives than in the Senate. While several studies provide some insight into what factors might influence Senate effectiveness, only one study directly examines the factors influencing the legislative effectiveness of individual senators (Moore and Thomas 1991).
179 As previously, I will review the Senate based studies first and, subsequently, consider House based examinations.
Legislative effectiveness considers how successful a senator is in moving his or her bills through the legislative process: seeing them reported from committee, passed by the Senate, or enacted into law. Studies have demonstrated that tenure in office has an influence on a senator's effectiveness (Boucher 1995, Moore and Thomas 1991). In addition. Ribbing and Thomas (1990) suggest that senior senators are more respected than their junior colleague and that this higher level of respect may have a payoff in terms of legislative effectiveness.
Looking at the 99th Congress and using the Matthews batting average as a measure of legislative success (see Chapter 5), Moore and Thomas (1991) found that senior senators of the majority party who introduce a limited number of bills in a relatively narrow area and focus their attention on Washington increase their chances of success. Members of the minority party, on the other hand, simply "go through the motions" (Moore and Thomas 1991:969). None of the variables considered (seniority, specialization, constituency attention, ideological moderation, or verbosity) show significant influences on the legislative effectiveness of minority party
^^There is some question about the nature of the relationship between respect, seniority, and legislative effectiveness in the Ribbing and Thomas study. Their evidence suggests senior senators are more highly respected than junior senators and those judged to be legislatively skillful are more highly respected than their less legislatively adept colleagues. This suggests their may be some relationship between seniority and effectiveness. Ribbing and Thomas do not address this question specifically.
180 senators. So, while the Moore and Thomas study provides some information about the factors that explain variation in majority party success rates, the minority party remains somewhat of a mystery.
Boucher (1995) examines success in the Senate with the bill introduced as the unit of analysis. In his study of the 99th, 100th and 101st Congresses, he considers what factors influence whether or not any action is taken on an individual bill.^® Many of his findings deal with characteristics of the sponsor and, thus, are instructive for considering legislative effectiveness. Boucher finds that in addition to seniority of the sponsor, the party status of the sponsor, the size of a sponsor's state and institutional positions of the bill sponsor have significant influence over whether or not action is taken on a bill. Senators of the majority party are more likely to see action taken on their bills than those in the minority party (see also Hibbing 1973: 175) . In addition, Boucher finds that senators from small states are more likely to see their bills moved. Finally, senators who serve in certain institutional positions are more likely to see action taken on their legislation. Committee chairs and ranking members as well as majority party members of the committee to which the legislation was referred are more likely to see their legislation move in some fashion. In addition, there appears to be some evidence that the majority leader and members of the minority party who serve on the committee to
^Boucher also considers factors influencing whether a bill passes the Senate or becomes public law. Although the findings across the three dependent variables are not identical, they are similar enough that I only review the factors influencing whether or not action was taken on a bill.
181 which the legislation was referred are also more likely to see action taken on their legislation, although neither finding is consistent across all three Congresses. However, placement within the institution clearly pays some dividends in moving legislation.
Matthews (1973) presents further evidence of the benefits of institutional position. He finds that both committee and party leaders are more effective than other senators. In addition, he finds that members of the majority party are more effective than their minority party colleagues.
Many of the House models find similar factors are important in explaining legislative effectiveness, although the more extensive literature suggests additional factors that influence legislative effectiveness.
Frantzich (1979) finds that senior Representatives are more effective than their junior House counterparts. In addition, he finds that committee and party leaders are more effective than non-leaders and that electorally marginal members are less likely to be effective than those who are safe. Finally, members of the majority party were much more likely to be highly effective than minority party Representatives.
In addition to the importance of seniority, Box- Steffensmeier and Sinclair found that focusing on local rather than national issues and having a high level of floor visibility through speechmaking led to higher levels of legislative effectiveness for Representatives from the majority party. For Representatives from the minority party, being a generalist and having a local focus increase a
182 Representative's effectiveness. Membership on a prestige committee or occupying a leadership position actually decrease a minority party Representative's effectiveness. Box- Steffensmeier and Sinclair attribute this finding to the role of these Representatives as visible critics of the majority party. In addition. Representatives from more affluent districts have a lower level of effectiveness, which may be caused by the incompatibility of the majority party (Democratic) agenda and the expectations of an affluent constituency.
Finally, in his study of House careers, Hibbing (1991) finds that tenure in the House and constituency attention both have a statistically significant influence on legislative involvement, which is a measure combining aspects of legislative activity, floor speaking, and effectiveness.^" Senior Representatives are more legislatively involved than junior members. In addition, Representatives whose focus is on constituency matters as opposed to Washington activity are likely to be less legislatively involved. He does not test for a direct relationship between electoral position and involvement; but, he finds that those who are electorally safe pay less attention to constituent interests and subsequently have a higher level of legislative involvement.
^'Hibbing chose to examine only Democratic Representatives in his multivariate model, which makes it impossible to examine party status differences in legislative involvement.
183 It is important to note that except for Ribbing's House study, the other studies of legislative activity and effectiveness have examined a small number of Congresses, usually just one or two. While the onerous nature of data collection makes this understandable, it limits the ability to generalize their findings.
Before discussing which of these numerous factors that may influence legislative activity and effectiveness are to be included in my model, it is important to briefly consider one additional area of the literature. What a senator does before arriving in the Senate may have some influence on the transition to Senate life, and thus, his or her level of activity and effectiveness. The ambition theory literature focuses attention on how Senators get to the Senate and provides some information that may be useful in considering legislative effectiveness and activity.
Previous Legislative Experience
One other relevant body of literature considers ambition theory. Elaborated by Schlesinger (1966), ambition theory examines the career path politicians take in moving up the ladder of political opportunities toward higher levels of public service. There are two basic components to ambition theory. First, Schlesinger attempted to define the political "opportunity structure," the hierarchy of offices in American politics. His mapping of the opportunity structure places a Senate seat near the apex of the opportunity structure, with only the Presidency and Vice-Presidency as more attractive offices. The primary offices that serve as stepping-stones to
184 the Senate are the House of Representatives and the office of Governor. These offices serve as feeders into the Senate largely because their constituencies overlap all or large portions of the senatorial constituency. While both offices have consistently produced future senators, the House of Representatives, rather than a governorship, is increasingly the stepping-stone of choice for senators (Canon 1990). Schlesinger argues that political actors will behave in ways that facilitate their advancement within the opportunity structure (see also. Van Der Slik an Pernaccioro 1979, Herrick and Moore 1993) .
The second component of ambition theory, and the component that has received the most attention since Schlesinger's writing, is concerned with predicting who will advance in the opportunity structure and what variables might influence politicians choices in trying to move within or out of the hierarchy of political offices. An extensive literature has developed examining "career choices," political actors decisions to seek higher office, stay in their current office, or retire from political life (Abramson et al. 1987, Black 1972, Rohde 1979, Hibbing 1982, Bullock 1972, Frantzich 1978, Kiewiet and Zeng 1993, Hall and Van Houweling 1995) .
My consideration of the career of a U.S. Senator is very different from ambition theorists' discussions of a political career, although this work informs it. While ambition theory focuses primarily on movement between offices or behavior in one office that enhances a politician's chances for achieving another office, I focus on the career within a single institution. Ambition theory focuses on offices located in
185 the lower levels of the opportunity structure as stepping stones to higher offices. In essence, it views the politician as always with one eye up the ladder, evaluating chances for movement. I would like to turn the view upside down. What might a senator have gained by serving in these lower, "stepping stone" offices that will benefit him or her as a senator? In other words, if a senator was to look back down the career ladder at the offices that led them to the Senate, is their any premium to the previous political experience that might make life easier or more difficult for the freshman senator?
Fenno (1986) argues that previous political experience influences a senator's adjustment to Senate life, although his anecdotal evidence provides mixed results. In essence, those with legislative experience go through a different kind of adjustment than those without previous legislative experience. While those with previous experience make adjustments in a routine that is somewhat familiar, those without legislative experience must familiarize themselves with an entirely new process. For one group the adjustment is one of degree and for the other, an adjustment in kind.
New senators coming from the House will have to adjust to the different rules and procedures of the Senate and its individualism. However, their experience in the House, and resultant familiarity with legislative procedure, is likely to ease this transition. In addition, many former House members may embrace their new found legislative power when contrasted with the limited impact any individual may have in the more structured House (Fenno 1986). Their relative freedom to offer amendments or block floor action in the Senate will be a
186 new resource to them. Finally, senators who have already earned their legislative stripes at the national level in the House may be even less willing to undergo any period of apprenticeship (Drury 1963) . Not only might they be better equipped to participate in legislative formulation immediately, they will likely believe they have earned the right to do so.
A similar benefit of previous legislative experience may also be accorded to those who come to the Senate from a state legislature. Senators with previous state legislative experience will have a familiarity with the legislative process upon arriving in the Senate that may facilitate their adjustment to the Senate. While this familiarity with the legislative process is similar to that of former House members, former state legislators do not have the same experience with the Washington community and the enhanced visibility of the U.S. Congress. As a result, while state legislative experience may provide some benefit to senators, it is not expected to be as beneficial as House experience.
Former governors may have a very different kind of adjustment. Although certainly familiar with the process of negotiating with legislative bodies, former governors lack the hands on legislative training of their colleagues who came to the Senate by way of the House. These former governors are used to being the most important figure in the organization and having a direct effect on its activities (Fenno 1986). Instead of being the one in charge, they are now one among equals. In addition, they are operating in an unfamiliar institution with difficult procedural rules.
187 Matthews (1972) found some evidence that senators who came from a governorship had a more difficult time adjusting to Senate life. He found that former governors from large states were much less likely to conform to Senate norms of behavior. He argued that former governors viewed apprenticeship as demeaning and wanted an immediate place in the legislative process. This suggests that they may be more inclined to offer large amounts of legislation early in their careers. However, their lack of legislative experience may make this a more costly endeavor or result in a lower level of success.
Models of Legislative Activity and Effectiveness : Expectations
The previous literature and the examination of the bivariate relationships in the previous chapters suggest some clear expectations for my models of legislative activity and effectiveness. Three models are considered. The first explores legislative effectiveness. The second examines bill sponsorship activity. The third considers amendment sponsorship activity. The expectations for each of the models are summarized in Table 6.1.
188 Tenure
First and foremost, I expect that tenure will play a key role in all three models. I anticipate that tenure will be positively associated with bill sponsorship activity. Although apprenticeship may no longer govern the Senate, senior senators, who have had time to master the legislative process, will likely incur fewer costs in preparing legislation, making the bill introduction process easier. In addition, senior senators are likely to have numerous legislative interests which have been carried over from Congress to Congress. These "old" issues, whether introduced for symbolic or substantive reasons, are likely to be reintroduced if not resolved.
The expectation for the influence of tenure on amendment sponsorship is exactly the opposite of the expectation for bill sponsorship. As discussed in Chapter 3, senior senators are the holders of important committee positions and, as a result, have significant influence over the legislation which is reported from committee and considered on the floor of the Senate. In essence, they are likely to be the "winners" in the committee process. As such, we would not expect them to engage in high levels of amending activity since amendments most often seek to alter the committee product. Instead, we might see senior members engaging in amending activity which is designed to protect the committee bill. While this might mean offering numerous amendments, it is unlikely to match the activity of those who lack the power within committee. As a result, I expect that tenure will be negatively related to amending activity.
189 Independent Variable Legislative Activity Legislative Effectiveness Bill Amendment Tenure + - + Electoral Safety + + + Institutional Power + - + Previous Experience House + + + Governor -/+ -/+ - State Legislature + + + Majority Party Status + - +
Ideology - + -/+
Table 6.1 Hypothesized Relationships in the Multivariate Model.
Finally, I anticipate that tenure will continue to exert significant influence on a senator's effectiveness. Senior senators should be more likely to have their bills reported from committee, passed on the floor of the Senate, and become law. Experience in the Senate allows for the mastery of rules and procedures, which will likely make moving legislation less difficult. I expect this tenure effect in spite of the many other variables included in the model.
190 Electoral Safety
"Safe” senators, who have obtained higher proportions of the vote in their electoral contests, ought to be more comfortable spending time on governing matters rather than campaigning or constituency focused matters. While the governing-campaigning dichotomy need not be wholly a zero-sum proposition, it is clear that with the many time demands of senatorial service, senators must prioritize their activities. Although interview evidence suggests that few senators feel entirely safe electorally, those that won comfortably in the past may feel freer to place legislating higher on the priority list than constituency service or direct campaigning activity. As a result, the percent of the vote received by the Senator in their last election is also expected to positively influence bill sponsorship, amendment sponsorship, and legislative effectiveness.
Another possibility is that the relationship between legislative sponsorship activity and electoral security may in fact be negative. Senators from marginal states could engage in high levels of bill or amendment sponsorship as a form of position-taking or credit claiming designed to shore up the constituency. Since this activity is largely symbolic, it should not influence the legislative effectiveness of a senator. While this is a plausible scenario, I am unaware of any evidence that supports it in Congress (Frantzich 1979).
191 Institutional Positions
I expect that senators who have attractive committee assignment and leadership position packages will be more active in sponsoring legislation. Given their prestigious positions, these senators have the opportunity to be prominent players in important policy areas. While specialization may no longer be considered a binding norm of behavior, interview evidence suggests that senators continue to expend the majority of their legislative effort on issues that fall within the jurisdiction of committees on which they serve. If you are on committees considering important policy questions, your incentive to be legislatively active is greater than if you serve on committees with jurisdictions limited to narrow policy areas or less prominent policy questions. The less prestigious committees, such as Veteran's Affairs, Civil Service and Post Office, and Indian Affairs, tend to have limited jurisdictions and deal with issues less salient to the general public.
This increase in legislative activity as institutional positions accumulate is not expected to apply to the amendment process. As discussed previously, senators with high institutional position ratings will likely be the "winners" in the committee process. As such, I do not anticipate that their rate of amendment sponsorship ought to be very high. In fact, they will likely sponsor fewer amendments than their colleagues with fewer institutional advantages. Consequently, I expect a negative relationship between the formal position index and amendment sponsorship.
192 Senators who hold more prestigious and numerous committee positions and who are part of the leadership team are expected to be more effective in their legislative activity. These well placed senators have access to information about and influence over important legislative activities. This information and influence likely allows senators to bargain more efficiently with others, enhancing their own legislative prospects.
Previous Experience
Senators with previous legislative are expected to have an easier time adjusting to life in the Senate. Their previous experience with the legislative process may make it easier to offer bills and propose amendments. Former governors are likely to have a greater degree of difficulty adjusting to the Senate, which may suggest lower levels of activity and effectiveness. However, Matthews (1960) suggests that governors may be more legislatively active, since they are more likely to ignore the norm of apprenticeship. What might these seemingly contradictory aspects of gubernatorial experience suggest for legislative activity and effectiveness? For bill and amendment sponsorship, I have no firm expectations in light of these contrasting arguments. For legislative effectiveness, the lack of procedural knowledge suggests that former governors are likely to have lower rates of effectiveness during their initial adjustment period. In
193 contrast, senators with House or state legislative experience are expected to have higher rates of sponsorship activity and effectiveness.
It is possible that this experience dividend is stronger in the first term in the Senate. While those with experience may have a leg up on their classmates, it is possible that there will not to be a permanent advantage. Consequently, I estimate the models of activity and effectiveness for freshman senators separately. If the experience dividend is most important in the initial term in the Senate, then the previous experience variables ought to perform better in the models including only freshman senators.
Majority Party Status and Ideology
Two additional variables are included in the model. Majority party status is expected to be positively related to bill sponsorship activity and legislative effectiveness. Members of the majority party have greater incentive to introduce legislation since the institutional benefits of party control mean that the chances of successfully passing that legislation are enhanced. Majority party status is expected to be negatively related to amendment sponsorship. Minority party senators are more likely to be dissatisfied with the committee product, as a result of their minority status on committee. As a result, they will be more likely to try and change the legislation at the floor stage through the amending process.
194 Finally, ideology is included in the model to control for variation in sponsorship and effectiveness across the parties. I expect that more liberal senators will be more active in the legislative process. The higher activity expectation derives from the goal of liberal members to change the status quo and to expand the role of government. The most effective way for a legislator to achieve policy change is through the introduction of legislation.
The expectation about the relationship between ideology and effectiveness is less clear. It is possible that these same liberal members who are more active are also less effective in sponsoring legislation. The direction of the relationship (positive or negative) may to some degree rely on how legislative effectiveness is operationalized. If it is operationalized as the "batting average" or proportion of legislation that actually moves through various stages of the legislative process, then liberal senators are likely less effective. This expectation comes from the idea that if a senator sponsors a large amount of legislation, as I expect liberals to do, then it becomes more difficult to pass a higher proportion of that legislation. It is easier to achieve a 75 percent success rate if three of your four bills are reported from committee than if you achieve that success rate by seeing 15 or your 20 bills reported from committee. Since the liberals have lower scores and conservatives higher scores on the ideology measure, I expect there to be a positive relationship between the legislative batting average and ideology.
195 If, however, the raw number of bills acted upon is the measure of legislative effectiveness, liberal members may be seen as more effective than other senators. If a senator offers only four bills, then the ceiling on his or her effectiveness score is 12 (assumes the four bills were reported from committee, passed the Senate and became public law) . If a senator offers 50 bills, then the ceiling of his or her effectiveness score is 150. Extremely active senators have a greater chance for achieving high effectiveness scores on the raw count measure. Due to the coding of ideology, I expect a negative relationship between ideology and the number of bills on which action was taken.
Models of Legislative Activity and Effectiveness: Data and Methods
As with the previous chapters, the unit of analysis is an individual senator in a particular Congress. The data collection for many of the individual components of the model has been described in previous chapters. A brief review is in order before moving to questions of analysis.
Tenure is operationalized in two ways. The first operationalization is the number of years a senator has served. The second operationalization is the natural logarithm of the number of years served. The bivariate relationship between tenure and legislative activity examined in Chapter 5 suggests that rather than a linear relationship, tenure may show diminishing marginal effects on activity. To test this possibility, the log of tenure is included in alternative models of legislative activity and effectiveness. 196 Electoral security is operationalized as the percent of the vote won by the senator in the previous election. The institutional position index employed is the standardized Committee Power Scale, discussed in Chapter 3 and Appendix B.®° The ideology measure used here is the Poole and Rosenthal first dimension D-Nominate score for the individual Congress, described in Chapter 4.
The new variables in this chapter all relate to previous political experience. This information was gathered from the "Roster of United States Congressional Officeholders and Biographical Characteristics of Members of the United States Congress, 1 7 8 9 - 1 9 9 3 . Previous experience is operationalized as a series of dichotomous variables. House experience is coded 1 for all senators with experience in the House of Representatives, 0 for all others. Gubernatorial experience is coded 1 for all senators with gubernatorial
®°The standardized Big Four Power Scale was substituted for the standardized Committee Power Scale in all three models. The results are remarkably similar to those with the Committee Power Scale as the institutional position variable. The effectiveness model does not change with the switch in operationalization. All coefficients and standard errors remain very similar regardless of the method of analysis. The bill sponsorship model changes only slightly. The tenure variable performs slightly better (coefficient=.009, standard error=.005) and the state legislative experience variable performs slightly worse (coefficient=-.191, standard error=.127) in the Random Effects Model. In addition, the R- squared increases from .19 to .22. The amendment sponsorship model remains very similar in all three modes of analysis. The coefficients and standard errors vary only slightly with the alternative institutional position operationalization.
®^The roster is available from the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR). ICPSR number 7803.
197 experience, 0 for all others. Finally, State legislative experience is coded 1 for all senators with state legislative experience, 0 for all others.®^
The dependent variables, legislative effectiveness and activity, are discussed in Chapter 5. Legislative effectiveness is operationalized both as the legislative batting average (proportion of bills sponsored on which action was taken)®® and as a raw count of the number of bills on which action was taken. The two legislative activity measures, bill and amendment sponsorship, are considered separately.
The heavy burden of data collection has limited the number of years for which I have activity and effectiveness data. As a result, I cannot examine historical differences in legislative formulation with the current data set. I hope to supplement this data to allow for historical comparisons in future work. ®^
®®Some studies create previous experience scales (for example. Canon 1990). I employ dummy variables since I expect different kinds of experience to have a different effect on senatorial behavior.
®®The effectiveness batting average is the sum of the committee, floor and legal batting averages discussed in Chapter 5. Since the bivariate relationships between tenure and effectiveness are very similar across the three stages of the legislative process, the three stages were combined into a single measure for analysis.
®‘*Number of cases for analysis are based on the availability of data for the dependent variables. The effectiveness model is estimated using 593 cases. The bill sponsorship model is estimated using 891 cases. The amendment sponsorship model is estimated using 691 cases. Dependent variables range from 0 to 2.5 with a mean of .48 on the 198 Pooling cross sectional data allows us to deal with both space and time simultaneously (Stimson 1985) . While this may provide for richer analyses, the structure of the data presents some difficulties. The standard Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression model "simply ignores the pooled structure of the data. Each case is treated as independent of all others, not as part of a set of related observations" (Stimson 1985:918) . This means that the chances of violating the regression assumption of no serial correlation (the residual error terms from different observations are uncorrelated) are increased. We would expect some serial correlation since the cases are not independent across the time dimension. Individual senators appear in the data set in multiple congresses. In addition, the lilcelihood that the homoskedasticity assumption (the variability in the error term is constant) will be met also diminishes. OLS estimates may provide some valuable information, but, they are potentially biased and inefficient.
The modeling problems of pooled cross-sectional data are not insurmountable, however. Several solutions have been offered. In the situation where there is cross-sectional dominance (the number of units, here senators, is greater than the number of time points, here congresses) and between units effects are present (variation occurs across units as well as over time), Stimson (1985) offers two potential solutions: the Least Squares with Dummy Variables Model (a.k.a. the Fixed Effects Model) or the Error Components Model (a.k.a. the proportional effectiveness scale; 0 to 153 with a mean of 20.15 on the additive effectiveness scale; 1 to 556 with a mean of 43.9 for bill sponsorship; 0 to 2833 with a mean of 38.2 for amendment sponsorship.
199 Random Effects Model) . While both estimators have their strengths and weaknesses, I present results from the random effects estimator only. A brief justification of the choice between estimators is presented in Appendix C. My primary reason for choosing the random effects estimator is that the Hausman Specification Test supports the choice of a random effects model. (The results of the test are shown in Appendix C.) In addition, the coefficients from the random effects estimator are more efficient than those generated by the fixed effects model, and there is not a severe loss of degrees of freedom as would be the case when creating the numerous dummy variables required for the fixed effects method.
Legislative Effectiveness and Activity in the Senate: Results
Legislative Effectiveness
The estimates using the Error Components Model are presented in Table 6.2 and 6.3, along with summary statistics for each of the model specifications. The multivariate model of legislative effectiveness performs well across both dependent variables, whether using the number of years in the Senate or its log. Considering the model of the legislative batting average, as shown in Table 6.2, the overall fit of the model is acceptable (R^ of .27) . With the exception of the variables considering previous political experience, the coefficients are of the expected sign. In addition, five of the eight variables are statistically significant at conventional levels.
200 As expected, there is a positive relationship between tenure and legislative effectiveness. Whether operationalizing tenure to allow for a linear relationship or using the logged measure, increased seniority leads to greater effectiveness. It is important to note that this is the case even after controlling for committee and leadership positions, and majority party status. Tenure clearly provides benefits for legislative success beyond those afforded by committee position. The evidence presented suggests that for every term served, a senator can expect to increase his or her success rate by approximately five percent.®^
Majority party status and institutional positions also have a strong influence on legislative effectiveness. Senators of the majority party are more legislatively effective than those of the minority party. A member of the majority party is approximately 25 percent more successful than members of the minority party. This suggests that the frustration felt by members of the minority party is well- founded.
®^The average standard deviation across the six Congresses studied is .32 for the batting average and 22.94 for the number of bills acted upon. For the batting average, the tenure coefficient is multiplied by six to create a term comparison (.023 * 6 = .14), This product is then multiplied by the average standard deviation to take us back from standard deviation units and into the variable units (.14 * .32 = .05) For the number of bills, the calculation is the same although the coefficient and average standard deviation are different. (.030 * 6 = .18) and (.18 * 22.94 = 4.1).
201 Model 1 Model 2 Coefficient Coefficient (Std Error) (Std Error) Candidate Percent .011*** .011** (.004) (.004) Committee Power Scale .176*** .174*** (.046) (.047) Tenure .023*** NA (.006) Logged Tenure NA .183*** (.053) Majority .809*** .808*** (.060) (.060) Ideology .258* .253* (.143) (.122) House Experience -.131 -.124 (.124) (.125) Gubernatorial .062 .079 Experience (.173) (.174) State Legislative -.059 -.033 Experience (.147) (.147) Constant -1.292*** -1.414*** (.238) (.249) N 593 593 R-Squared .27 .27
Table 6.2 Multivariate Model of Legislative Effectiveness: Legislative Batting Average, 1979-1990.
202 Institutional positions also have a significant influence on legislative effectiveness. Senators with higher scores on the Committee Power index are more effective than those with lower scores on the index.®® Senators with better committee seats are more effective in moving their legislation, even after majority party status is controlled.
Electoral security also provides benefits for legislative effectiveness. Senators who win a greater share of the vote are more effective than those that win less of the vote. Although the effect is statistically significant, the magnitude of the coefficient is extremely small. In addition, as expected, liberal senators are less effective when considering the proportional measure of effectiveness than their conservative counterparts. The coefficient is quite large and statistically significant. This likely results from the larger number of bills sponsored by liberal senators, as we shall see below.
Finally, none of the governmental experience variables perform as expected. In fact, the signs of all three experience variables are in the opposite direction than predicted and none are statistically significant.
Turning to effectiveness as measured by the number of bills on which action was taken, the results are remarkably consistent with those presented for the model of the legislative batting average. The overall fit of the model of the legislation acted upon is better than the batting average
®®The analysis was replicated using the Big Four Power Index rather than the Committee Power Index. The results are nearly identical to those presented here.
203 model (R-squared = .40) . Six of the eight relationships are in the expected direction and four of the eight coefficients are statistically significant. The results are shown in Table 6.3.
Tenure continues to play an important role when considering this measure of effectiveness. For every term served, a senator can expect to see an additional 4.1 bills and resolutions acted upon. While the number alone seems relatively small, it is important to note that the mean number of bills and resolutions acted on ranges from 18 to 21 pieces of legislation in the nine Congresses under consideration. As a result, the four bill increase amounts to roughly a 20 percent increase in legislative success.
Majority party status and institutional position remain strong predictors of legislative effectiveness. In fact, a member of the majority party can expect to see action on approximately 17 more bills and resolutions than a member of the minority party.
As expected, the only meaningful change across the two different measures of success is in the relationship between ideology and legislative effectiveness. When considering the amount of legislation acted on, the relationship between ideology and effectiveness is not statistically significant. The ideology of a senator does not have a discernible effect on the number of bills and resolutions acted on. This is contrary to the expectation that liberals would have a larger number of bills and resolutions acted on, since they tend to offer more bills on average. It is consistent with Table 6.2, which shows that conservatives have a higher batting average.
204 Model 1 Model 2 Coefficient Coefficient (Std Error) (Std Error) Candidate Percent .007*** .007** (.004) (.004) Committee Power Scale .359*** .348*** (.040) (.041) Tenure .030*** NA (.005) Logged Tenure NA .276*** (.049) Majority .750*** .754*** (.058) (.058) Ideology .047 .050 (.118) (.116) House Experience -.002 .014 (.099) (.097) Gubernatorial -.182 -.163 Experience (.139) (.136) State Legislative -.177 -.161 Experience (.117) (.115) Constant -1.108*** -1.346*** (.215) (.223) N 593 593 R-Squared .40 .40
Table 6.3 Multivariate Model of Legislative Effectiveness: Number of Bills and Resolutions Acted Upon, 1979-1990.
205 Bill Sponsorship Activity
The models of bill sponsorship activity also perform well. The overall fit of the model is acceptable (R-squared = .21 or .23) . Five of the eight independent variables are in the predicted direction and seven of these variables achieve statistical significance in one of the two models. Recall that the first model uses the number of years in the Senate as the tenure measure, while the second model uses the log of tenure. The results are shown in Table 6.4.
Tenure has a statistically significant positive affect on bill and resolution sponsorship whether considering the model with tenure operationalized as the number or years in the Senate or the log of the number of years in the Senate. Using the logged measure improves the overall fit of the model slightly (R-squared increases from .21 to .23) . Senior senators sponsor more bills and resolutions than their more junior colleagues. For every term in office, senators increase their bill and resolution sponsorship by about six pieces of legislation. The effect of tenure on bill sponsorship remains even after institutional position, party, ideology, previous experience and electoral position are taken into account.
As is the case in legislative effectiveness analysis, institutional position and majority party status each have a strong impact on bill sponsorship activity. Senators with a strong package of committee and leadership positions offer quite a bit more legislation than those with less attractive institutional positions. Members of the majority party offer many more bills than their minority party colleagues. On
206 average, majority party senators introduce 25 more bills and resolutions than majority party senators. This is quite a substantial difference, especially when noting that the average per capita number of bills and resolutions introduced across the Congresses considered ranges from 40 to 50 pieces of legislation. The large difference in sponsorship suggests that minority party senators may read the writing on the wall about their chances of success and not engage in large amounts of likely futile bill and resolution sponsorship.
As expected there is a negative relationship between ideology and bill and resolution sponsorship, which suggests liberal senators are engaging in higher levels of bill sponsorship. While the ideology coefficient is highly statistically significant when using the number of years in the Senate as the tenure measure, the coefficient is marginally significant (p=.13) when the logged tenure measure is incorporated.
Although the results suggest candidates who received a large share of the vote in their last election offer more bills in the Senate, the effect is not statistically significant. This finding is not influenced by the choice regarding the operationalization of tenure.
207 Model 1 Model 2 Coefficient Coefficient (Std Error) (Std Error) Candidate Percent .003 .002 ( .003) (.003) Committee Power Scale .261*** .220*** (.035) (.035) Tenure .021*** NA (.005) Log of Tenure NA .291*** (.039) Majority .395*** .413*** (.051) (.050) Ideology -.206** -.177 (.120) (.118) House Experience -.190* -.213** (.100) (.126) Gubernatorial -.268* -.259* Experience (.143) (.099) State Legislative -.245** -.263** Experience (.117) (.115) Constant -.680*** -.962*** (.186) (.189) N 891 891 R-Squared .21 .23
Table 6.4 Multivariate Model of Bill Sponsorship, 1973-1990.
208 Finally, previous experience does seem to matter in levels of bill and resolution sponsorship. Political experience of all kinds leads to significantly lower levels of bill and resolution sponsorship. As hypothesized, former governors engage in lower levels of bill and resolution sponsorship than other senators. Contrary to expectations, former House members and state legislators offer fewer bills than other senators. This suggests that their previous legislative training may not pay much of a dividend in the volume of bill and resolution sponsorship. Alternatively, this lower level of sponsorship may suggest that previous legislative experience leads to a more selective approach to bill sponsorship. Senators with previous legislative experience may recognize the limits of the legislative process and focus their attention on fewer bills at a time. Or, past socialization may have encouraged a more selective approach to sponsorship activity.
Amendment Sponsorship
When turning to amendment sponsorship activity. Smith's (1989) difficulty in finding the correlates of amendment sponsorship is replicated on a larger data set. The overall fit of the model, whether using tenure or its log, is not very good (R-squared = .05 or .06). In addition, only four of the eight relationships are in the predicted direction. Results are shown in Table 6.5.
Tenure appears to have no significant influence on the level of amending activity by senators. The only statistically significant effect on amendment sponsorship is
209 the institutional position scale. Senators with more highly regarded positions offer more amendments than other senators. This is contrary to my expectation that those with institutional power would have less reason to challenge committee activity through offering floor amendments. Instead, those with a more valuable constellation of positions in the Senate are more active in amending legislation. Amendments may be the only way to keep control over the bill.
As expected, members of the majority party appear to offer fewer amendments than minority party senators. The result falls just short of conventional levels of statistical significance (p=.12). Liberal senators appear to offer more amendments than more conservative senators, although once again the coefficient fails to achieve statistical significance. Finally, there appears to be no relationship between previous office experience and amending activity.
210 Model 1 Model 2 Coefficient Coefficient (Std Error) (Std Error) Candidate Percent -.004 -.005 (.004) (.004) Committee Power Scale .172*** .150*** (.045) (.045) Tenure -.001 NA (.006) Log of Tenure NA .072 (.053) Majority -.110 -.099 (.070) (.070) Ideology .124 .138 (.125) (.125) House Experience -.110 -.101 (.101) (.102) Gubernatorial -.118 -.121 Experience (.143) (.143) State Legislative .102 .076 Experience (.118) (.118) Constant .315 .218 (.240) (.118) N 691 691 R-Squared .05 .06
Table 6.5 Multivariate Model of Amending Activity in the U.S. Senate, 1977-1990.
211 Freshmen and Legislative Activity and Effectiveness
It is possible that the previous political experience variables matter more in the initial transition to Senate life. After a term, members will think of themselves as senators rather than former House members or governors or astronauts. Senators will have had time to familiarize themselves with legislative procedure and the expectations of the Washington community. This may make previous experience more important for freshmen senators than for more experienced senators.
To account for this possibility, I ran the models of effectiveness and activity for freshmen senators only. Freshmen are those serving in their first six years in the Senate. If experience is more beneficial in the early years in the Senate, then the previous experience variables ought to perform better in these models.
Legislative Effectiveness
The models of legislative effectiveness are shown in Table 6.6. The overall fit of the two models varies considerably. The factors examined do a considerably better job predicting the number of bills and resolutions acted upon as compared with the legislative batting average (R-squared = .30 and .18 respectively).
As is the case when considering all senators, previous political experience seems to have little effect on the legislative effectiveness of senators. None of the experience
212 variables is statistically significant and only one of the three is in the expected direction in either model. Even for freshmen, previous political experience does not improve a senator's legislative effectiveness.
Several other findings are consistent with the consideration of the batting average of all senators. Committee positions are quite important. Freshmen with better committee assignments are more effective than freshmen with less attractive committee assignments. Membership in the majority party also benefits freshmen senators when it comes to legislative effectiveness. Winning election with a higher proportion of the vote does benefit freshmen senators effectiveness when considering the proportional effectiveness measure.
Contrary to the examination of all senators, neither tenure nor ideology influence freshmen senators legislative batting average. Senators at the end of their initial term in office do not have a higher legislative batting average than those in their first year in the Senate. Also, there is no discernible relationship between the liberalism of the freshman senator and the batting average.
213 Batting Average Number of Bills Acted On Coefficient Coefficient (Std Error) (Std Error) Candidate Percent .018* .005 (.009) (.004) Committee Power .126*** .101*** (.075) (.033) Tenure .007 .079*** (.031) (.013) Majority .711*** .319*** (.115) (.048) Ideology .276 .029 (.184) ( .086) House Experience -.082 .002 (.152) (.071) Gubernatorial Experience .236 -.136 (.234) (.109) State Legislative .002 -.052 Experience (.203) (.095) Constant -1.608*** -1.066*** (.537) ( .249) N 231 231 R-squared .18 .30
Table 6.6 Freshmen and Legislative Effectiveness.
214 There are other important differences between the two effectiveness models in addition to the difference in overall fit. Most importantly, when considering the number of bills and resolutions acted on, tenure does matter for senators in their first term. Freshmen near the conclusion of their first term see action on more of their legislation than those who are in the early portion of their term. Since tenure did not matter for their legislative batting average, this suggests that those in the later portion of their first term not only have more bills acted upon but also introduce more legislation thereby keeping their batting average down. Studies that focus solely on the batting average measure of effectiveness cannot detect this difference.
Finally, while candidate vote margin matters for the legislative batting average, it does not have a statistically significant effect on the number of bills or resolutions acted upon. This suggests that senators who are safer do not engage in as much symbolic introduction of legislation as other freshmen senators. Since it appears that the numerator of batting average (number of bills and resolutions) is not getting larger with increased vote share, safe freshmen senators must be introducing fewer pieces of legislation.
215 Legislative Activity
The models of bill and amendment sponsorship for freshmen are presented in Table 6.7. The overall fit of the bill sponsorship model is good, while the fit of the amendment sponsorship model remains unimpressive (R-squared = .27 and .08 respectively).
Two of the previous experience variables do have a statistically significant influence on the bill sponsorship patterns of freshmen senators. As expected, former governors introduce fewer bills and resolutions than other freshmen senators. Contrary to expectations, although consistent with the consideration of all senators, freshmen with state legislative experience introduce less legislation than other freshmen senators. Having House experience does not influence a freshmen senator's bill sponsorship activity.
As expected, freshmen near the end of their first term introduce more legislation than those in the first years of their initial term. This is consistent with the differences between the two effectiveness measures for freshmen discussed in the previous section. This tenure difference in the first term, also suggests that the learning curve is fairly steep in the initial term in office. Committee position also continues to influence bills sponsorship levels when considering freshmen alone. Interestingly, majority party status does not influence the level of bill sponsorship for freshmen senators. This may be because freshmen of the minority party have yet to experience the frustration of legislative futility. As a
216 result, they offer as much legislation as their majority party colleagues without recognizing the low level of success that will likely meet them. Finally, the electoral safety of freshmen has little influence over the level of bill sponsorship. While the negative relationship is consistent with the discussion of the differences in effectiveness models in the previous section, it is contrary to my initial expectations and fails to achieve statistical significance.
217 Bills and Amendments Resolutions Sponsored Sponsored Coefficient Coefficient (Std Error) (Std Error) Candidate Percent -.004 -.003 (.006) (.009) Committee Power .089** -.048 (.044) (.067) Tenure .172*** .087*** (.014) (.026) Majority .092 -.288*** (.061) (.099) Ideology -.046 .337** (.120) (.169) House Experience .128 .184 (.096) (.141) Gubernatorial -.275* .217 Experience (.144) (.210) State Legislative -.230** .064 Experience (.119) (.181) Constant -.746** -.236*** (.340) (..503) N 339 271 R-squared .27 .08
Table 6.7 Freshmen and Activity and Effectiveness,
218 Conclusion
While Sinclair (1989) and Smith (1989) argue that the Senate is a much more open institution, Schiller's (1996) argument that a clear structure still guides Senate behavior is supported here. Institutional positions and seniority continue to play a significant role in determining who will propel the legislative agenda of the Senate.
The results presented here clearly demonstrate that how long a senator has served continues to play a role in determining his or her level of legislative activity and effectiveness even after other institutional and individual factors have been taken into account. Membership in the majority party is key. Not only do minority party senators experience lower levels of legislative effectiveness, they seem to see the writing on the wall and engage in less bill sponsorship than their majority party colleagues. The attractiveness of a senator's committee assignments and his or her membership in the leadership are important determinants of legislative activity and success. While these institutional positions are very important for legislative activity and effectiveness, they do not account for all of the variation in legislative behavior. Senior senators are more effective, whether considering the proportion or number of bills acted upon. In addition, senior senators introduce more legislation than their less experienced colleagues.
This chapter began with a quotation from Senator Warren Rudman suggesting that one-third of senators made the institution run, while the remaining two-thirds were either ineffective or clueless. While Rudman seems to suggest the
219 variation is based on the individual alone, this analysis suggests variation in legislative activity is as much about a senator's place in the institution as his or her individual characteristics. The third of the Senate that make it run are most likely to be senior members of the majority party who have very valuable committee and leadership positions and have achieved a level of electoral support that leaves plenty of time for legislating. Certainly, the norms of the institution have declined in a prescriptive sense. Junior senators are not told to be silent in committee or refrain from offering legislation. However, there is a sort of inner club that remains, although its membership is not exclusively Southern or dominated solely by committee chairs. There is a clearly defined group of senators that are likely to be successful in the Senate. The definition of this group rests largely with institutional position and seniority.
220 CHAPTER 7
CONCLUSION
Summary
The task of this dissertation has been to sketch the contours of the career of the United States senator. In doing so, I have focused most specifically on how tenure in the Senate influences various aspects of the Senate career. The most general conclusion to be drawn from the research presented here is that the Senate is not as open or individualistic an institution as the political science literature or the conventional wisdom suggests. Institutional variables as well as individual characteristics continue to structure the senatorial career, especially committee positions, majority party status, and seniority.
Part of the overstatement of Senate individualism results from the frame of reference used to evaluate legislator's activities. When talking about the Senate as an institution, comparisons tend to be made with the Senate of the 1950s and the House of Representatives.
Matthews' (1973) U.S. Senators in Their World, which examined the Senate of the 1950s, is rightly considered a classic work in legislative politics. I have referred to
221 Matthews' study more than any other work in this dissertation. It has been and will continue to be a frame of reference for all who study the U.S. Senate. As such, the work that has succeeded Matthews ' account has compared the Senate to its 1950s incarnation, which was dominated by a subset of senior members who held powerful positions in the institution and guarded the conservative nature of the chamber. By focusing so much attention on an era in which the norms and practices of the institution restricted the power of many senators, scholars have emphasized how far the Senate has come in terms of individualism. It is certainly true that the norms of behavior have changed. Freshmen senators are no longer expected to serve an apprenticeship or give up their rights in debate. A clique of Southern Democrats no longer dominate the institution, having been the victim of the increase in partisan competition in the South.
Leaving the analysis with this statement of the enhanced position of junior senators overlooks how much influence institutional structure continues to have on individual behavior. Therefore, one of the legacies of Matthews' work is a vision of the Senate that has structured more recent thinking on the institution and, as a result, led to some overestimation of the place of individual senators in the institution. While the Senate has undergone some "transformation," it has not become an institution that ceases to be greatly influenced by committee position, majority party status, and seniority.
Another frequent frame of reference for discussing Senate individualism is the House of Representatives. Clearly, the Senate is more open than the House, giving
222 individual legislators more responsibility in legislating and more tools for influencing legislation on the floor. Much of the image of the Senate as a place where a single man or woman can leave one's individual stamp on a wide range of policy comes from the experience of former House members who move across the capitol. These former House members find themselves assigned to more committees, very often holding at least a subcommittee chair or ranking member position in their first term. In addition, floor debate is much more open than in the House, with individual senators maintaining the right to speak on any piece of legislation with very few restrictions. Relative to their position in the House of Representatives, these senators do have greater individual rights and responsibilities. This does not mean, however, that service in the Senate is without its own institutional constraints.
What structures the Senate career? Seniority continues to play an important role in the modern Senate. Senior senators are more effective and more active legislatively. Regardless of how you measure legislative effectiveness, either as the number or proportion of bills acted on, senior members see more of their legislation move through the legislative process. This holds true even when controlling for institutional positions and party status. Senior senators are not only very effective, they are also very active, introducing more legislation than their junior colleagues.
Institutional position also proves to be very important in structuring a Senate career. Sen. Robert Byrd's (1988:651) statement that a senator's career is greatly influenced by committee assignment is born out in the analysis
223 presented. Senators who have a better overall package of committee assignments and leadership positions are more active and effective in the legislative process. Using these attractive committee positions and the benefits that come from them, senators have a greater influence on the policy process. Committee positions in the Senate are largely determined by seniority. As the evidence in Chapter 3 suggests, senior senators are greatly advantaged in their attainment of institutional positions. Despite efforts to democratize the committee assignment process, such as the codification of the Johnson Rule, senior senators continue to enjoy an advantage in the value of their committee and leadership positions. This in turn provides an additional indirect benefit of seniority on the activity and effectiveness of senators.
Perhaps the decisive factor structuring the Senate career is membership in the majority or minority party. Senators of the majority party enjoy numerous advantages. The majority party staff for individual committees is larger than for the minority party. The majority party controls legislative scheduling at the committee and floor stages. Members of the majority party preside over the legislative sessions of the Senate, making important decisions about who to recognize during floor debate.
These advantages of majority party status translate into tangible legislative benefits. It is not surprising that senators of the majority party have an advantage in Senate activity and effectiveness. What is surprising is the clear dominance of the majority party in legislative production. Even when controlling for institutional positions and seniority, majority party senators fare much better in moving
224 their legislation through the process. While there are some examples of effective members of the minority party, in general, minority party senators have little hope of enacting their legislative agendas.
If seniority, majority party status, and institutional position continue to structure the senatorial career, what makes the Senate of the 1990s different from the Senate of the 1950s? One significant change has to do with the electoral fortunes of Southern Democrats. Largely responsible for the apparent influence of tenure on electoral safety, these senators now run with a less dominant incumbency advantage than in the 1950s. Even for the most senior members, running as a sitting Democratic senator does not ensure reelection in the South. This is largely due to the rise of the Republican party in the South and the concurrent increase in the quality of the challengers in Senate elections. Running in more competitive states, senior Democrats have a harder time getting reelected. As a result, the ability of these senior Democrats to dominate the Senate as an institution is undermined. The group of senior Southern Democrats that once dominated the business of the Senate has largely disappeared.
Another way the Senate has changed is that the control of the committee process is no longer dominated by conservative senators. In the 1950s and 1960s, liberal senators were at a great disadvantage in the committee assignment process. Although the reforms of the committee process did not close the gap between junior and senior senators in committee assignments, they did close the gap
225 between liberal and conservative senators. The advantage to conservatives in receiving valuable committee assignments vanished in the 1970s and 1980s.
One question that remains open is the degree to which the legislative formulation stage of the career has changed over time. The time consuming nature of the data collection made it impossible to examine this question here. In future work, I intend to consider the possibility of change. This dissertation suggests that the gap between junior and senior senators is closing somewhat, although it still remains. Given the finding presented here and the evidence in previous work, I expect that seniority and committee position enhanced a senator's effectiveness and activity even more in the 1950s, and possibly the 1960s.
Implications
In the first chapter of this dissertation, I argued that a study of Senate careers would provide information to evaluate two current phenomena that are likely to have a great effect on the Senate. The first was the large scale turnover in the Senate caused by a wave of retirements in 1992, 1994, and 1996. In the 1990s, over 30 senators left the Senate voluntarily, while several others lost reelection bids. The second phenomena is the term limitations debate. While the retirements mean an influx of younger members, term limits would mean both more new members and shorter careers. Term limits supporters seek to shorten the careers of U.S. senators
226 by imposing mandatory limits on service. What might a less experienced membership mean for the Senate?
The results presented here suggest that seniority provides clear dividends to senators that both directly and indirectly lead to more effective legislating. An influx of new members suggests two possibilities for the level of legislative production in the Senate. First, with a less experienced membership, the Senate may lower its production generally. It is possible that without the most experienced legislators who know the legislative process and understand the often arcane parliamentary procedures the Senate will produce less legislation. This may be especially true if the newer members are more ideologically rigid and less amenable to compromise, as many of the senators I interviewed suggested.
Second, the institution may be further transformed to meet the demands of its new membership. If lack of experience leads to decreased legislative productivity, senators may seek to alter the rules and practices of the institution to facilitate regaining productivity. For example, there could be movement to limit the use of holds on legislation which allow individual senators to delay consideration of a bill. Or, perhaps senators will once again reexamine Rule XXII, which governs the cloture process, and make filibustering more difficult. If productivity is at issue, then making it easier to end debate on legislation would facilitate the passage of legislation. In addition, there are numerous potential changes that cannot be anticipated at this time. If the Senate membership adjusts its rules to encourage greater productivity from its less experienced membership, it is
227 potentially sacrificing some of the power of individual members. The two rules changes I suggest would facilitate legislating at the expense of individual prerogatives. While movement away from individual rights may serve the needs of the collective membership, it is inconsistent with the trend toward increased individualism in the post World War II era. It is also inconsistent with the vision of the Senate as a body concerned with deliberation and minority rights.
Future Research
There are several areas of the Senate career left to explore. As previously noted, there is the question of historical variation in the legislative formulation stage. The suggestion of this work is that the gap between junior and senior senators may be closing. Yet, without information about legislative activity and success in the 1950s and 1960s, there is no way to examine the existence of this change, or its magnitude.
One aspect of the Senate career that has been considered only in passing here is the time and effort senators spend on work that relates directly to their constituents. Clearly, attention to constituency is related to the development of the Senate career, especially a senator’s electoral fortunes and a senator’s allocation of resources in Washington. In fact, in my interviews, several former senators alluded to the apparent trade off between spending time on constituent interests and being a player in national policy-making. Exploring the
228 developments in constituency attention across the career may give additional insight into legislative formulation.
Perhaps the most intriguing possibility for future work is to tie the development of the Senate career more closely to changes in the institution. If the democratization of the Senate has been overstated, why did it fall short? What is it about the Senate as an institution that makes change so difficult even in the face of massive membership turnover? The lessons learned might inform decisions about future reform movements in the Senate.
229 Appendix A
Standardized Scores
In several chapters of this dissertation, I have employed standard scores to measure several variables that may be sensitive to differences across Congresses. To compare senators formal position attainment in different time periods, it is necessary to control for differences in the number of committee positions. If such controls are not included, then any inferences evidence of change over the career may be influenced by changes in the number of committee positions rather than tenure itself. Likewise, to compare senators legislative activity and success in different time periods, it is necessary to control for differences in the number of bills introduced and considered in the Senate. This allows for greater confidence that the evidence reflects individual career changes rather than workload differences.
One way to control for these temporal differences is the employment of standardized scores, which measure the variable in standard deviation units. Standard scores have a mean of value of 0 and a variance of 1. Therefore, a unit change in the standardized variable is a one standard deviation change.
230 Consequently, the measures examine relative levels of activity, effectiveness, and institutional position rather than raw levels of activity, effectiveness, or position.
Standard scores, also referred to a "z-scores," are calculated (Gujarati 1988):
Xi-X z = -----
By using standard scores, I trade more easily interpretable results for increased confidence that intra- Congress variation is not biasing the results. The potential problem with using standard scores is that interpretation of the values is difficult. Talking about variables in standard deviation units does not provide easily understandable information. What does a one standard deviation change in the committee power scale actually mean? Some hint of the magnitude of the change can be shown by examining the average standard deviation across the Congresses in the study (see Chapter 6) . However, the costs of potential bias produced by intra-Congress variation in legislative activity and institutional positions make the tradeoff of less easily interpreted results necessary.
231 APPENDIX B
INSTITUTIONAL POSITION SCALES
Committee Power Scale
The Committee Power Scale was created based on information about transfers across Senate committees provided in Endersby and McCurdy (1996). Using the Bullock and Sprague (1969) method of quantifying committee transfer information, Endersby and McCurdy calculate the pairwise transfer scores for individual committees from the 80th through 103rd Congresses. The Bullock and Sprague pairwise transfer index is designed to judge the relative preference of one committee over another. It provides the ratio of acquired assignments to the sum of the assignments acquired and surrendered. Put another way, it divides the number of senators transferring to the committee by the number of senators transferring on or off the committee. Since it is a pairwise measure, the only movement that is considered is from one committee to another. In other words, transfers are meaningful only if a senator leaves one committee for another committee. If a senator simply surrendered a committee assignment without receiving another, it is not considered a transfer.
232 There is some data missing from the Endersby and McCurdy article. The Budget, Small Business, and Veteran's Affairs Committee scores are presented in a footnote only because the low number of transfers to and from the committees make the scores somewhat suspect. The Budget Committee score was used since its placement among the more attractive committees has been reinforced by the previous literature (Smith and Deering 1990, Sinclair 1988) and in interviews with former senators. The Small Business and Veteran's Affairs Committees are not very attractive committees. Sinclair and Smith and Deering classify Veteran's Affairs as an unrequested or undesirable committee. Small Business is classified as a mixed policy/constituency committee by Smith and Deering and is excluded from Sinclair's analysis. Since the literature suggests that these two committees are among the least desirable in the Senate, they were given the mean score of the least desirable category, which included the District of Columbia and Civil Service and Post Office Committees. The transfer index scores are shown in Table B.l.
One concern in using the scores is that there is some suggestion that the relative value of seats on different committees has changed over time. Endersby and McCurdy suggest that the relative rankings, and as a result the transfer index scores, may have changed after the committee reforms of the 1970s. The small number of post-reform transfers makes any inference tentative, since the scores are sensitive to a low number of transfers. Some comfort
233 can be taken in the fact that all of the analysis was replicated using an additional measure, the Big Four Power Index, described below.
In order to account for the enhanced status of party and committee leaders, transfer scores reported by Endersby and McCurdy were used as the raw material for the Committee Power Scale. Additional weight was given to positions as reported in Table B.2.
For each committee assignment, senators were given a particular score. Senators who were not leaders were given the Bullock and Sprague pairwise transfer score for that committee. For example, a senator serving on the Foreign Relations Committee received a score of .855 for that assignment. Committee leaders, chairs and ranking members, were given a weighted committee score. The chair of the Rules Committee received a score of .600 for that position. Finally, party leaders and whips were given weighted scores based on the highest committee position, the Appropriations Committee. The majority leader received a score of 2.586 for that position.
The scores for each individual committee assignment were summed, creating the overall Committee Power Scale score for an individual senator in a given Congress.
234 Bullock and Sprague Index Committees: Transfer Index Score: Appropriations .862 Foreign Relations .855 Finance .844 Budget .750 Judiciary .697 Armed Services .604 Commerce .591 Aeronautics .438 Rules and Administration .300 Interior .281 Labor .276 Government Operations .265 Agriculture .258 Banking .233 Public Works®’ .196 District of Columbia .091 Veteran's Affairs .079 Small Business .079 Civil Service and Post Office .067 Source: Endersby and McCurdy (1996).
Table B.l Committee Transfer Scores for the U.S. Senate.
The Public Works Committee score does not appear in the original article. It was provided by James Endersby in correspondence. 235 Position Value Committee Member Bullock and Sprague Pairwise Transfer Index Score Committee Chair 2 * Committee Score Ranking Member 1.5 * Committee Score Majority Leader 3 * Highest Committee Score Minority Leader 2.25 * Highest Committee Score Majority Whip 1.25 * Highest Committee Score Minority Whip Highest Committee Score
Table B.2 Committee Power Index.
Big Four Committee Power Scale
An alternative scale was created to more closely approximate the division between the four most prestigious Senate committees and all other assignments. Matthews’ (1972) groundbreaking study of the Senate, work by Sinclair (1988), and interview information suggest there is a clear distinction between the top four committees in the Senate and the others. In fact, the Senate rules limit assignment to these prestigious committees. Under what is commonly referred to as the "Johnson Rule," no senator may be given a second assignment to the Appropriations, Armed Services, Foreign Relations or Finance Committees until all senators have received a seat on one of these four committees.
236 For each committee assignment, senators were scored based on the values presented in Table B.3. As with the Committee Power Scale, the scores of senators holding committee or party leadership positions were weighted to reflect the additional power inherent in these positions. The individual committee scores were summed in order to create a Big Four Power Index score for each senator in an individual Congress.
237 Position Value Committee Member Big Four Committee 2 Other Standing Committee 1 Committee Chair Big Four Committee 4 Other Standing Committee 3 Committee Ranking Member Big Four Committee 3 Other Standing Committee 2 Majority Leader 5 Minority Leader 4 Majority Whip 2 Minority Whip 1
Table B,3 Big Four Committee Power Scale.
238 APPENDIX C
POOLED TIME SERIES REGRESSION:
FIXED EFFECTS AND RANDOM EFFECTS MODELS.
The primary difference between the fixed effects (the
Least Squares with Dummy Variables Model) and the random effects (Error Components Model) estimators is how each treats the unit specific residual.®® Consider the model (Stimson
1985) :
= + e,i
where the error is represented by,
e,j = a +
ttj = unit specific residual (Senators)
Tj = time specific residual (Congresses)
Hij = residual specific to units and time
®®I include a brief discussion of the random and fixed effects estimators. For more information, see Greene (1993), Stimson (1985), Sayrs (1989), or Stata (1997:631). 239 The fixed effects estimator creates dummy variables for
i-1 senators and t-1 Congresses. The senator dummy variables control for unit specific residuals and the Congress variables control for the time specific residuals. One problem with the
fixed effects model is that creation of so many dummy variables sacrifices quite a few degrees of freedom. A second problem is that multicollinearity caused by the creation of the dummies likely increases the standard errors and causes less efficient estimates.
The random effects estimator does not separate the unit or time specific residual from the residual specific to units and time. As Stimson (1985:923) states, "...the estimated dummy coefficients are not explanation, but rather summary measures of our ignorance about the causes of the between-unit differences..." Thus, the dummy coefficients are considered as random variables rather than fixed constants and are collected in the error term. One problem with the random effects model is that if the model is misspecified, then the unit effects (which are now part of the error term) are likely correlated with one or more of the independent variables.
240 This violates a crucial assumption of the random effects model
(and Ordinary Least Squares Regression) and leads to biased estimates.
The Hausman Specification test provides one method to guide the selection between fixed and random effects estimators (Green 1993:479; Stata 1997:631). I provide only a brief, non-technical discussion of the Hausman test. For greater elaboration, see Green 1993, Section 16.4.4 or the
Stata Manual (pp. 641-42) . The test is designed to uncover whether the assumption of no correlation between the error term and the independent variables holds for the data at hand.
If the model is correctly specified and if the unit specific residual is not correlated with the independent variables, then the coefficients that are estimated by the fixed-effects estimator and the coefficients estimated by the random effects estimator should not be statistically different. A chi- squared test is used to judge statistical significance. If the Hausman test is not statistically significant, the null hypothesis that the difference in coefficients is not systematic cannot be rejected. In such a case, the random effects estimator can be employed without fear of violating the assumption that the error term and the independent variables are not correlated.
241 The Hausman Specification Test was performed for the legislative effectiveness, bill sponsorship, and amendment sponsorship models. The results are presented in Tables C.l through C.3, shown below. In all three cases, there is no evidence to suggest a systematic difference between coefficients in the fixed versus random effects estimators.
As a result, the random effects model, with its more efficient estimates, is preferred. Note that the comparison between the models does not include the previous experience variables.
Since these variables are time invariant, the fixed effects model cannot estimate coefficients for them. They are collinear with the senator dummy variables created in the fixed effects model. Also, I present only the Hausman results for the models using the logged tenure measure. The Hausman results are very similar when using the number of years in office as the tenure measure.
242 Coefficients Fixed Random Difference Effects Effects Candidate Percent .006 .007 -.001 Committee Power .366 .348 .018 Scale Log of Tenure .195 .276 -.081 Majority .759 .754 .006 Ideology -.040 .050 -.090
Chi-Square (5) = 3.76 Prob>Chi-Square = 0.59
Table C.l Hausman Specification Test for Systematic Differences in Coefficients. Legislative Effectiveness Model (Number of bills and resolutions on which action was taken)
®^Hausman Specification Results are similar when using the legislative batting average. 243 Coefficients Fixed Random Difference Effects Effects Candidate Percent .003 .002 .001 Committee Power Scale .207 .220 -.013 Log of Tenure .300 .291 .009 Majority .440 .413 .027 Ideology -.392 -.177 -.215 Chi-Square (5) = 11.05 Prob>Chi-Square = 0.35
Table C.2 Hausman Specification Test for Systematic Differences in Coefficients. Bill Sponsorship Model.
Coefficients Fixed Random Difference Effects Effects Candidate Percent -.003 -.005 .002 Committee Power Scale .137 .150 -.013 Log of Tenure .105 .072 .033 Majority -.100 -.099 -.001 Ideology -.099 .137 -.237 Chi-Square (5) = 1.33 Prob>Chi-Square = 0.93
Table C.3. Hausman Specification Test for Systematic Difference in Coefficients. Amendment Sponsorship Model,
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