U.S. Senator's Ideal Points for Higher Education: Documenting Partisanship, 1965-2004

Few studies of higher education politics have systematically analyzed the voting patterns of elected officials. This paper analyzes roll call data from the United States Senate on votes regarding higher education issue for the years 1965-2004. Senators' ideal points for higher education policy...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of higher education (Columbus) 2010-09, Vol.81 (5), p.619-644
Main Author: Doyle, William R.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Colleges
Conflict
Congressional voting
Data Analysis
Education policy
Educational Policy
Higher Education
Inference
Legislators
No confidence motions & votes
Pattern Recognition
Political Attitudes
Political parties
Political partisanship
Politics
Senators
Studies
Universities
Voting
Voting patterns
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Summary:Few studies of higher education politics have systematically analyzed the voting patterns of elected officials. This paper analyzes roll call data from the United States Senate on votes regarding higher education issue for the years 1965-2004. Senators' ideal points for higher education policy are estimated utilizing Bayesian methods for estimation and inference, with posterior distributions for parameters estimated via Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods. Results indicate that senators' ideal points for higher education are arrayed on a conventional left-right continuum. Senators found to be liberal or conservative in studies of other issues are found to be on opposite sides of the continuum on higher education voting. The number of divisive votes has increased in recent years.
ISSN:0022-1546
1538-4640
DOI:10.1080/00221546.2010.11779069