Partisan Agenda Control and the Dimensionality of Congress

Recent studies have questioned the familiar characterization of Congress as unidimensional. We argue that agenda control, orchestrated through the House Rules Committee and other techniques, can make multidimensional congresses appear more unidimensional. We evaluate this argument by examining the r...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:American politics research 2014-07, Vol.42 (4), p.600-627
Main Authors: Dougherty, Keith L., Lynch, Michael S., Madonna, Anthony J.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Committees
Correlation analysis
Ideologies
Ideology
Legislative Bodies
Measurement
Multidimensional analysis
Partisanship
Political parties
Variance
Votes
Voting
Voting Rules
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Summary:Recent studies have questioned the familiar characterization of Congress as unidimensional. We argue that agenda control, orchestrated through the House Rules Committee and other techniques, can make multidimensional congresses appear more unidimensional. We evaluate this argument by examining the relationship between measures of unidimensionality and various measures of party control for the House of Representatives from 1875 to 1997, at both the roll-call level and congress level. Our findings contribute to an expanding literature explaining why a single dimension could explain most of the variance in voting data, even if latent ideology is multidimensional.
ISSN:1532-673X
1552-3373
DOI:10.1177/1532673X13511109