party agendas mpsa slides

8/8/2019 Party Agendas MPSA Slides

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Party Control and Political Agendas

The Influence ofParty on Substantive Eras of Congress

David B. Sparks

Duke University


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Congressional Agendas

Not in the sense of determining how and whenvotes take place.

Rather, in the sense of substantivecharacterization of the nature of issues and topics

under consideration. e.g. the macroeconomy, civil rights, the environment,

etc.


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Determinants of the Agenda

The President

Edwards 1989; Bond and Fleisher 1990; Edwards andBarrett 1999; Edwards and Wood 1999

The Media

McLeod, Becker, and Byrnes 1974; Iyengar 1979; The Electorate

Abbe, et. al. 2003; Baumgartner and Jones 2004

The Parties

Taylor 1998


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Ways to Think About the Agenda

Collective: View of the entire agenda as a bundledset of emphases

Simultaneous: View of all potential topics andissues as possible choices for the allocation of

attention Singular: One or two major topics as

representatives of the agenda

Note: All data from the Policy Agendas Project


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Evidence of Party Influence

If we hypothesize that majority party leadershiphas influence over determining the agenda, we

would expect:

1. Shifts in the nature of the overall agenda to

correspond to transfers of power2. Different majority party leadership choosing to

emphasize different issues


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If we hypothesize that majority party leadershiphas influence over determining the agenda, we

would expect:


correspond to transfers of power2. Different majority party leadership choosing to

emphasize different issues


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Agenda Eras

Congresses grouped across time according to theshape of their agendas.

Considering the agenda as a collective whole

Each congress represented by a point in a-space

Where a is the number of topical classifications


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Network-Constrained Clustering

Generalization of hierarchical clusteringtechniques

Distance Matrix Adjacency Matrix

Clusters must be internally contiguous

Weather example Take daily time series weather data (precipitation,

humidity, high/low temperature, etc.) for a givenlocation

Find principal components

Cluster days in the year

Identify four seasons


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Agenda Eras and Party Control

Cluster agendas of both chambers over time with

a contiguity constraint

Identify 10 eras in the Senate and 6 in the House

To correspond with the number of majority changes

Compare


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Assessing the Fit

Variation of Information (Meila 2007)

Compare two sets of partitions by measuring thedegree to which they place pairs of observationsin the same cluster

31 - 31 = 930 pairs of observations per chamber Vector of length 930 indicating, for each pair, whether

a partition sorts them into the same or differentclusters

Compare the sorting vectors of two differentpartitioning techniques


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Assessing the Fit

Match between agenda-based clusters and

majority-based clusters Senate: 83.0%

House: 64.1%

Significance via comparison to random partitions Senate: Fit better than 78.6% of random partitions

House: Fit better than 53.7% of random partitions

Conclusion: Statistically insignificant relationship


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If we hypothesize that majority party leadership

has influence over determining the agenda, wewould expect:


correspond to transfers of power2. Different majority party leadership

choosing to emphasize different issues


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Modeling Agenda Choices

Multinomial probit model

Predicting allocation of hearings across all possiblemajor topic areas

Using majority partisanship and indicator variables foreach congress, to stand in for external effects

Including the President, the Electorate, the Media, etc.

Looking for Party effects


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Same Estimates in a Table


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Interpreting the Findings

Democrats significantlyincrease attention to:

House: Social Welfare, Foreign Trade, theEnvironment

Senate: Housing and Community Development, theEnvironment

Democrats significantlydecrease attention to:

House: Public Lands and Water Management,Government Operations, Education

Senate: International Affairs and Foreign Aid,Government Operations


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Predicting Majorities

Rather than predicting agendas with information

about the majority party,

Predict the majority party with information aboutagendas.

OLS regression predicting the Democratic swingwithin a chamber, using percentage of hearingson each major topic as dependent variables.


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Conclusions

Era comparison evidence not compelling

Suggests the possibility of a relationship, but notsignificant

Topic prediction evidence more so

Uses all available information Parties predict and are predictable

Supports the Taylor (1998) story of increasedimportance of party leadership importance in

agenda setting in the post-reform era


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Thanks.

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