Legislative Studies Quarterly

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• Does Electing Women Reduce Corruption? A Regression Discontinuity Approach

  Previous studies uncovered a negative relationship between the proportion of women in public office and corruption. These findings have inspired anti‐corruption programs around the world. It remains unclear, however, whether there is a causal link between the share of women in office and malfeasance. For instance, gender differences in political experience or access to corruption networks might explain this relationship. We leverage the gradual implementation of gender quotas in Spain to isolate the effects of female descriptive representation on public misconduct and adjudicate between alternative explanations. The analyses suggest a causal link between gender and malfeasance in office: the reform generated an exogenous increase in the share of women elected, which led to a decrease in corruption that was sustained over time. This finding enhances our understanding of the effect of public officials' characteristics on policy outcomes, and of the role of parity laws in promoting political change.

• Distinctive Voices: Political Speech, Rhetoric, and the Substantive Representation of Women in European Parliaments

  As the share of women in parliaments rises, increased attention is paid to how they substantively represent women. Meanwhile, the availability of parliamentary speech data has enabled researchers to dissect politicians’ rhetorical patterns. We combine these two literatures to ask whether rhetorical differences between men and women in parliament are connected to style, policy, and preferences of women voters. We apply machine‐learning models to speeches from five West European parliaments (2000–18) to measure the femininity of the rhetoric used in each speech. Results show that women and men talk differently in parliament, and that this distinctiveness is due to both style and substance. Combining these results with public opinion surveys, we find that women MPs have the most distinctively “feminine” discourse on issues that are most salient to women in society. These findings showcase the direct connection between descriptive and substantive representation of women in contemporary democracies.

• Conducting Interview Projects in the US Congress: Analyzing the Methods of Experts in the Field

  The field of political science is seeing renewed interest in studying the US Congress via one‐on‐one interviews. Yet, the qualitative research methods literature on this topic has lagged behind, with few recent treatments available. The result is uncertainty regarding how best to access and interview Congress. In this study, we implement a novel study design, interviewing over 20 authors—who collectively represent nearly all Congressional qualitative interview studies from the past several decades—about their research practices. Whereas the existing literature focuses on lessons learned from one or two authors’ research experiences, this approach allows us to synthesize a wide range of researchers’ practices and perspectives, identifying areas of consensus and dispute and ultimately providing comprehensive advice to qualitative researchers. As interviewing Congress becomes increasingly difficult amidst growing political polarization and distrust of academics, this methodological advice comes at an opportune time for researchers studying the US Congress and beyond.

• The Last Shall Be Last: Ethnic, Racial, and Nativist Bias in Distributive Politics

  Examining historical budget and spending patterns from state legislatures, we show that inequality evident in other realms of American politics had a profound, dollars‐and‐cents, impact on the expenditures that flowed to political districts. Given the salience of race, class, and immigration status to American politics, we would expect that distributive spending reflects the same biases that shape voting patterns, representation, and policymaking. But, to our knowledge, this question has not previously been studied. Drawing on detailed, archival data from six states in the 1921–61 era, we uncover clear evidence of bias. Districts with more immigrants win significantly less money, controlling for a host of other factors. So do districts with large numbers of non‐whites. Thus residents of districts dominated by native‐born, Anglo constituencies receive more dollars than those in other districts, even when controlling for the identities of legislators and other characteristics of the districts.

• How Do General Election Incentives Affect the Visible and Invisible Primary?

  Previous research finds that nominating more centrist candidates increases vote share and win probability in congressional general elections. Yet party primary elections often nominate non‐centrist candidates, increasing polarization between the American parties. We develop a model of choice in nomination politics that shows when and how actors respond to incentives of the general election. We then combine 200 million contribution records with data on 22,400 candidates in 7100 House primary elections from 1980 through 2016. We find that potential candidates and primary voters respond to general election incentives but do not find clear evidence for contributors or the winnowing process. Connecting these results back to our model, this implies that actors in the invisible primary either place higher value on in‐party candidate ideology or have different beliefs about the general election than do primary voters. Our evidence adds to a body of research that suggests primary voters are a larger moderating force than elites in American party politics.

• Foxes and Hedgehogs in Legislatures: Why Do Some MPs Become Policy Specialists and Others Generalists?

  Which legislators become specialized in particular policy areas (hedgehogs), and which develop into policy generalists (foxes)? Instead of focusing on the individual characteristics of MPs, we build on institutionalist literature and argue that an MP's specialization arises from an interaction between MP and parliamentary leadership. These interactions generate demand for policy generalists depending on a leadership position, committee membership, government status, and parliamentary group size. Policy specialization is measured by how many different topics a legislator addresses in Parliament. Using data from Germany from 1998 to 2013, topic‐coded parliamentary questions are combined with MPs' personal and partisan data. Descriptively, foxes are common in Germany and dominate in Parliament. The subsequent estimation indicates that policy specialists are related to government status and parliamentary group size.

• Closing the Gap: An Analysis of Women's Representation in State Legislatures and the Gender Pay Gap

  In several US state legislatures, the number of women lawmakers has recently reached unprecedented levels. This raises the following question: what are the policy consequences associated with an increase in women legislators? While legislative scholars have uncovered that an increase in representation through women state lawmakers can result in different policy outcomes, one outcome that has not been considered is the size of the gender wage gap. In this research note, we develop the theoretical linkage that connects gender representation in state legislatures to the level of pay inequality within a state. We test our theoretical expectation with two different measures of pay inequality at the state level using panel data. Our results suggest that an increase in women state lawmakers corresponds to a smaller wage gap between men and women within the state. These findings deepen our understanding of the importance of gender representation in state legislatures.

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• The Legislative Agenda in 13 African Countries: A Comprehensive Database

  While African legislatures have been receiving increasing academic attention in recent years, efforts to expand our understanding of these institutional bodies have been hampered by a dearth of reliable quantitative data regarding their activity and output. To rectify this issue, we have collected and issue‐classified data on the legislative agenda in 13 African countries. We leverage this new dataset to explore how democratic development affects the legislative agenda. We show that legislatures in more democratic countries have a larger, broader, and more dynamic agenda, and we propose an extensive future research agenda for legislative politics in Africa.

Featured documents

• A God of Vengeance and of Reward? Voters and Accountability

  Theories of democratic politics prize congruence between citizens’ preferences and their elected representatives’ actions in office. Elections are a critical means for achieving such policy congruence, providing voters the opportunity to chasten representatives who are out of step with constituent...

• Pathways to Power: The Role of Preparliamentary Careers and Political Human Capital in the Obtainment of Cabinet Positions

  Understanding the rise to power is central to the study of politics. Yet, we still know little about the career paths of influential politicians like ministers. The literature assumes that dominant preparliamentary occupations (e.g., lawyer, local offices) predict promotion. We move beyond this...

• Constituency Size and Evaluations of Government

  This article examines the relationship between legislative constituency size and opinions about the US state government. I show that over the course of US history, the states have disconnected the size of their legislatures from population change, resulting in a growing constituency size in nearly...

• Rules and the Containment of Conflict in Congress

  Congressional rules can be violated by majority vote, but the application of those rules often leads to different outcomes than would prevail under direct majority rule. Why does Congress enact rules in the first place, and why would not a majority violate those rules whenever it disliked the...

• The Advantage of Incumbents in Coalitional Bargaining

  Political parties frequently form coalitions with each other to pursue office or policy payoffs. Contrary to a prominent argument, the distribution of rents within the coalition does not always reflect the relative sizes of the coalition members. We propose that this is at least partially due to an ...

• Congressional Bargaining and the Distribution of Grants

  In the United States, state and local governments receive over $700 billion annually in federal grants, yet relatively little is known about how Congress designs these programs. I formalize a theory of congressional bargaining over grants and test the theory using an original dataset of Senate...

• Political Uncertainty and the Vote‐of‐Confidence Procedure

  I develop a model to study the effects of political uncertainty on a prime minister’s ability to use a vote‐of‐confidence procedure to determine policy outcomes. In contrast to previous studies, I model political uncertainty as an area in policy space in which the probability of the prime minister’s...

• Heeding to the Losers: Legislators' Trade‐Policy Preferences and Legislative Behavior

  Electoral incentives affect legislators' responsiveness to voters, parties, and other stakeholders. Proportional representation (PR) electoral systems with party control over nominations foster party discipline and reduce legislators' responsiveness to local constituents when at odds with the party....

• How Do General Election Incentives Affect the Visible and Invisible Primary?

  Previous research finds that nominating more centrist candidates increases vote share and win probability in congressional general elections. Yet party primary elections often nominate non‐centrist candidates, increasing polarization between the American parties. We develop a model of choice in...

• Do Voters Know Enough to Punish Out‐of‐Step Congressional Candidates?

  Traditional democratic norms suggest that accountability requires voters to be able to accurately perceive the positions of candidates for office. When asked to place congressional candidates on an ideological spectrum, voters show a surprisingly high level of both inaccuracy and variation in the...