Compensation, Opportunity, and Information: A Comparative Analysis of Legislative Nonresponse in the American States

• DOI: 10.1177/1065912917709355
• Author: David Fortunato,Tessa Provins
• Date: 01 September 2017
• Published date: 01 September 2017
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912917709355

Political Research Quarterly

2017, Vol. 70(3) 644 –656

© 2017 University of Utah

Reprints and permissions:

sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav

DOI: 10.1177/1065912917709355

journals.sagepub.com/home/prq

Article

Introduction

In the 1999–2000 session of the Alabama House of

Representatives, members failed to take a position on

over 24 percent of roll-call votes. In the Wisconsin House

during that same period, representatives recorded a vote

on over 99 percent of roll calls. Legislative nonresponse,

whether it is strategic abstention, declining to vote for a

lack of information, or simply due to absence from the

chamber, is a fundamental failing of legislators to repre-

sent their constituents—a break in the process of repre-

sentative democracy. Each time legislators decline to

vote on a legislative proposal, they silence the voice of

their constituents, potentially contributing to the realiza-

tion of an outcome they oppose, and skew the relation-

ship between the public’s preferences and the policies its

government delivers. Yet, despite its normative salience,

the contextual variation observed among the legislative

assemblies of the United States (and legislatures around

the world, for that matter) has gone largely unexplored.

Instead, scholarly examination has predominately argued

that the decision to vote is motivated by individual con-

cerns, such as careerism (Cohen and Noll 1991; Hibbing

1986) or dissonance between the preferences of a legisla-

tor’s party and his or her district (e.g., Rosas and Shomer

2008). By focusing almost exclusively on individual con-

cerns, the extant literature is largely unable to explain

variation in aggregate nonresponse rates across legisla-

tures and therefore does not allow us to understand how

institutional factors, such as compensation, informational

resources, and so forth, may shape a legislator’s decision

to be present and vote—a legislator’s decision to repre-

sent their constituents. In this manuscript, we address this

opportunity in the literature and provide an answer to the

question: why are nonresponse rates higher in some leg-

islatures than others?

Our explanation is rooted in simple logic: nonresponse

is a function of legislators’ willingness and ability to cast

a vote. Where past studies have overwhelmingly focused

on individual-level factors, however, we step back and

consider the contextual factors that contribute to this

choice. Building on the existing literature on legislative

professionalism, we ask, how may legislative bodies

increase their members’ willingness and ability to be

present in the chamber when the roll is called and take a

position on that proposal? We use the ninety-nine state

709355PRQXXX10.1177/1065912917709355Political Research QuarterlyFortunato and Provins

research-article2017

1Texas A&M University, College Station, USA

2University of California, Merced, USA

Corresponding Author:

David Fortunato, Department of Political Science, Texas A&M

University, 2035 Allen Building, 4348 TAMU, College Station, TX

77843-4348, USA.

Email: fortunato@tamu.edu

Compensation, Opportunity, and

Information: A Comparative Analysis

of Legislative Nonresponse in the

American States

David Fortunato1 and Tessa Provins2

Abstract

We present a parsimonious framework for understanding contextual variation in legislative nonresponse. We argue

that legislators’ propensity to vote is a function of their willingness and ability to be physically present in the chamber

and determine the best position to take on a given proposal. From this framework, we derive four hypotheses

regarding the compensation legislators receive, their opportunity to pursue work outside of the chamber, and their

informational resources. Analyzing data on over seven million voting opportunities across two sessions in ninety-

nine chambers, we find robust evidence that longer legislative sessions decrease nonresponse and that informational

resources increase nonresponse, but no evidence that compensation influences nonresponse.

Keywords

institutions, legislative professionalism, legislative voting, nonresponse