The majority-party disadvantage: revising theories of legislative organization

Date Issued
2017-10-24Publisher Version
10.1561/100.00015112Author(s)
Feigenbaum, James J.
Fouirnaies, Alexander
Hall, Andrew B.
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https://hdl.handle.net/2144/26702Citation (published version)
James J. Feigenbaum, Alexander Fouirnaies, Andrew B. Hall. 2017. "The Majority-Party Disadvantage: Revising Theories of Legislative Organization." Quarterly Journal of Political Science, Volume 12, Issue 3, pp. 269 - 300.Abstract
Dominant theories of legislative organization in the U.S. rest on the notion that the majority party arranges legislative matters to enhance its electoral fortunes. Yet, we find little evidence for a short-term electoral advantage for the majority party in U.S. state legislatures. Furthermore, there appears to be a pronounced downstream majority-party disadvantage. To establish these findings, we propose a technique for aggregating the results of close elections to obtain as-if random variation in majority-party status. We argue that the results from this approach are consistent with a phenomenon of inter-temporal balancing, which we link to other forms of partisan balancing in U.S. elections. The article thus necessitates revisions to our theories of legislative organization, offers new arguments for balancing theories, and lays out an empirical technique for studying the effects of majority-party status in legislative contexts.
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© 2017 J. J. Feigenbaum, A. Fouirnaies and A. B. HallCollections
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