R. Douglas Arnold Lit. Review (Congress)

Midterm lit review for Claire Haeg's U.S. Congress class, spring 07


In The Logic of Congressional Action, R. Douglas Arnold attacks the express goal of explaining the motivation and inner workings behind congressional policy decisions. Why, specifically, does congress enact policies that provide general benefits at times while limiting benefits to certain groups or geographic constituencies at others? The logic, he argues, lies in the principle legislative goal of reelection and the series of estimations that follow, including the propensity of constituents to form policy opinions and, thereafter, to act upon those opinions via the electoral ballot.
The Logic of Congressional Action paves new avenues for the analysis of congressional decision making, though its innovative theoretical nature creates questions that are left unanswered by the basic theory itself. Yet in spite of these shortcomings, Arnold has written a piece that stands as a foundation for a new line of scholarship – one that ranges from the use of simple assumptions in answering basic questions about the legislature to the application of theoretical premises about public opinion and blame placement in broader social analyses.

The Logic of R. Douglas Arnold
Arnold’s (1990) work sets out to answer a question of his own making, general as it is: “Why does Congress enact the policies it does?” (p. 3). He seeks to answer why Congress enacts legislation that benefits certain groups with specific and often narrow geographic and interest benefits. He “sets forth both the conditions that encourage legislators to produce particularistic policies and serve organizes interests and the conditions that prompt legislators to serve more general interests” (p. 3).
Arnold (1990) argues that there are three principle influences in congressional decision-making: manipulation on the part of coalition leaders, anticipation of voters’ actions in future elections, and a degree of free agency (p. 5). “The theory assumes,” he writes, “that members of Congress care intensely about reelection…This means simply that legislators will do nothing to advance their other goals if such activities threaten their principle goal [of reelection]” (p. 5). He goes so far as to “assume that when legislators have to make a decision they first ask which alternative contributes more to their chances for reelection” (p. 7).
The principle goal of Arnold’s (1990) book, then is “to discover how legislators estimate the electoral consequences of their policy decisions so that they can compare an unending stream of paired alternatives (p. 7) – alternatives, he writes, that are at times defined by successful coalition leaders who are, furthermore, charged with the task of anticipating the potential actions of legislators based on said legislators’ electoral goals (p. 7). Anticipation, as Arnold (1990) repeatedly puts it, is a major part of his analysis. “Rather than assuming that policy preferences are fixed and asking what impact established preferences have on legislators’ decisions,” he writes, “I introduce the notion of ‘potential preferences’ and ask how legislators adjust their decisions in anticipation of them” (p. 10).
Arnold’s (1990) principle theory of congressional influence and logic is broken into four steps:
Citizens establish policy preferences by evaluating both policy proposals and policy effects
Citizens choose among congressional candidates by evaluating both the candidates’ policy positions and their connections with policy effects.
Legislators choose among policy proposals by estimating citizens’ potential policy preferences and by estimating the likelihood that citizens might incorporate these policy preferences into their choices among candidates in subsequent congressional elections.
Coalition leaders adopt strategies for enacting their policy proposals by anticipating legislators’ electoral calculations, which in turn requires that they estimate both citizens’ potential policy preferences and the likelihood that citizens might incorporate these policy preferences into their choices among congressional candidates (p. 14-15).
Arnold (1990) includes examples pertaining to energy, tax, and economic policy in the later part of the book. He demonstrates, in short, that Congress will often serve particular interests at the expense of diffuse interests, but sometimes reverses itself, thus demonstrating the power of policy-conscious publics to persuade legislators that the public will appreciate the benefits on election day.
To his first point, Arnold (1990) writes that “legislators need to estimate which of their constituents might divide on the issue, and how deeply they might feel about it” (p. 17). He argues that they develop policy preferences based on a simple analysis of cause and effect – both in the prospective sense, such that constituents would logically presume that certain results and consequences would follow from specific policy directions, and in the retrospective sense, such that constituents draw conclusions based on past results and the policies that generated them (p. 17-19). What’s more, constituents’ ability and desire to follow and assess the effects and path of legislation depends on the policy effects status as “early order” or “late order” effects. Arnold (1990) writes that “for short causal chains, retrospective evaluation is not fundamentally different from prospective evaluation. It is just as easy…When causal chains are very long, however, retrospective evaluation becomes virtually impossible” (p. 20-21).
Arnold (1990) specifies several categories of costs and benefits, including “general,” “group,” and “geographic” costs, and argues that “the perceived incidence of costs and benefits is partly a function of the length of the causal chain” (p. 26). Furthermore, he writes, the strength of constituents’ feelings on legislation, and, thus, we might suppose, propensity to act on those feelings, relies on the magnitude and timing of a specific cost or benefit, the proximity of a citizen to those who are affected, and the presence of an instigator to “reveal citizens’ stake in an outcome” (p. 28-30). These factors, he writes, “affect the likelihood that a citizen will perceive a specific cost or benefit” (p. 30).
The next question addressed, then, pertains to a related point – the second of Arnold’s (1990) four steps. How, in essence, do citizens’ policy preferences relate to their choice of candidate? Arnold (1990) writes that there are four paths by which citizens make their decision: “Voters may decide how to vote on the basis of either policy positions or policy effects, and they may connect their policy evaluations either to the candidate directly or to the party first and only indirectly to the candidate” (p. 40). The evaluations based on party and candidate positions, he writes, are prospective evaluations, whereas the evaluations based on party and incumbent performance are retrospective in nature (p. 40-41). Citizens’ retrospective evaluations can be as simple as 1) whether conditions are improving or deteriorating in society and 2) which party is currently in charge or which candidate is currently in office, and thus, in some sense, responsible for those conditions (p. 41, 44).
Arnold (1990) writes that a number of other factors determine citizens’ voting preferences, and addresses the handling of an enormous analytical task by a relatively inattentive citizenry (p. 57). He states that “whenever an election occurs a citizen merely retrieves the four values, combines them into a single net present value, and votes according to its sign” (p. 58).
The third and, as far as is relevant to Arnold’s (1990) methodical analysis, final step in the process of congressional decision-making is the weighing of options by legislators, given their estimations of citizens’ potential reactions, with the principle goal of reelection constantly at the forefront of their strategy. “The question for legislators,” he writes, “is how much they should consider the known policy preferences of attentive publics as opposed to the potential policy preferences of inattentive publics when they are deciding which sides to support in a policy dispute” (p. 65). Attentive publics, he notes, are those that are affected by a policy’s costs or benefits, as noted in the first section (p. 65).
Legislators, Arnold (1990) writes, should have little trouble estimating subsequent action by attentive publics if their representative were to vote contrary to their preferences (p. 67); the issue, he writes, lies in the “attempt of the legislator to estimate three things: the probability that an opinion might be aroused, the shape of that opinion, and its potential for electoral consequences” as related to inattentive publics (p. 68). These can depend on such previously mentioned factors as the traceability of a policy effect or the presence of an instigator (p. 68-69). To estimate the potential reaction of inattentive publics, Arnold (1990) suggests that a legislator consider how he or she would incite the inattentive publics against him or herself if they stood for an alternative policy position, as well as the potential presence of instigators to agitate public opinion against the legislator (p. 70). Arnold (1990) concludes that, to reach a decision, a legislator needs to “1) identify all the attentive and inattentive publics…2) estimate the direction and intensity of their preferences and potential preferences, 3) estimate the probability that the potential preferences will be transformed into real preferences, weight all these preferences according to the size of the various attentive and inattentive publics, and 5) give special weight to the preferences of the legislator’s consistent supporters (p. 84).
To conclude the basic outline of Arnold’s (1990) impact on the analysis of congressional decision-making, the first three steps of his theory of congressional influence are the most definitive and significant as pertains to his central goal of demonstrating that electoral goals drive legislators to enact both general and particularized benefits. The role of coalition leaders is not to be ignored, especially in the event that those roles are filled by party leaders, wielders of the power to award nominations and, in the post-Wright era, positions of power within the legislature; however, much of the study regarding coalition leaders depends on their understanding of the congressional decision-making process itself – the first three steps in Arnold’s (1990) theory – such that the power of influence could be made to hold more power when leaders know what a legislator will emphasize in a high-stakes candidacy. As Arnold (1990) writes, “neither the existence nor the talent of coalition leaders is explainable within the current model” (p. 132).
Arnold’s (1990) argument, in essence, is that congressional decision making is stilted on a delicate balance of estimating policy preferences of inattentive constituents, the likelihood that policy preferences will henceforth have electoral results, and the need to appeal to attentive publics and the legislator’s loyal base, all on the basis of which course of action will garner the best electoral results. The aforementioned estimates are based upon the costs and effects of policies on specific constituents, as well as the traceability of certain effects to original policy. What’s more, citizens may develop preferences either retrospectively or prospectively, based on incumbent and party performance or party and candidate positions.

Innovation and inherent theoretical shortcomings: initial reaction to The Logic of Congressional Action
Reviews of Arnold (1990) are largely mixed; praise is accompanied by criticism, as an innovative framework for congressional analysis is accompanied by new, unanswered questions and issues.
In an untitled review of Arnold’s Book, Lawrence C. Dodd (1992) characterizes The Logic of Congressional Action as “one of the most illuminating books I have ever read on Congress” (p. 1052). Yet Dodd (1992) also faults Arnold for failing to “deliver on this central goal” of demonstrating “that electoral calculations can account for the enactment of general, as well as particularized, benefits” (p. 1052).
Specifically, Dodd (1992) cites the confusion in the text “over the distinction between particularized benefits and collective goods,” this having spawned from Arnold’s arguing “that general benefits refer to ‘collective goods that people value because they believe everyone profits’,” and that “particularistic goods, by contrast, are the benefits that fall on identifiable group or geographic interests” (p. 1052).
“The trouble,” Dodd writes, “is that Arnold assumes that group or geographic interests are the only particularistic interests that concern voters. In point of fact, much of the tension between private and collective interest arises from citizens’ desire for highly salient, specific, and divisible individual benefits” (p. 1052). Individual benefits, Dodd (1992) argues, cannot compete with general and group benefits for legislators’ support, as Arnold’s theoretical framework suggests and assumes (1052). Dodd (1992) suggests three criterion, which he states ought to be included in the book, which a good must meet to be considered collective: “(1) the program’s primary benefit should be substantial, shared, and indivisible among citizens (e.g. clean air); (2) there should exist real reason to believe that the enactment of the policy would deliver the shared and indivisible benefits (so that such claims are not simply symbolic); and (3) the program should have some substantial private costs, so that government action is required to obtain the beneficial effect” (p. 1052-1053).
Given these criterion, Dodd (1992) asserts, none of Arnold’s case studies (economic, tax, and energy policy) fits into the category of collective goods. In fact, Dodd (1992) argues, the examples used serve to contradict (if not reverse) the original theory, especially the fourth part, pertaining to coalition leaders: “What Arnold has demonstrated is that coalition leaders exploited legislators’ increased vulnerabilities in the 1970s and 1980s in order to pursue an expansion of privatized and individualized benefits and to reverse historic concerns with collective goods and the general public interest” (p. 1053).
Dodd’s (1992) more relevant point, however, lies in Arnold’s underlying theoretical question and development. Can Arnold, he asks, demonstrate that the electoral calculations of which he writes apply to collective goods (p. 1053)? In order to do this, he argues, Arnold must do two things: “Arnold must develop a more sophisticated interpretation of the voting public, with citizens, as well as politicians, attentive not just to immediate policy benefits but to long-term policy effects and concerned, therefore, not just with private and particularized policy agendas but with shared and indivisible policy benefits” (p. 1053). Second, according to Dodd (1992), Arnold would need to devise “a determination of the institutional arrangements that facilitate authentic congressional deliberation over whether to deliver (and how best to fund) collective goods” (p. 1053).
Arnold’s work is met by Dodd (1992) with a combination of praise for innovation and criticism for its theoretical shortcomings: “The Logic of Congressional Action is destined to become a classic investigation of congressional decision-making and a welcome stimulus to a new generation of theorizing and policy analysis. Arnold has yet to demonstrate that the electoral calculus of legislators yields general policies providing collective goods, but he is clearly knocking at the door” (p. 1053).
Slightly earlier in the same year that Dodd’s review was published, Daniel J. Reagan (1992) praised Arnold’s book as “an imaginative, insightful addition to congressional scholarship” (p. 687). In fact, Reagan does little other than commend Arnold for his theory and the innovative critical process that produced it.
Reagan (1992) puts a great deal of emphasis on the framework in which Arnold pursued his central questions, which is called “innovative” later in the review (p. 687): “Rather than attacking prevailing paradigms…Arnold wants to refine and expand the literature that centers on the reelection motive to explain congressional behavior” (p. 686). Of course, the assumption that congressional behavior is driven by the reelection motive is hardly innovative. Reagan (1992) explains: “Where Arnold differs from the typical focus on the electoral foundations of congressional behavior is with his claim that ‘the electoral quest’ can move Congress to adopt either particularistic policies or general interest ones…he seeks to specify the conditions that lead electorally driven legislators to adopt particularistic policies, and the conditions that lead them to adopt policies that serve the general interest” (p. 686-687).
Reagan’s (1992) writing is not devoid of criticism – criticism, as Reagan (1992) points out, that Arnold largely brings to readers’ attention himself. “The world that he describes,” Reagan (1992) writes, “is admittedly artificial and less complex than the world inhabited by real legislators” (p. 687). Reagan argues that this simplicity helps Arnold make his arguments, “but it leaves him unable to explain a decisive part of his theory on his own theory’s terms” (p. 687). Though coalition leaders play a key role in the decision-making process, Reagan (1992) quotes from Arnold, “‘neither the existence nor the talent of coalition leaders is explainable within the current model’ (p.132)” (p. 688). Yet one resultant strength of Arnold’s work, Reagan (1992) argues, “is that it thus points beyond itself, beyond the artificial world…Arnold’s contribution lies not only in refining the predictive capacities of ‘the electoral connection,’ but also in suggesting these limits to its explanatory powers” (p. 688).
In 1994, Steven P. Croley of the University of Michigan Law School reviewed The Logic of Congressional Action in conjunction with John Mark Hansen’s Gaining Access: Congress and the Farm Lobby, 1919-1981. “While Arnold and Hansen both highlight an insufficiently emphasized issue [the rational-choice theory],” he writes, “their particular arguments concerning the implications of imperfect information leaved unanswered several important questions” (p. 509). He continues: “Indeed, the relationship between imperfect information and the electoral connection – an issue insufficiently developed in many of the classics on legislative behavior – ultimately constitutes the driving engines of their respective theories. For these reasons, and also because [Arnold and Hansen] exhibit several important methodological and substantive similarities, as well as leave open similar questions, they warrant joint praise and criticism” (p. 510).
Specifically, Croley (1994) praises Arnold for his attention to inattentive publics, which he calls “silent publics” (p. 517) and for noting that legislators are themselves imperfectly informed: “In contrast to much of the classic work on legislator decision-making, Arnold and Hansen explore the consequences of the fact that legislators are imperfectly informed with respect to the…variables central to their reelection decision-making calculus” (p. 517).
Yet both authors, Croley (1994) argues, establish questions regarding those consequences that are left unanswered (p. 518). “It is unclear,” he writes, “just how introducing imperfect information about constituents’ responses to costs imposed upon them, without more, solves the puzzle Arnold identifies” (p. 518). Croley (1994) continues: “By explaining that sometimes a legislator imperfectly informed about the future will anticipate that the beneficiaries of general-interest policies will appreciate their gains and will provide electoral advantages to the legislator, Arnold does not answer why that is so. In other words, he provides no reason why a legislator would anticipate that concentrated groups will be less likely to possess electoral resources in the future than in the present” (p. 518-519).
Croley (1994) also points out that Arnold’s implicit assertion that, in assuming the priority status of reelection goals, legislators are inherently risk-averse, may be flawed: “reelection-minded legislators seem likely to be either risk-averse, risk-neutral, or risk-seeking depending on what percentage of the vote they otherwise expect to receive” (p. 520).
Overall, Croley (1994) appears willing to look past Arnold’s shortcomings – which include how data needed to estimate the electoral consequences of any action would be gathered and tested for credibility (p. 522) – when it comes to praising The Logic of Congressional Action for its having initiated a new and quite relevant realm of congressional decision-making analysis. “By pointing in a new and important direction,” he writes, “Arnold and Hansen have advanced the project of understanding the calculus of the reelection-minded legislator” (p. 523). This innovative nature of Arnold’s book – as well its theoretical shortcomings, both self-proclaimed and non-obvious – are the common ground on which the initial reaction by critics and reviewers meet.

Applications both simple and broad: further scholarship based on The Logic of Congressional Action
To address every scholarly work that has cited The Logic of Congressional Action and/or has used its principles and theory to develop a new thesis would be impractical. The selections to be discussed, then, have been chosen on the basis of their own importance to the study of political science, in this case indicated by the number of citations of that work, as well as by the extent to which Arnold’s (1990) work influenced the scholarship.
Jeffrey W. Legro (2000) of the University of Virginia extends Arnold’s (1990) concept of the voters’ mindset, specifically the conception of success or failure and the blame or reward that results (p. 51), to the broad shifting of collective ideas pertaining to public policy. In a section aimed at explaining the change in collective ideas throughout a society, Legro (2000) investigates, more specifically, “the collapse of an extant orthodoxy” (p. 424). This collapse in orthodoxy, he writes, is “driven by the interaction of (1) collective expectations (generated by collective ideas) and (2) the experienced consequences of critical events” (p. 424).
He then brings Arnold’s (1990) analysis of the collective voter mindset into the analysis: “Extant collective ideas contain not only a notion of appropriate action but also a portrayal of what consequences are a success (or socially-approved) versus a failure (or socially stigmatized). This distinction is important because a range of studies indicate that failure as opposed to its opposite success is associated with a change in collective mindset” (p. 425). Readers are then pointed to a passage of Arnold’s (1990) book: “costs inspire people to search for someone to blame, whereas benefits are usually enjoyed without a corresponding effort to discover whom to reward” (p. 51). Legro (2000) has extended Arnold’s (1990) concept that “large and perceptible costs, then, are the principle stimuli for voting by the incumbent performance rule” (p. 51) to the collective decision-making process of societies that are shifting amongst the plurality of orthodoxies, norms, and common ideas.
The application of Arnold’s (1990) theory to outside scholarship can take a simpler form – for example, it can be applied directly to a question regarding the legislative process. John M. Carey, of Washington University, and Richard G. Niemi and Linda W. Powell, both of the University of Rochester (1998), explore the effects of term limits on the behavior of state legislators, and in doing so, pull from one of Arnold’s (1990) most basic assumptions: that the quest for reelection is at the forefront of the legislator’s decision-making process: “A central assumption in most legislative theory is that politicians are ambitious and that, as a consequence, legislative behavior and organization cannot be explained without paying close attention to political career opportunities and trajectories (Arnold 1990; Fenno 1978; Schlesinger 1966)…critics of careerism attribute pork-barrel spending, excessive government regulation, and bureaucratic inefficiency to legislators’ efforts to build constituency support” (p. 272).
Carey, Niemi and Powell (1998) come out in support of term limits, holding that “with respect to legislative behavior, term limits decrease the time legislators devote to securing pork, and heighten the priority they place on the needs of the state and on the demands of conscience relative to district interests” (p. 271). Insofar as Arnold (1990) is correct in his assumption that electoral concerns take precedence in the decision-making process, Carey, Niemi and Powell (1998) consider this fundamental characteristic of the legislature detrimental to, if we must say, the collective good.
Wendy J. Schiller (1995) of Brown University also applies one of Arnold’s (1990) basic premises to the investigation of a more empirical question of legislative function – specifically, the use of bill sponsorship to shape personal agendas. Schiller (1995) refers to Arnold’s (1990) functions stemming from the premise that, “in contrast to the vast amounts of knowledge that exists about legislators and roll-call voting (Kingdon 1973; Mayhew 1974; Arnold 1990), few works seek to explain the choices legislators make when building their agendas. Unlike roll-call voting, where senators face a predetermined set of alternatives they had no part in shaping, bill sponsorship is under control of the individual legislator” (p. 186-187).
Schiller (1995) comes close to paralleling some of Arnold’s (1995) underlying methodical premises, as is evidenced in her concluding that “Senators are constrained in their use of bill sponsorship by a combination of institutional and political forces” (p. 186), insofar as Schiller (1995) focuses on the specifics of bill sponsorship and Arnold (1990) focuses on legislative action in general. Her work departs somewhat from Arnold’s (1990) in stating that “current views of the senate as a place that lacks structure and predictability in it operations may be overstated” (p. 186) as both Dodd (1992) and Arnold (1990) emphasize the formidable gaff left in the predictability of legislative action given the prevalence of imperfect information.
Arnold’s (1990) work can also be extended to comparative analysis, so long as the country being held under the comparative microscope experiences regular democratic elections, thus investing in executives and legislators’ a fear of losing a future race. Argelina Cheibub Figueiredo and Fernando Limongi (2000) reference The Logic of Congressional Action in their “Presidential power, legislative organization, and party behavior in Brazil.” Specifically, in their discussion of presidential agendas and the resultant (relative) executive power in Brazil, they cite the frequency with which constitutional amendments are passed (or are at least voted on in a disciplined manner): “For constitutional amendments, the government coalition failed to attain the necessary three-fifths mostly due to absences. If these absences are considered nondisciplined votes, presidents have been defeated on twenty-six of 434 cases due to lack of discipline. Hence discipline is the norm” (p. 160).
The post-article notes by Figueiredo and Limongi (2000) reveal the logic behind a lack of non-discipline even among the amendments that were not passed: “There is no case in which the constitution was changed against the government’s will. Following Arnold’s classification, most of these votes were on politically unfeasible policies, for instance, reform of the social security system” (p. 170). Readers are pointed specifically to a passage from Arnold’s (1990) chapter on electoral calculations and legislators’ decisions: “Legislators’ fear of retrospective voting impels them to avoid a class of policy alternatives that I shall call politically infeasible policies. Specifically, legislators shun policies that would have large and direct early-order effects on their constituents, for these effects are easily traced to their roll-call votes” (p. 72-73). The work of Figueiredo and Limongi (2000) points out the instance of Arnold’s (1990) theory – such that discipline is encouraged by the call to accountability by voters – is applicable not only to other democracies outside the U.S. but also to any body or organization in which image and intrapersonal contact and impact will potentially have lasting effects. This is to say nothing of the process leading to displays of discipline and the fact that legislators in Brazil must estimate the likelihood of voter retribution and act accordingly.
Of special interest is the extension of Arnold’s (1990) central question – that of general interests versus group or geographic interests – and its applicability to an empirical group. Michele L. Swers (1998) of Harvard University takes on this job in analyzing the voting patterns of female legislators as related to policy benefits for fellow women. Specifically, she cites the “blame avoidance” (p. 443) that Figueiredo and Limongi (2000) used in their analysis and its applicability to the plethora of women’s issues that stem from controversial reproductive issues: “The significance of gender is magnified when one consider that the bills on which gender has its most significant impact, reproductive issues, constitute the women’s issue legislation that is most salient to political activists. Highly contested bills relating to abortion and family planning continuously come to the floor for a vote in every legislative session. Pro-choice and pro-life groups constantly monitor representatives’ voting records and distribute voters’ guides during election campaigns. Thus, the prudent legislator who is concerned with ‘traceability’ and ‘blame avoidance’ should avoid taking a controversial stand that can be used by an opponent in the next campaign” (p. 443).
Swers (1998) concludes that gender plays a significant role in gender-specific issues such as reproductive policy, though gender is overwhelmed by such other factors as party and constituency concerns on non-gender related issues (p. 435). Arnold (1990) would likely agree, likening these conclusions to electorally-minded calculations weighed between a number of competing factors.

Conclusion
Arnold’s theory, by its very nature, leaves questions unanswered. Between the understanding of the meaning of “collective” goods and the implications of imperfect information, Arnold could certainly be faulted for postulating a theory that is full of holes; however, as Dodd (1992) and Croley (1994) make clear in their reviews, these gaps in explanatory merit are the result of Arnold’s having formed a relatively innovative theoretical framework – a framework whose insights into the provision of specific versus general benefits and estimates of unseen data have begun to earn landmark status in the realm of congressional action analyses. Furthermore, Arnold’s work has proven applicable to outside work both in its basic assertions about electoral motivation and in its larger theoretical methods, such as blame avoidance, of analyzing broad social trends in thought and intrapersonal strategic action. The Logic of Congressional Action is of the variety of scholarship that begs readers to look past its shortcomings and tap into the potential for congressional research and discovery. Thanks to Arnold’s patented framework, that potential is a great deal more accessible.




































Works Cited

Arnold, R. Douglas. 1990. The Logic of Congressional Action. New Haven: Yale University
Press.

Carey, John M., Niemei, Richard G., and Powell, Lynda W. 1998. “The Effects of Term Limits
on State Legislatures.” Legislative Studies Quarterly 23: 271-300.

Croley, Steven P. 1994. “Review: Imperfect Information and the Electoral Connection.”
Political Research Quarterly 47: 509-523.

Dodd, Lawrence C. 1992. Untitled review. American Political Science Review 86: 1052-1053.

Figueiredo, Argelina Cheibub and Limongi, Fernando. 2000. “Presidential power, legislative
organization, and party behavior in Brazil.” Comparative Politics 32: 151-170.

Legro, Jeffrey W. 2000. “The transformation of policy ideas.” American Journal of Political
Science 44: 419-432.

Reagan, Daniel J. 1992. “Review: Congress beyond the Electoral Connection.” The Review of
Politics 54: 686-688.

Schiller, Wendy J. 1995. “Senators as Political Entrepreneurs: Using Bill Sponsorship to Shape
Legislative Agendas. American Journal of Political Science 39: 186-203.

Swers, Michele L. 1998. “Are women more likely to vote for women’s issue bills than their
male colleagues?” Legislative Studies Quarterly 23: 435-448.