Showing papers on "Voting behavior published in 2002"

Partisan Hearts and Minds: Political Parties and the Social Identities of Voters

Abstract: In this authoritative study, three political scientists demonstrate that identification with political parties powerfully determines how citizens look at politics and cast their ballots. "Partisan Hearts and Minds is a profound breakthrough in our understanding of partisan loyalties and makes a major contribution to the study of political attitudes and voting behavior."-Paul Abramson, Michigan State University "This book will be influential the moment it appears. It will be the starting point for all further treatments of the topic."-Richard Johnston, University of British Columbia "The grounding of partisanship in social identities is the most important theoretical contribution to the study of partisanship in the last two decades."-Morris P. Fiorina, Stanford University

Handcuffs for the Grabbing Hand? Media Capture and Government Accountability

Abstract: It is widely recognized that active media can play a role in enhancing political competition by informing voters Collusion between government and media can, however, undermine this role We extend the political accountability model to include the presence of media outlets and the possibility that the incumbent exerts influence over them In equilibrium, the media structure is linked to political outcomes in two ways: directly through its monitoring capacity and indirectly through political capture We examine evidence both across countries and within India

Ideas, Institutions, and Political Order: Explaining Political Change

Abstract: Institutional approaches to explaining political phenomena suffer from three common limitations: reductionism, reliance on exogenous factors, and excessive emphasis on order and structure. Ideational approaches to political explanation, while often more sensitive to change and agency, largely exhibit the same shortcomings. In particular, both perspectives share an emphasis on discerning and explaining patterns of ordered regularity in politics, making it hard to explain important episodes of political change. Relaxing this emphasis on order and viewing politics as situated in multiple and not necessarily equilibrated order suggests a way of synthesizing institutional and ideational approaches and developing more convincing accounts of political change. In this view, change arises out of “friction” among mismatched institutional and ideational patterns. An account of American civil rights policy in the 1960s and 1970s, which is not amenable to either straightforward institutional or ideational explanation, demonstrates the advantages of the approach.

Parliamentary behaviour with two principals: preferences, parties, and voting in the European parliament

Abstract: The European Parliament has be? come one of the most powerful insti? tutions in the European Union. Mem? bers of the European Parliament (MEPs) can now enact legislation, amend the European Union budget, veto the nominee for the European Union Commission President, and censure the Commission. But, we know little about what determines MEPs' voting behavior. Do they vote according to their personal policy preferences? Do the EP parties force MEPs to toe the party line? And, when national party and EP party preferences conflict, which way do MEPs respond?to the principals who control their election (the national parties) or the principals who control their influence in the EP (the EP par? ties)? The results reported here show that national party policies are the strongest predictors of voting behav? ior in the EP.

Gender Stereotypes and Citizens' Impressions of House Candidates' Ideological Orientations

Abstract: categorization on the basis of gender to occur among the most and least politically sophisticated. Finally, citi? zens draw on stereotypes of women to assign attributes to female candi? dates, not on stereotypes of men to infer attributes of male candidates. A growing body of research demonstrates the importance of candi? date gender for citizen assignment of attributes to candidates. This research is part of a trend in scholarship on public opinion and voting behavior that emphasizes citizens' strategies for forming impres? sions of candidates' attributes with minimal cognitive effort and time (Popkin 1996; Rahn 1993; Sniderman, Brody, and Tetlock 1991). Here I ex? amine the characteristics of candidates and citizens that moderate use of candidate gender as a tool used by citizens to infer the ideological orienta? tions of 1994, 1996, and 1998 candidates for the United States House of Representatives. Though still a minority of candidates, in the 1990s the number of women seeking election to the House of Representatives and the Senate increased considerably, presenting an excellent opportunity for scholars to examine the relevance of candidate gender for citizen assign? ment of pertinent attributes.

Diverging Parties: Social Change, Realignment, and Party Polarization

Abstract: Party polarization in the House of Representatives has increased in recent decades. Explaining this development has been difficult, given current interpretations of American elections. The dominant framework for interpreting elections has been to see them as candidate-centered, or individualistic. This framework may have seemed appropriate as a way to see elections during the 1970s and 1980s, when identification with parties declined and split-ticket voting increased. With increasing party differences, however, the presumptions that campaigns focus on candidates separate from parties, and that voters are less partisan in their voting, do not provide a satisfactory framework for understanding our current situation. This proposed book explains the emergence of party polarization by focusing on how the constituencies of House districts affect partisan outcomes and the subsequent voting behavior of House members. This proposed analysis is premised on the simple argument that members are elected from districts, and an explanation of polarization must begin with districts. The origins of polarization lie in the realignment of the electoral bases of the parties, and the shifting demographic composition of America. Liberal voting is more likely among members from urban, lower-income, largely non-white districts. Conservative voting is more likely among members from higher-income, largely white districts. Realignment has resulted in Democrats representing urban, lower-income, heavily non-white districts, while Republicans are more likely to come from suburban-rural, more affluent, white districts. Perhaps most important, the percentage of districts with a substantial proportion of non-whites is steadily increasing in the United States. The analysis will focus primarily on changes since the 1960s.

Can Special Interests Buy Congressional Votes? Evidence from Financial Services Legislation*

Abstract: The challenge in the campaign contribution literature has been to overcome the simultaneous‐equation bias that is inherent in the vote‐contribution relationship. This paper proposes a new method to overcome this bias. It examines behavior at different points of time and relates it to contributions at different points of time. This method is applied to legislators’ voting decisions on financial services regulation. Analyzing this type of legislation is of particular interest because it allows an analysis of the net influence of competing interest groups. Consistent with the proposed model’s predictions, I find evidence that changes in contribution levels determine changes in roll call voting behavior, that contributions from competing groups are partially offsetting, and that junior legislators are more responsive to changes in contribution levels than are senior legislators.

Ideology, nationality and Euro-parliamentarians

Abstract: This article analyzes the voting behavior of Euro-parliamentarians. The roll-call data from the plenary sessions of the European Parliament (EP) during the third and fourth legislatures are used to estimate legislators' preferences. Applying the spatial models of roll-call voting to the EP, I investigate the dimensions underlying legislators' voting behavior. I focus on the relative importance of ideology (i.e. European-wide political party affiliation) versus nationality as the main factor influencing voting behavior. The results support the existence of a European political system in which the main actors are political groups, not national delegations. Also, the pattern of voting in the EP is found to be quite stable across time and issues. Moreover, after taking into account Members' political party affiliations, nationality becomes, though to a lesser extent, statistically significant in explaining legislators' ideal positions.

On Measuring Partisanship in Roll-Call Voting: The U.S. House of Representatives, 1877-1999

Abstract: On Measuring Partisanship in Roll Call Voting: The U.S. House of Representatives, 1877-1999 We propose a method of assessing party influence, based on a spatial model. Our method provides the first test of whether observed values of the widely-used Rice index of party dissimilarity are consistent with a “partyless” null model. It also avoids problems that beset previous estimators. Substantively, we find evidence of party influence in all but one Congress since 1877. Moreover, our indicator of party pressure is systematically higher for the sorts of roll calls that party theorists believe are more pressured—procedural, organizational and label-defining votes. Our results refute the widespread notion that parties in the House have typically had negligible influence on roll call voting behavior. They also document important changes in party influence associated with the packing of the Rules Committee in 1961 and the procedural reforms of 1973.

Legislative Politics in Latin America: EXPLAINING THE HIGH LEVEL OF PARTY DISCIPLINE IN THE ARGENTINE CONGRESS

Abstract: Politicians and academics consider party discipline in the Argentine Congress to be (comparatively) very high (Jones 1997a; Molinelli 1991; Mustapic and Goretti 1992). While the conventional wisdom of high levels of party discipline is nearly universal in Argentina, there have been no empirical studies of roll-call voting behavior during the post-1983 era and virtually no structured attempts to explain the principal sources of this high level of discipline. This chapter has two goals. First, undertaking the first analysis of rollcall votes in the post-1983 period, it underscores the comparatively high levels of party discipline in the Argentine Chamber of Deputies. Second, it identifies the primary determinants of this highly disciplined voting behavior. Argentine Political Institutions Argentina is a federal republic consisting of 23 provinces and a semiautonomous federal capital. It has a presidential form of government with a bicameral legislature and since 1983 has represented one of Latin America's most vibrant and successful democracies. The Argentine Chamber of Deputies has 257 members, who are elected from multimember districts (the 23 provinces and the federal capital) for four-year terms. The deputies are elected from closed party lists using the d'Hondt divisor form of proportional representation. In the event that a deputy dies or resigns during office, he/she is replaced by the next person on the party list who has not yet occupied a Chamber seat. One-half (127 and 130) of the Chamber is renewed every two years, with every district renewing one-half of its legislators (or the closest equivalent).

Congressional Party Defection in American History

Abstract: In this paper, we analyze the roll call voting behavior of those House and Senate members who changed their party affiliation during the course of their political career. We analyze members who switched during the stable periods of the three major twoparty systems in American history: the Federalist-Jeffersonian Republican system (3rd to 12th Congresses), the Democratic-Whig System (20th to 30th Congresses), and the Democratic-Republican System (46th to 106th Congresses). Our primary finding is that the biggest changes in the roll call voting behavior of party defectors is observed during periods of high ideological polarization, and that party defections of the past 30 years are distinct from switches in other eras due both to high polarization and the disappearance of a second dimension of ideological conflict.

Party Polarization and Party Structuring of Policy Attitudes: A Comparison of Three NES Panel Studies

Abstract: The conventional wisdom in the partisan change literature predicts that increasing party conflict on one issue agenda leads to a decline in party conflict on another agenda—a process called “conflict displacement.” We have argued that recent party politics in the United States has experienced “conflict extension,” with the Democratic and Republican parties in the electorate growing more polarized on cultural, racial, and social welfare issues, rather than conflict displacement. Here, we suggest that the failure of the literature to account for conflict extension results from incomplete assumptions about individual-level partisan change. The partisan change literature typically considers only issue-based change in party identification, which necessarily leads to the aggregate prediction of conflict displacement. This ignores the possibility of party-based change in issue attitudes. If party-based issue conversion does occur, the aggregate result can be conflict extension rather than conflict displacement. Our analysis uses data from the three-wave panel studies conducted by the National Election Studies in 1956, 1958, and 1960; in 1972, 1974, and 1976; and in 1992, 1994, and 1996 to assess our alternative account of individual-level partisan change. We show that when Democratic and Republican elites are polarized on an issue, and party identifiers are aware of those differences, some individuals respond by adjusting their party ties to conform to their issue positions, but others respond by adjusting their issue positions to conform to their party identification.

Political Decision Making, Deliberation and Participation

Abstract: Contains essays that address three important and interrelated themes in the theory and practice of democratic politics: the use of information short cuts in political decision making; the role of deliberation in citizens' attitude and opinion formation; and, the pathways to civic and political participation.

Electoral Influences on Legislative Behavior in Mixed-Member Systems: Evidence from Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada

Abstract: This article addresses how mixed-member systems that combine proportional representation (PR) and single-member districts (SMD) into a single election can influence legislators' voting behavior. Scholars have generally extended standard expectations of behavior to mixed-member systems by assuming that legislators occupying PR seats in mixed-member parliaments should be more cohesive than those occupying SMD seats. I argue that controlling for seat type alone does not take into account the interaction between PR and SMD in mixed-member systems. Using voting data from Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada, I show that controlling for dual candidacy and the “safety” of the deputy's district or list position increases our understanding of the factors motivating legislative cohesion.

The Professionalization of Political Communication Continuities and Change in Media Practices

Abstract: Professionalization has become a self-defining, catch-all buzzword employed to explain the recent changes in political communication. However, because of the catch-all or blanket explanatory quality of the term `professionalization', its use within the literature on political communication and campaigning obscures multifaceted shifts in the methods by which political actors communicate through the media. Drawing on a number of interviews with former and current UK members of parliament and prospective parliamentary candidates, the authors argue that much of what is referred to within the discourse of professionalization is linked more to responses to technological change. They propose, therefore, that more care should be taken when describing all modern political communication as professional, otherwise there is a danger of inferring that the practices of the past were amateurish; a conclusion that does not stand up to rigorous research.

Who Cares about Local Politics? Media Influences on Local Political Involvement, Issue Awareness, and Attitude Strength

Abstract: This study examines sources of variation in political participation and cognition, testing the effects of several factors on individuals' engagement in the local political process including, as dep...

Learning to Choose: Electoral Politics in East-Central Europe

Abstract: This is a detailed analytic study of voting behavior and party representation in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland in the decade since the fall of communism. The author seeks to map out the basic contours of the three national party systems and to uncover the structures of social and ideological divisions on which the party systems are based. To do so, he uses public opinion surveys, election returns, economic figures, and census records to test standard theories developed in studies of Western democracies, as well as political scientists' predictions about how voters would act and parties develop once the communist yoke was lifted. The book addresses the ongoing academic debate on the question of whether these countries' experiences during the past decade should be described in terms of gradual stabilization or continuing electoral volatility. The three countries, generally seen as democratic "success stories" of the post-communist region, have produced, within the span of a single decade, complex multi-party systems, in which elections are not only held regularly, but are actually lost (also with some regularity) by those in power. At the same time, the three countries have carried out a largely successful economic transformation and are currently in the process of being integrated into Western Europe's political, economic, and security structures. The three will almost certainly join the European Union within the next few years, raising the interest among Western scholars and foreign policy professionals in a comprehensive road map of their electoral politics. This book fills that need.

According to the Polls: The Influence of Opinion Polls on Expectations

Abstract: Voter expectations concerning the outcome of an election on the performance of a party or candidate have come to play an increasingly important role in the study of voting behavior. Whenever there are more than two candidates or parties, the voter may base his decision not only on his own preference but on expectations of what other voters will do. In studying voting behavior in U.S. presidential primaries, researchers have introduced the terms "viability" and "electability," which are both related to how well the candidates will be able to appeal to other voters (Abramowitz 1987, 1989; Bartels 1988; Brady and Johnston 1987). If an individual perceives that his preferred candidate or party is not viable or electable, he may choose to support one that he thinks will do better (see Broughton 1995; Teer and Spence 1973). All forms of strategic or tactical voting involve calculations of this kind (see Catt 1996). If expectations are central to vote decisions, it becomes as important to investigate the source of these expectations as to study the vote decision itself. The same types of consideration, in particular questions of the reasonableness or rationality of the vote decision, apply. For example, some researchers have argued that expectations are acquired cognitively (e.g., based on polls), while others claim that they are affective (i.e., wishful thinking). Researchers have really only begun to investigate the importance of expectations in the vote decision, and the literature on the sources of expectations is thus still rather limited. The main concern has been whether voters derive their expectations from public opinion polls or from other sources. The strongest empirical evidence that identifies polls as the source of expectations is the

ENCOURAGING POLITICAL DEFECTION: The Role of Personal Discussion Networks in Partisan Desertions to the Opposition Party and Perot Votes in 1992

Abstract: Drawing on data from a unique study of the 1992 American presidential election, this article demonstrates that personal discussion networks influence voting behavior, independent of candidate evaluations and partisanship. These social networks encouraged two different kinds of defections from otherwise-expected behavior. People were more likely to vote for Perot if their personal discussants supported him and to convert preferences for him into a Perot vote on election day. Partisans also were more likely to defect to the other major party if their discussion network failed to fully support the candidate of their own party. These results withstood controls for candidate evaluations and partisanship as well as for selective exposure to discussants and selective perception of their preferences. They show the importance of adding social context to personal attitudes, interests, and partisanship in explaining voting behavior.

An integrated computational model of multiparty electoral competition

Abstract: Most theoretic models of multiparty electoral competition make the assumption that party leaders are motivated to maximize their vote share or seat share. In plurality-rule systems this is a sensible assumption. However, in proportional representation systems, this assumption is questionable since the ability to make public policy is not strictly increasing in vote shares or seat shares. We present a theoretic model in which party leaders choose electoral declarations with an eye toward the expected policy outcome of the coalition bargaining game induced by the party declarations and the parties' beliefs about citizens' voting behavior. To test this model, we turn to data from the 1989 Dutch parliamentary election. We use Markov chain Monte Carlo methods to estimate the parties' beliefs about mass voting behavior and to average over measurement uncertainty and missing data. Due to the complexity of the parties' objective functions and the uncertainty in objective function estimates, equilibria are found numerically. Unlike previous models of multiparty electoral competition, the equilibrium results are consistent with the empirical declarations of the four major Dutch parties.

The Idea of Political Marketing

Abstract: Introduction Considerations on Market Analysis for Political Parties by Patrick Butler and Neil Collins Social-Psychological, Economic and Marketing Models of Voting Behavior Compared by John Bartle and Dylan Griffiths Market Analogies: The Marketing of Labor and the Origins of New Labor by John Bartle Kirchheimer's Catch-All Party: A Re-Interpretation in Marketing Terms by Stefan Eghbalian and Stefan Henneberg Understanding Political Marketing by Stefan Henneberg Conceptualizing Political Marketing: A Framework for Election Campaign Analysis by Dominic Wring Political Marketing and the Aestheticization of Politics: Modern Politics and Post-Modern Trends by Barrie Axford and Richard Huggins The Marketing of Political Marketing by Nicholas O'Shaughnessy

Thinking about Political Psychology: The Challenges of Political Psychology: Lessons to Be Learned from Research on Attitude Perception

Abstract: Political psychology is a relatively young empirical enterprise. As dated by research involving quantitative techniques such as sample surveys and laboratory experiments, political psychology does not begin to approach the long histories of chemistry, physics, and astronomy. And even considering the application of typically qualitative analytic methods such as case studies and historical document analysis, our enterprise is in its relative youth (see, e.g., Hermann 1986). Partly as a result of our youth and partly as a reflection of it, we have not experienced the dramatic paradigm shifts that other sciences have (see, e.g., Kuhn 1970). Whereas other disciplines have seen the rise and fall of major organizing theoretical perspectives, we have shown no signs yet of rejecting old overarching perspectives in favor of new ones. There have also been no dramatic shifts during the history of political psychology in terms of the methods we employ to evaluate our hypotheses empirically. This is not to say that methods are uniformly employed by investigators across the subfield; clearly, this is not the case. But the current state of affairs seems to be one of tolerance of a multiplicity of methods, rather than a universal sense that some methods have proven not to be useful while others are. Yet a close look at the history of studies in some areas of political psychology suggests that there might be some useful lessons to be learned about the value of certain methods over others.

Indecision Theory: Quality of Information and Voting Behavior

Abstract: In this paper we show how to incorporate quality of information into a model of voting behavior. We do so in the context of the turnout decision of instrumentally rational voters who differ in their quality of information, which we refer to as ambiguity. Ambiguity is reflected by the fact that the voter's beliefs are given by a set of probabilities, each of which represents in the voter's mind a different possible scenario. We show that in most elections voters who satisfy the Bayesian model do not strictly prefer abstaining over voting for one of the candidates. In contrast, a voter who is averse to ambiguity considers abstention strictly optimal when the candidates' policy positions are both ambiguous and they are “ambiguity complements". Abstaining is preferred since it is tantamount to mixing the prospects embodied by the two candidates, thus enabling the voter to “hedge" the candidates' ambiguity.

The political context

Abstract: People have studied, learned and used mathematics for over four thousand years. Decisions on what is to be taught in schools, and how, are ultimately political, influenced by a number of factors including the experience of teachers, expectations of parents and employers, and the social context of debates about the curriculum. The ICMI study is posited on the experience of many mathematics teachers across the world that its history makes a difference: that having history of mathematics as a resource for the teacher is beneficial.

Public Perception of Polls and Support for Restrictions on the Publication of Polls: Denmark's 2000 Euro Referendum

Abstract: Previous studies have focused on either media coverage of polls or on their effects. This study investigated the visibility and quality of news reporting of opinion polls and the public evaluations of polls in the context of the  Danish referendum on the introduction of the euro. A content analysis of the news coverage showed that more than one-third of all news in the campaign referred to polls and that newspapers were significantly better than television news in providing methodological information about the polls. Focus group interviews revealed that voters were dissatisfied with too many polls in the news and concerned about the possible influences of polls. Panel survey data substantiated this finding suggesting a broadly shared perception that the referendum campaign was dominated by polls. Voters who were frequently exposed to news about the referendum showed an increase in dissatisfaction with the dominance of polls during the campaign. Those who supported a more restrictive policy on the publication of polls in future campaigns included elderly voters, people dissatisfied with the campaign, and people who had cast their vote for the losing side. Results are discussed in the light of policy recommendations for the reporting of polls in campaigns. The centrality of public opinion polls in politics today is well established (e.g., Herbst , Lavrakas and Holley , Lavrakas and Traugott , Mancini ). Previous studies have either focused on the quantity and quality of news reports about opinion polls during national elections (e.g., Andersen , Brettschneider , Smith and Verall ) or the effects of opinion polls and exit polls during national and state level elections (e.g., Atkin , Ceci and The authors wish to thank the Danish Research Academy, the Nordic Film Foundation, the Danish Broadcasting Association and the Dutch Science Foundation (NWO) for providing funding for the study. The authors gratefully acknowledge the thorough and helpful comments provided by Peter Neijens, the Journal’s editor and three anonymous reviewers. A previous version of this article was presented to the WAPOR conference Democracy and the Millennium: The Role of Media and Public Opinion in Elections, Pamplona, Spain, November –, . The article was first submitted to IJPOR May , . The final version was received April , .  World Association for Public Opinion Research                 Kain , Schmitt-Beck , Sudman ). Little attention, however, has been paid to the role of polls in referendum campaigns (LeDuc ). As a political and democratic instrument, referendums play an increasingly important role as a supplement to the representative democracy, and they have been of special importance in the process of European integration (Butler and Ranney ). A number of countries have held referendums with close races on the issues of joining the European Community/Union or on ratifying key EU treaties, and several member states have announced referendums to determine national policy positions on European issues in the future (Hug and Sciarini ). Denmark is one country that has utilized national referendums to determine policies of integration in Europe. The referendum outcomes have been both supportive and opposing of further European integration, often following heated public debates and close electoral races. Denmark remains one of the countries where there are currently no legal restrictions on the publication of polls at election time. There is a longstanding gentleman’s agreement, however, to end campaigning the day before an election and not to publish exit polls before voting has ended (Siune ). This corresponds with a number of countries where pollsters, networks, and others engaged in exit polling accept a ‘selfdenying ordinance not to release their figures until the last vote has been cast’ (Butler , p. ). In this study we investigate both the media coverage of polls and the effects on public perceptions of polls in a national referendum campaign: the  Danish referendum on the introduction of the euro, the common European currency. Contrary to the advice of most political parties, financial elites, and major newspapers, a majority of Danes ( percent) voted ‘no’ to the euro. We also explore public support for policies regarding the publication of opinion polls. We begin with a review of the literature on the visibility and assessment of the quality of poll coverage in the news. We then turn to an investigation of the public perception of polls before discussing public support for policy recommendations on publications of polls. 1 While pre-election polls and exit polls are mentioned together, the distinction between the two is acknowledged and is also applied in the investigation of public support for policies concerning the publication of polls. Pre-election polls are typically based on (representative sample) surveys prior to election day and they typically measure turnout intention, vote preference, party leader preferences, policy issue support, etc. Exit polls are (representative) surveys that measure actual voting behavior of voters after they have cast their votes. The organization and methodology of exit polling is different from pre-election polls and are discussed elsewhere (Hofrichter ).        

Judicial Review, the Congressional Process, and the Federalism Cases: An Interdisciplinary Critique

Abstract: or as applied in any of these cases. We doubt that it is well situated to do so in the future. Leaving such inconveniences aside, the embrace of a universal formal theory of congressional action would be wrongheaded in any event. In our view of the state of political science, no theory of legislative decisionmaking exists that is capable of addressing the issues adequately. For example, positive political theories of legislative politics, which extend well beyond public choice theory of the 1960s and 1970s, have become an important branch of legislative scholarship in political science." 3 Positive political theories treat legislators as instrumentalist and, given a set of assumptions about the rules or institutional setting in which they operate, deduce propositions about legislators' behavior, institutional choices, or policy outcomes. There are a variety of positive theories of legislative politics, however. They differ in assumptions about the political motivations of legislators (policy, reelection, or progressive ambition) and about the identity of other players relevant to goal achievement (the President, interest groups, the electorate, the courts, and so on). They also differ in what they seek to explain (individual voting behavior, the structure of committees and parties, or policy outcomes). Simply stated, there is no single positive political theory of legislative decisionmaking. Rather, a variety of theories have emerged to address various aspects of legislative politics. Our approach reflects this state of affairs in the theory of legislative decisionmaking.' 4 While there is reason to believe that members are at least partly instrumental, it is unwise for us, or the courts, to attribute any particular motivation to members of Congress. There is no basis, as a general rule, to assume that interest groups, the electorate, parties, or any other political actors dominate the legislative process. In the absence of a single theoretical standard for evaluating the Court's treatment of the legislative process, we turn to the more burdensome, but 112. For example, Bill Eskridge's study of instances in which Congress has overridden Supreme Court decisions by statute found that states were among the most successful petitioners for such congressional action, William N. Eskridge, Jr., Overriding Supreme Court Statutory Interpretation Decisions, 101 YALE L.J. 331, 348-49 (1991). 113. See, e.g., Symposium, Positive Political Theory and Public Law, 80 GEO. L.J. 457 (1992). 114. See, e.g., Kenneth A. Shepsle & Barry R. Weingast, Positive Theories of Congressional Institutions, in POSITIVE THEORIES OF CONGRESSIONAL INSTITUTIONS 5 (Kenneth A. Shepsle & Barry R. Weingast eds., 1995). Imaged with the Permission of Yale Law Journal [Vol. Ill: 1707 1730 HeinOnline -111 Yale L.J. 173