The Movers and the Shirkers: Representatives and Ideologues in the Senate. By Eric M. Uslaner. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999. 218p. $44.50

William Bianco

American Political Science Review, 2001, vol. 95, issue 1, 224-224

Abstract: The Movers and the Shirkers is a critique and extension of a well-cited and important research program: attempts to measure the degree to which legislators shirk, or advance their own policy goals at the expense of those held by their constituents. Such analyses (e.g., Joseph P. Kalt and Mark Zupan, "Capture and Ideology in the Economic Theory of Politics," American Economic Review 74 [June 1984]: 279­ 300; John R. Lott, "Political Cheating," Public Choice 52 [1987]: 169­86) typically assume a principal-agent relation- ship between constituents and elected representatives, and they specify a regression analysis with roll-call behavior as a left-hand side variable and various measures of constituency interests and legislator ideology as right-hand side variables. Previous work (John E. Jackson and John W. Kingdon, "Ideology, Interest Groups, and Legislative Votes," American Journal of Political Science 36 [August 1992]: 805­23) shows that these analyses are bedeviled by measurement and esti- mation issues. Eric Uslaner highlights a more fundamental flaw: By ignoring important and well-understood mechanisms that tie legislators to their constituents, these analyses as- sume what should be tested.

Date: 2001
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