The Dynamics of Interest Group Evaluations of Congress

Keith T Poole and Howard Rosenthal

Public Choice, 1998, vol. 97, issue 3, 323-61

Abstract: The authors apply a dynamic spatial model to interest group ratings of the members of Congress over the period 1959-81. Spatial distances between an interest group and the members of Congress are assumed to be monotonic with the ratings. Their pooled cross-sectional time-series data set consists of 203,387 ratings by fifty-nine interest groups. The authors restrict the spatial coordinates of the interest groups and members of Congress to be polynomial functions of time. Two significant dimensions are recovered: the first dimension, which accounts for approximately 75 percent of the variance, represents liberal-conservative positions on economic issues; the second dimension, which accounts for approximately an additional 5 percent of the variance, represents liberal-conservative positions on social issues. Nearly all the interest groups and most members of Congress are ideologically consistent. They are either liberal on both dimensions or conservative on both. Copyright 1998 by Kluwer Academic Publishers

Date: 1998
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://journals.kluweronline.com/issn/0048-5829/contents link to full text (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:97:y:1998:i:3:p:323-61

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ce/journal/11127/PS2

Access Statistics for this article

Public Choice is currently edited by WIlliam F. Shughart II

More articles in Public Choice from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().