Speeches and Legislative Extremism in the U.S. Senate

Jean François Godbout and Bei Yu
Additional contact information
Jean François Godbout: Simon Fraser University
Bei Yu: Northwestern University

Chapter Chapter 11 in Do They Walk Like They Talk?, 2009, pp 185-205 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract The following chapter investigates the relationship between legislative activity and legislative speech in the U.S. Senate between the 101st and 108th Congress. The analysis measures the link between the quantity of speech used on the floor by particular senators and their individual level of legislative productivity. This chapter focuses on the number of bills introduced and cosponsored by senators. Controls for party affiliation, majority status, ideology, and proximity to an election were also added to determine whether certain context specific factors have an impact on the amount of floor speeches. The analysis demonstrates that the existence of a relationship between speech and action in the policy processes. However, this relationship is mitigated by ideology (liberals speak more) and by the distribution of partisanship in the Senate (senators in the minority obstruct more). The analysis also indicates that in later congresses, more conservative senators began to behave just like their liberal counterpart. The previous findings seem to indicate that the recent increase in roll call polarization in the U.S. Congress is also present in legislative debates and proceedings.

Keywords: Individual Level Variable; Legislative Activity; Party Affiliation; Roll Call Vote; Divided Government (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:spr:stpchp:978-0-387-89672-4_11

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9780387896724

DOI: 10.1007/978-0-387-89672-4_11

Access Statistics for this chapter

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