examining the electoral connection across time · 2019. 9. 11. · pl14ch02-jenkins ari 1 april...

PL14CH02-Jenkins ARI 1 April 2011 11:30

Examining the ElectoralConnection Across TimeJamie L. Carson1 and Jeffery A. Jenkins2

1Department of Political Science, The University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia 30602;email: [email protected] of Politics, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia 22903;email: [email protected]

Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci. 2011. 14:25–46

First published online as a Review in Advance onMarch 17, 2011

The Annual Review of Political Science is online atpolisci.annualreviews.org

This article’s doi:10.1146/annurev-polisci-030310-221852

Copyright c© 2011 by Annual Reviews.All rights reserved

1094-2939/11/0615-0025$20.00

Keywords

Congress, ambition, accountability, autonomy, responsiveness

Abstract

Mayhew’s (1974) thesis regarding the “electoral connection” and its im-pact on legislative behavior has become the theoretical foundation formuch of the research on the contemporary U.S. Congress. Recently,scholars have begun to suggest that the Mayhewian electoral incen-tive may apply to politics in earlier congressional eras as well. To as-sess these claims more systematically, we consider four conditions thatserve as the building blocks of the electoral connection—ambition, au-tonomy, responsiveness, and accountability. Through a detailed reviewof the literature on electoral politics in Congress, we discover that allfour conditions were present in a strict sense as far back as the Pro-gressive Era. Moreover, considerable evidence suggests that a weaker,less formalized version of the electoral connection existed even earlierin American history. We conclude by briefly discussing the implica-tions of these findings on the rapidly growing literature examining thehistorical and institutional evolution of Congress.

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INTRODUCTIONIn his seminal book on the U.S. Congress,Mayhew (1974, 2004) treats legislators as ifthey are “single-minded seekers of reelection.”Although he acknowledges that this strictassumption represents an abstraction, Mayhewcontends that it provides a useful mechanismfor evaluating the behavior of elected rep-resentatives. The tenets of what is typicallyconsidered the “electoral connection” rest onthe candidate-centered politics of the contem-porary era, in which legislators establish theirown campaigns, raise their own money, andappeal directly to voters. Voters, in turn, canpunish or reward incumbents directly, by split-ting their tickets and voting for candidates ofdifferent parties. These dynamics lead membersof Congress to pursue various strategies—suchas advertising, position taking, and creditclaiming—in order to satisfy constituents andretain office. Throughout his book, Mayhewdemonstrates that the electoral connection ex-plains quite a bit of variation in member behav-ior and goes a long way in helping us understandthe development of the modern Congress.

As noted, Mayhew’s conception of the elec-toral connection is contemporary in nature,portrayed largely as a post–World War IIphenomenon. Although Mayhew is silent onthe subject, the conventional wisdom has beenthat earlier political eras were too differentto accommodate a strong electoral linkagebetween individual representatives and theirconstituents (Formisano 1974, Huckabee 1989,Price 1975, Swift 1987). Scholars have argued,for example, that most nineteenth-century leg-islators were not interested in pursuing a careerin Congress (Polsby 1968, Price 1975), andtherefore lacked strong incentives to heed thewishes of their constituents. Others contendthat nineteenth-century voters evaluated candi-dates based on party affiliation rather than leg-islative actions (Skeen 1986) and generally didnot hold public officials accountable for theirindividual behavior in office (Formisano 1974).

Since the first edition of Mayhew’s bookwas published, a considerable turn toward thestudy of congressional history has occurred.

As a result, “conventional” arguments on therepresentative-constituency linkage have beenrefined by research suggesting that individualmember accountability increased dramaticallyfollowing the adoption of various antiparty re-forms between 1890 and 1920—during the Pro-gressive Era—such as the Australian (secret)ballot and the direct primary (Katz & Sala 1996,Kernell 1977). The secret ballot had a profoundeffect on the electoral milieu by providing vot-ers with a greater opportunity to punish or re-ward candidates individually while also givingincumbents the institutional means to developa personal vote (Ansolabehere et al. 2000, Cainet al. 1987). With the “party ballot” in placeprior to these reforms, voters were not select-ing between different candidates as much asthey were between different parties (Engstrom& Kernell 2005). Moreover, the direct primaryprovided voters with the ability to choose partynominees directly, rather than allow party elitesto dictate the choices, as had been the case dur-ing the convention era (Reynolds 2006, Ware2002). Although not stated explicitly, a directimplication of these works is that an individualelectoral connection emerged around the turnof the twentieth century, but was tenuous at bestprior to the reforms of the Progressive Era.

In addition, a number of studies haveemerged to suggest that some variant of theelectoral connection was present throughoutthe nineteenth century (and perhaps evenearlier). For example, although members ofCongress may not have always been single-minded reelection seekers, there is evidencethat they have always been ambitious (Stewart1989, cf. Rudder 1990). Moreover, multiplestudies have suggested that nineteenth-centurymembers of Congress pursued similar behav-ioral strategies (advertising, position taking,and credit claiming) as in the contemporaryera, striving to be responsive to constituents’demands even though the electoral dynamicswere somewhat different ( Jenkins & Stewart2003, Reynolds 2006, Wilson 1986b). Stillothers have assumed an electoral connectionexisted during the nineteenth century, eventhough they do not test this assumption directly

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(Katz & Sala 1996, Kernell & McDonald 1999,Theriault 2003). Finally, there is also evidencethat voters in the nineteenth century rewardedand punished incumbents based on legislativeperformance (Bianco et al. 1996, Carson &Engstrom 2005), although this may have beenrestricted to hypersalient votes in Congress.As a result, scholars in this revisionist traditionhave argued that similarities to today areapparent and that a very real electoral con-nection may have been present across much ofcongressional history.

Unfortunately, these studies of the “pre-modern” electoral connection have beenlargely individualistic in nature, as a generalunderstanding of how the electoral connectionmay have operated prior to World War II hasnot emerged. This uneven development, in ourview, may be partly attributable to more funda-mental ambiguities; specifically, a precise elabo-ration of the necessary components that under-lie the contemporary electoral connection doesnot appear in the literature. We believe that anaccurate assessment of the breadth and scope ofthe electoral incentive requires a return to firstprinciples. Only by clearly identifying the criti-cal domains of the modern electoral connectioncan we then—through an extensive review ofthe literature on congressional behavior andelections—begin to trace out its historicalprogression and pinpoint changes that weresignificant to its development.These are ourgoals in this article. As we pursue them, we canalso begin to examine the relative importanceof specific institutions or legislative behaviors,as they relate to the electoral connection. Thiswill allow us to both assess and potentiallychallenge the traditional accounts of whenparticular components of the contemporaryelectoral connection were actually fulfilled.

In the next section, we unpack the electoralconnection in the context of the contemporaryera. From there, we discuss the four condi-tions necessary for an electoral connection inCongress—which we identify as ambition, au-tonomy, responsiveness, and accountability—and review whether those conditions werepresent in various formal and informal manifes-

tations across time. In the final section, we syn-thesize our findings, posit several questions forfuture analysis, and consider the implications ofour discussion for the study of the historical andinstitutional development of Congress.

UNPACKING THEELECTORAL CONNECTION

Mayhew’s (1974, 2004) notion of the electoralincentive, and the legislative behavior thataccompanies it, has become the theoreticalfoundation for much of the contemporaryresearch examining the U.S. Congress. In itssimplest version, reelection is the proximategoal of members of Congress, one that theypursue at the expense of all others. They thenundertake certain strategic behaviors in pursuitof their reelection goal. These basic elements ofMayhew’s thesis are well known. In this sec-tion, we “get under the hood” and considermore fundamental questions. What actuallyconstitutes an electoral connection? Morespecifically, what are some of the underlyingassumptions that drive Mayhew’s electoralconnection thesis?

At its heart, the notion of an electoralconnection originates in the linkage betweenrepresentatives and their constituents. In atypical representative democracy, citizens areserved by political agents; in the case of theU.S. Congress, geographic constituencies(districts or states) are served by legislators(House members or senators). The linkagebetween legislators and constituents is electoralin nature; representatives serve at the behest oftheir constituents and can be voted out of officein regularly occurring elections. If legislatorsvalue their political positions and seek toremain in office—which all accounts of theelectoral connection assume—they must winelections; this requires an attempt to meet theneeds of their constituents. At election time,constituents evaluate the performance of theirlegislators, assess whether their needs havebeen adequately fulfilled, and use votes as bluntinstruments of accountability—rewarding orpunishing their representatives accordingly.

www.annualreviews.org • The Electoral Connection Across Time 27

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With the representative–constituency link-age forming the basic template for an electoralconnection, several specific conditions must bemet to fulfill the Mayhewian conception. Weargue that four such conditions exist. First, anelectoral connection is premised on the notionthat legislators are politically ambitious, thatthey desire reelection. Indeed, this ambitionprinciple is the central assumption in Mayhew’stheoretical framework. If legislators desire re-election, then this presumes that they desire acareer in Congress—at least for some extendedperiod of time—else they would not endure therigors of a campaign every two or six years. Mul-tiple reelection victories provide additional op-portunities for power (and further stoke ambi-tion): The longer a member serves in Congress,the more likely he or she is to gain influencewithin the chamber, as a function of the senior-ity system. This increasing influence, in turn,makes it far easier for legislators to affect pol-icy outcomes, especially if they are key mem-bers of the party leadership or the committeestructure.

A second condition is that members ofCongress must possess autonomy; that is, theymust be in a position to control their own des-tiny. This has two parts. First, members mustbe able to seek reelection, should that be theirgoal. Access to the electoral process must beopen and exercised at their discretion. Stateddifferently, no barriers (institutional or other-wise) should stand in the way of a member’sambition. Second, members must maintain alarge degree of independence in their pursuitof reelection. As Mayhew asserts, legislators inthe modern era can build and sustain their ownelectoral coalitions largely independent of theparty organization. More specifically, membersof Congress can establish their own campaignthemes based on their own records of accom-plishments, raise their own money, and appealdirectly to their constituents. Although party af-filiation provides legislators with an important“brand” name, along with a variety of services(see Aldrich 1995), it is not meant to restrictthe appeal of representatives or senators to theirconstituents. After all, legislators may be forced

to appeal to very diverse constituencies—whichis certainly the case for senators—and they donot want to be labeled as too extreme relativeto the voters whom they represent.

A third condition is that legislators mustpossess the ability to be responsive; that is, theymust be able to provide their constituents withvarious benefits that enhance their chancesof reelection. In Mayhew’s world, respon-siveness is conceptualized in terms of threeelectorally useful activities that legislatorsfrequently engage in—advertising, creditclaiming, and position taking. For instance,members of Congress can utilize casework,express favorable positions on symbolic votes,or secure pork-barrel projects to curry favorwith their constituents. It is their positionsin Congress—whether as party leaders or keymembers of relevant committees—that offerlegislators the opportunity to engage in thesetypes of activities. Moreover, legislative actionsmust be salient, or visible, so that constituentsfully recognize the important role of thelegislator in generating these particularizedbenefits (Arnold 1990, Kingdon 1989).

A fourth condition, which focuses moreexplicitly on the constituency side of the elec-toral connection, is that voters must possessthe ability to keep legislators accountable; thatis, they must be able to evaluate legislators’performance in office and punish or rewardthem accordingly. In addition, Mayhew (1974,pp. 28–38) suggests that a representative’sparticular electoral circumstances should influ-ence his or her legislative behavior. Electorallyvulnerable or marginal legislators, for example,should be less likely to support legislationthat is politically unpopular. At the same time,we should observe higher rates of retirementamong those legislators voting for unpopularlegislative initiatives and lower rates of reelec-tion among those who support such policies.Indeed, these expectations are borne out instudies examining the electoral consequencesof position taking and roll-call voting duringthe contemporary era, in which legislators arepenalized for extreme behavior relative to theconstituency they represent (Bovitz & Carson


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2006, Canes-Wrone et al. 2002, Carson et al.2010, Jacobson 1993, Tessin & Clinton 2007).

We hold that these four conditions must befulfilled in order for an electoral connection,along the lines that Mayhew (1974) first elabo-rated, to operate. We examine these conditionsin detail in the next four sections, identifyingwhen each was satisfied in a strict sense throughan extensive review of the literature on congres-sional behavior and elections. We also allow forflexibility in our assessment of each condition,to determine if it operated differently than whatwe have come to expect in the modern era. Indoing so, we consider whether a weaker or lessformalized electoral connection may have ex-isted even further back in time.

AMBITION

Political ambition is the first and perhaps mostfundamental component of the electoral con-nection. The desire to achieve reelection (andto maintain a career in Congress, more gen-erally) is the basic building block of Mayhew’sthesis; reelection desire follows directly from anassumption about members’ political ambition.Carving out a congressional career, and possi-bly rising in the chamber’s leadership structure,is sufficiently attractive to ambitious membersthat they are willing to bear a variety of costs(campaign costs, opportunity costs of alterna-tive employment, etc.) to make it happen.

How long have members of Congress beenpolitically ambitious? Or perhaps more inkeeping with Mayhew’s thesis, how long havelegislators valued a career in Congress andthus actively sought reelection? A survey ofthe literature reveals that these are two distinctquestions with two distinct answers.

We consider the issue of careerism first.There is general agreement among legislativescholars, using different measures such as theaverage number of terms served (Polsby 1968),the percentage of senior members (Price 1971),the percentage of incumbents replaced (Fiorinaet al. 1975), and the percentage of incumbentsrunning in the general election (Brady et al.1999), as to when legislators sought to establish

roots in Congress and make it the basis of theircareers. The findings are summarized by Bradyet al. (1999, p. 490):

The literature generally dates the rise in ca-reerism as beginning in the 1890–1910 pe-riod. . . . After 1900, the number of freshmanHouse members sharply declined and the av-erage years of incumbent service grew dramat-ically. . . . [B]y 1920 the House had been trans-formed from a body of amateur members to amodern legislature of professional politicianswith established careers in Washington.

The 1890–1910 era seems to have been asignificant moment in the rise of congressionalcareerism—thanks in part to a variety ofchanges both endogenous (the growing impor-tance of seniority) and exogenous (decliningparty competition along with various electoralreforms) to Congress. But there is also evidencethat a careerist trend had begun before then.Kernell (1977, p. 671), for example, contendsthat House membership began stabilizing asearly as 1860, and that there was a “near lineargrowth of congressional careerism” from theCivil War through the 1920s. Moreover, hesuggests that congressional careerism may ex-tend back even earlier, as antebellum southernpoliticians likely saw the benefit of “extendedpolitical service in protecting [their] ‘peculiarinstitution’” (p. 676).

There are difficulties, however, in ascribing“desire for a congressional career” to each ofthese presumptive measures of careerism. Thisis because the measures conflate nominationand election—which means members countedas “careerists” or “career-seeking” were thosewho sought reelection and previously wonrenomination. Some incumbents likely soughtreelection, and desired a career in Congress, butwere denied renomination. Unfortunately, dataon nineteenth-century nomination politics arequite poor, making further refinement difficult.Moreover, incumbents could not seek nomi-nations directly during the nineteenth century,as nominations were determined by party con-ventions and were also sometimes subject to


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informal term limits (i.e., rotation). These en-cumbrances on the discretion of incumbents arediscussed in the next section. The larger pointhere is simply that the typical measures of con-gressional careerism are limited in what theycan tell us about the rates at which incumbentsin either the House or Senate desired reelectionand a career in Congress more generally.

A broader question is: Were nineteenth-century representatives ambitious?1 If ambitionis defined more broadly than “desiring a ca-reer in Congress” or “single-minded reelectionseeking,” then Mayhew’s formulation is poten-tially applicable during an era of high turnoverin Congress. For instance, Stewart (1989,pp. 9–10) argues:

[T]he extent of the nineteenth-century con-gressional revolving door has frequently beenoverinterpreted. The high turnover ratesmask the extent to which late-nineteenth andearly-twentieth century MCs [Members ofCongress] were professional politicians, butpoliticians with a higher priority on local ca-reers than on national ones. Thus, the ‘elec-tion pursuit’ hypothesis that drives currentcongressional research in this tradition can beapplied to past congressional behavior if theconceptualization of election pursuit is mademore general, allowing for a broader notionof what MCs wanted to do with their futurecareers.

Based on Stewart’s argument, careerism inthe nineteenth century may be better con-ceived as “political careerism” than “congres-sional careerism.” Ambitious office seekers inthe nineteenth century typically pursued a leap-frog strategy in building their political careers,with a seat in Congress constituting just onestop along the way. Often members movedfrom a local (state) position to Congress and

1The earliest discussion of ambition in this context involveseighteenth-century legislators. According to James Madison inFederalist 51 and 53 (Rossiter 1961), legislators have alwaysbeen ambitious, which is why frequent elections to the U.S.House were necessary.

then back again, and governorships, mayoral-ties, and judgeships were common employmentdestinations after serving in Congress (Kernell1977, p. 691). Access to these latter positionsoften hinged on members’ congressional per-formance, as party leaders back home kept aclose eye on Washington politics (Stewart 1989,pp. 57–58).2

Elsewhere, Stewart (2001, pp. 138–39) ex-plores the ambition and back-and-forth ca-reer pattern of pre-twentieth-century legisla-tors. Looking at two early Congresses, the first(1789–1791) and 47th (1881–1883), he findsthat 95.4% and 80.7% of freshman Housemembers, respectively, had previous (local) po-litical experience. Moreover, many of thosefreshmen did not end their political careers inCongress, as 53.8% and 44.3%, respectively,held another political position after serving inthe House. Examining all Congresses throughthe turn of the twentieth century—the first(1789–1791) through 56th (1899–1901)—weuncover results consistent with Stewart’s ar-gument. As illustrated in Figure 1, a major-ity of freshman House members throughoutthe period were politically experienced, with aper-Congress average of 81.6% having held aprior political position. The findings on subse-quent political experience are also interestingand hint at the rise of congressional careerism.Between the first and 24th Congresses (1789–1837), 50.3% of House freshmen went on tohold another political position; this drops to45.1% between the 25th and 41st Congresses(1837–1871) and 35.2% between the 42nd and56th Congresses (1871–1901). These data sug-gest that a small move toward House careerism

2Even during the period of strong party bosses and machinepolitics in the nineteenth century, there is almost no system-atic evidence suggesting that member ambition was temperedby the party-centered nature of the electoral process. Thefact that individual candidates had to seek out the approvalof the party organization to earn a position in Congress didnot mean that they failed to value that position once elected.Indeed, there is growing evidence that nineteenth-centurypolitical parties desired strong candidates on the ticket asmuch as the candidates needed the parties to facilitate theircareers in Congress (see, e.g., Carson et al. 2007).


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Figure 1Percent of freshman House members with prior/subsequent political experience, first (1789–1791) through56th (1899–1901) Congresses. Source: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, andCarroll McKibbin. Roster of United States Congressional Officeholders and Biographical Characteristics of Membersof the United States Congress, 1789–1996: Merged Data, 10th ICPSR ed. Computer file produced anddistributed by Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, 1997.

occurred during the early part of the SecondParty System, and a considerably larger movebegan during Reconstruction.

Overall, these results indicate that a clear“political class” existed in the nineteenth cen-tury; although ambitious politicians may nothave been congressional careerists in the mod-ern sense, they did establish political life as theirvocation. The notion that nineteenth-centurypolitics was populated by a collection of “Mr.Smiths,” who did their brief tour of duty inWashington amid an otherwise ordinary careerwholly outside of politics, is simply incorrect.

Before moving on, we briefly entertain a re-lated question: Why was careerism more po-litical than congressional during much of thenineteenth century? This question has neverbeen examined in any detail in the literature,but two potential answers come to mind. First,much of the action in political-economic de-velopment prior to the Civil War occurred atthe state and local levels—this is where the bulkof the money was and where political decision

making had the greatest effect on public policy(Wallis 2004, Wallis & Weingast 2005). It wasonly after the Civil War that the federal gov-ernment expanded appreciably, and large rev-enue surpluses (brought on by protective tariffs)provided members of Congress with substantialdistributive policy-making authority (Kernell1977). Second, congressional salaries were lowthroughout the nineteenth century, and severallaws that raised them significantly were quicklyrescinded (Alston et al. 2006, Bianco et al.1996). Thus, serving in Congress was not a lu-crative venture during much of the nineteenthcentury, and other political offices, even manyat the state level, often paid considerably more.

AUTONOMY

Although ambition may be the most funda-mental component of the electoral connection,it must be combined with autonomy to reachthe Mayhewian conception. It is not enoughthat members want to achieve reelection (and


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maintain a career in Congress), they must alsobe in a position to make it happen. They mustpossess discretion to pursue reelection, shouldthat be their choice, and do it largely on theirown terms. And they must be able to crafttheir own reelection campaigns, based on theirknowledge of their geographic units and thepolitical dynamics therein, largely unhinderedby external (partisan) requirements. Stated sim-ply, Mayhew’s thesis requires that incumbentsbe able to control their own electoral destinies.

Discretion

The first element of the autonomy componentis discretion. Members must be able to pursuereelection on their own accord; the option mustbe available for them to exercise. This sort ofdiscretion is in fact a fairly recent (modern) de-velopment. The choice to run for reelection istied to the choice to seek party renomination,which is one step removed. Because election vi-ability often depends on running under the ban-ner of one of the two major American parties,renomination is crucial to reelection.

In a strict sense, the ability of a congressionalincumbent to seek party renomination directlyoriginated with the political-primary move-ment in the early twentieth century. Primaryelections (or “direct primaries”) allow candi-dates to compete actively for a party’s nomina-tion by appealing directly to party-identifyingcitizens in the underlying geographic con-stituencies.3 During the first two decades of thetwentieth century, the vast majority of statesadopted direct-primary laws, which coveredcongressional party nominations as well as partynominations for most other state offices (seeWare 2002, p. 123). Thus, for much of the lastcentury, the ability of members to seek reelec-tion has been a two-stage process, with renom-ination essentially required (except in rare cir-cumstances) as the initial stage of reelection.

3Politicians of the era recognized immediately the effects ofdirect primary elections on House membership. As HouseSpeaker Champ Clark (1920, p. 220) stated, “The primaryelection method . . . helps the sitting member retain his seatif he is at all worthy of it.”

Prior to the rise of direct primaries, stateparty conventions determined the nomina-tion process. Party nominees for House seatswere chosen in district conventions, with dele-gates selected from the district’s various coun-ties (Reynolds 2006). The convention systemwas therefore an indirect nomination process,as candidates for office (including incumbents)were left to the mercy of convention delegateswho determined party slates. There was littleroom for the average voter in such a system;voters may have had some input in initial del-egate selection (which varied by county), butthey had no direct say over the choice of con-gressional nominees.

In addition to facing an indirect nominatingsystem during the convention era, somenineteenth-century incumbents also had todeal with state-level term limits. This was partof the norm of “rotation,” as party leadersworked to distribute offices among the manyparty faithful. Rotation generally meant thatmembers of Congress were restricted to a finiteperiod of service (often two terms). Becauserotation was an informal party rule, data onwhich states employed rotation, and over whatperiod of time this practice was utilized by stateparty organizations, are sketchy at best. Despitethe well-known case of Abraham Lincoln beingrestricted to one House term in Illinois, per theWhig Party rule in place at the time, Kernell(1977) argues that rotation was a relativelyminor problem because it was not employedwidely and thus affected relatively few incum-bents. Indeed, he estimates that only 4% of allcongressional careers during the 1850s wereended due to rotation, only 3% in the 1870s and1880s, and just 1% in the 1890s (but see Price1998 for a critique of Kernell’s methodology).

While party conventions served as a poten-tial barrier to ambitious politicians, reelection-minded incumbents and other potentialcandidates did not behave passively during thisera. Rather, they acted rationally and adjustedto the institutional environment. During muchof the convention era, active campaigningby candidates was frowned upon—although,as Reynolds (2006, p. 9) notes, “Prospective


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nominees and their friends worked quietly be-hind the scenes.” By the end of the nineteenthcentury, however, the culture had changed, andcandidates behaved much more aggressively,courting convention delegates openly and ac-tively. Reynolds (2006, pp. 10, 72–73) contendsthat congressional candidates “had learnedthat it paid to be assertive in promoting one’savailability for party honors” and that “it wasexpected that persons desirous of a nominationhad to spend extra time, money, and energy towin it.” Thus, the “hustling candidate” emergedwell in advance of the direct-primary era.

Independence

The second element of the autonomy compo-nent is independence. And while it is often heldthat candidate-centered campaigns emerged inforce after World War II, per the Mayhewianthesis, other evidence suggests that the di-rect primary was the instigator by creating anopen nomination process, which resulted in aDarwinian struggle among potential candi-dates. Election costs rose astronomically, assizeable pots of money needed to be raisedand spent on campaign managers, agents in thefield, and political advertising (Reynolds 2006,pp. 190–92). Candidates who had strong fi-nancial backing—and who could raise moneyconsistently—were advantaged under the newsystem. The great sums of money spent in theearly years of the direct-primary era led somestates to pass laws to restrict various forms ofpolitical advertising. Other laws attempted toplace dollar limits on campaign expendituresand force disclosure of how funds were beingspent (so-called “corrupt practices acts”), whileseveral states went so far as to briefly reemploya form of the convention system in response tothe escalating costs of campaigns.

Of course, money often lubricated the lastyears of the convention system, as hustlingcandidates, eager for nominations, distributedfunds to lobby convention delegates. AsSummers (2004, p. 8) states, “Money [in the latenineteenth century] was everywhere. A cam-paign could not get along without it.” Indeed,

the financial independence of potential candi-dates was a major issue even during the heightof the convention era. Although party leadershad a strong hand in selecting candidates, it wasstill very much a candidate-centered process—the viability of potential candidates dependedon the degree to which they could indepen-dently finance their pursuit of office. Accord-ing to Reynolds (2006, p. 189), “Politicianssalivated at the prospect of nominating a richman for office who could liberally fund the fallcampaign.” With financial independence camegeneral campaign independence, as candidateswere given considerable latitude to establishtheir own campaign messages (within the broadcontours of the party platform).

Bolting

One additional aspect of autonomy deservesmention. Although discretion to seek reelec-tion was hampered during the era of nominat-ing conventions, because of the indirect natureof the nomination process, incumbents oftenhad a backdoor option available to them. Dur-ing much of the nineteenth century, the bal-loting process was informal; a state-sponsoredballoting system was not widely in operationuntil the 1890s. This meant that the partiesthemselves were largely responsible for print-ing and distributing ballots. Thus, if an incum-bent failed to receive his party’s nomination,he could “bolt” the party (and the convention’sdecision) and run a “splinter campaign” in thegeneral election. All that was required was forhim to print and distribute ballots of his own.As Bensel (2003, p. 8) argues:

Unlike contemporary politics where a newparty would have to circulate petitions, pay fil-ing fees, and meet deadlines months before anelection takes place, a party faction could be-come an effective contender at the polls even ifit bolted only hours before the voting started.

Moreover, the lack of ballot rules allowed asplinter candidate to reconfigure the “regular”party slate and insert his own name in place


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of the party’s chosen nominee (Ware 2002).Doing so required no special skills or talents.As Reynolds (2006, p. 127) explains, “anyonecould prepare and distribute ‘mixed’ or ‘irreg-ular’ tickets.” Thus, if an incumbent was pop-ular enough and controlled enough resourcesto print ballots and hire workers to distributethem, he could still credibly vie for reelectionwithout the party’s official nomination.

RESPONSIVENESS

In addition to being ambitious and au-tonomous, members of Congress must also beresponsive. Responsiveness, the third compo-nent of the Mayhewian conception of the elec-toral incentive, means that incumbents must beable to fulfill the needs and requests of theirconstituents. As reelection requires constituentratification, members must be in a position toprovide the types of benefits that constituentscare about. In the contemporary Congress,Mayhew contends that legislators frequentlyengage in three types of behaviors in their pur-suit of constituent support: advertising, creditclaiming, and position taking. Indeed, it is amixture of these three fundamental activities,Mayhew suggests, that helps to ensure thatmembers of Congress continue to be reelected.

To what extent are these types of reelection-oriented activities actively facilitated by the in-stitutional structure within Congress? Accord-ing to Mayhew (1974, pp. 81–82):

[T]he organization of Congress meets re-markably well the electoral needs of its mem-bers. To put it another way, if a group of plan-ners sat down and tried to design a pair ofAmerican national assemblies with the goal ofserving members’ electoral needs year in andyear out, they would be hard pressed to im-prove on what exists.

What makes this statement particularly in-teresting is that many of the recognizablecongressional institutions—such as the stand-ing committee system and the property rightsnorm—were in place as far back as the early

nineteenth century (Gamm & Shepsle 1989,Jenkins 1998, Stewart & Canon 2001). Evenso, when we discuss the electoral connection inconjunction with these legislative institutions,we often do so in terms of the contemporaryCongress. For instance, when focusing on leg-islators engaging in credit-claiming activities,we often think about how effective they are atfunneling pork back home. Or we emphasizehow members of Congress take advantage ofthe media to advertise themselves or their ac-complishments to their constituents.

Were nineteenth-century legislators in a po-sition to utilize these types of activities to pro-vide “benefits” to their constituents? Yes, albeitto a somewhat more limited extent than we reg-ularly observe today.

Advertising

As noted above, Reynolds (2006) describes howcandidates during much of the nineteenth cen-tury were expected to rise above the politicalfray—as raw political ambition was considereda vice during this era—by not actively solicit-ing public support for their campaigns. By thelatter part of the nineteenth century, this cul-tural (and behavioral) norm was swept away, ascandidates actively adjusted their behavior inan attempt to earn and retain the nominationfor office (Reynolds 2006, pp. 62–67). Thesehustling candidates valued getting their nameout to delegates in much the same way thatMayhew claims that congressional incumbentsdo today. Once they secured a seat in Congress,they could then utilize their legislative accom-plishments to persuade voters that they shouldbe reelected.

Evidence for member advertising in theantebellum era also exists. Cooper & Young(1989) argue that changes to the rules of bill in-troduction in the House, going back to the late1830s, were made at least in part to generateadditional opportunities for members to pro-mote their legislative efforts. Committees hadalways been privileged in their ability to intro-duce bills, and members’ opportunities to gainthe floor for advertising purposes had always


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been limited. This created pent-up member de-mand. And, in fact, the rules changes in 1837–1838 only whetted members’ appetites. By the1840s, as Alexander (1917, p. 217) states,

members clamored for more time for the in-troduction of bills. At first bills were not nu-merous. The modern habit of using them toadvertise a member’s activities did not thenobsess the legislative mind. . . . But when thefact developed that a bill introduced, thoughnot passed, benefited the member, since it ev-idenced a disposition to serve his constituents,the House (1860) set apart each alternateMonday for their introduction. . . . This radi-cal change, encouraging members to presentbills on all possible subjects, created such aMonday rush that it increased their numbernearly twenty-fold in twenty years . . .

Institutional development in the House,thus, followed directly from members’ self in-terest. Beginning in the 1830s, and continu-ing over the next few decades, bill introductionchanged so as to make it easier for members“to introduce business of interest to their statesand localities” (Cooper & Young 1989, p. 98).This argument for constituency-induced mem-ber self-interest being the driving force for in-stitutional development in the House is quiteconsistent with Mayhew’s (1974) elaboration ofthe electoral connection.

Position Taking

In addition to advertising, members ofCongress also find it advantageous to en-gage in various forms of position taking. AsMayhew (1974, p. 62) reminds us, the “con-gressman as a position taker is a speaker ratherthan a doer,” since “the position itself is thepolitical commodity.” In the age of 24-hour ca-ble news and the Internet, incumbents have afar easier time getting their message out to-day than they did in the past. Nevertheless, thereach of the party press was extensive in thenineteenth century (Pasley 2001, Smith 1977),and events in Congress were covered in great

detail (Kernell 1986, Kernell & Jacobson 1987).These party newspapers thus provided incum-bents with an outlet to advocate positions onissues that the public cared about well beforethe era of mass technological communications.

One interesting case of antebellum posi-tion taking has been explored in great de-tail in the literature—the petition movementagainst slavery in the 1830s ( Jenkins & Stewart2003, Meinke 2007, Miller 1995). Petitions, ormemorials, sent from citizens to their represen-tatives had been a part of the representative–constituency linkage from the government’sfounding. In the mid-1830s, the petition move-ment escalated, as antislavery advocates in theNorth flooded their representatives with re-quests that slavery be eliminated. These ef-forts eventually led to a series of “gag rules”in Congress, wherein petitions regarding slav-ery would not be read. After years of argument,and mounting pressure in the North, the gagon slavery petitions was repudiated, as manyNorthern politicians who had previously sup-ported the gag switched their positions, fearingconstituent retribution. This fear of taking the“wrong” position on slavery issues later affectedspeakership elections in the 1840s and 1850s( Jenkins & Stewart 2001).

Another example of position taking involvescivil service reform legislation in the 1880s.For years after the Civil War, legislation toreform the civil service system in the UnitedStates was pushed, without success. Theriault(2003) argues that a series of events in the early1880s—the emergence of organizations dedi-cated to eradicating the spoils system, PresidentGarfield’s assassination in 1881 by a disgrun-tled office seeker, and the midterm electionsof 1882 that resulted in substantial Republicanlosses—contributed to a shift in public supportfor civil service reform. Indeed, it was duringthe lame-duck session following the 1882midterms that reform legislation was enacted,via the Pendleton Act (1883). In emphasizingthe importance of legislative responsivenesson this issue, Theriault (2003, p. 53) maintainsthat “members of Congress gave up patronageand political assessments, not only because they


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were perhaps inefficient avenues to reelection,but because the public demanded reformand the members wanted to be reelected.”Theriault’s argument builds upon the workof Johnson & Libecap (1994), who argue thatlegislators passed civil service reform as astrategic initiative to facilitate their reelectionefforts. With more skilled politicians in thecivil service, they argue, legislators could bettermanage their remaining political appointees.Thus, according to Johnson & Libecap, reelec-tion was a central goal for members of Congressin the 1880s, well before the modern era.

Credit Claiming

The final activity that reelection-seeking in-cumbents regularly employ is credit claim-ing. The member’s goal is simple: to accom-plish certain objectives on behalf of his orher constituents that will make them support-ive in subsequent elections. In the contem-porary era, there are many opportunities forcredit claiming—such as securing pork-barrelprojects, preventing a military base from beingclosed, and performing intermediary work onbehalf of constituents (or “casework”)—manyof which stem directly from the committee onwhich a representative sits. Ultimately, the rep-resentative needs to convince constituents that(a) he or she is personally responsible for mak-ing something desirable happen and (b) the de-sired outcome would be significantly less likelyto occur if he or she were not currently servingin Congress.

As noted above, much of the recognizedinstitutional structure in Congress that facili-tates credit claiming was in place long beforethe post–World War II era. This, in turn,suggests that incumbents may have found itadvantageous to utilize their positions on leg-islative committees far earlier than is generallyaccepted to try to achieve benefits for theirconstituents. Indeed, committee assignmentsand committee chairs were hotly contestedduring the antebellum period—probably, atleast in part, for credit-claiming purposes. Inthe postbellum era, committee assignments

and chairmanships formed the glue to holdthe party organizations together, as theywere doled out to different factions in theparty based on members’ particular needs andthereby cemented organizational decisionsmade in caucus ( Jenkins & Stewart 2012).

The late-nineteenth-century congressionalagenda created the basis for many credit-claiming opportunities, as particularistic issuesgained in importance. In discussing policy re-sponsiveness in Congress during the 1870s, forinstance, Thompson (1985, pp. 123, 125) states:

Most legislators tried earnestly to hold uptheir end of the representational relationshipby pledging to work explicitly on behalf ofwhat they perceived to be their constituencies’policy interests. Speeches, eulogies, memoirs,journalistic accounts, and, for those who keptthem, diaries and correspondences all attest tothe pervasiveness of such behavior. . . . Thereis a clear consensus that House membersdemonstrated awareness of and concern fortheir constituencies’ needs and tried, when-ever possible, to act responsively.

More specifically, rivers-and-harbors legis-lation emerged in force in the early 1880s, andtypically “contained significant appropriationsfor improvements designed to benefit onlyparticular localities” (Stathis 2002, p. 122).Members of Congress in the late nineteenthand early twentieth centuries frequentlyclaimed credit for their district’s respectivepiece of the rivers-and-harbors pie (Wilson1986a,b).4 Protective tariffs were perhaps themajor political-economic issue in the postbel-lum Congress, as a variety of raw-materialsproducers and manufacturers forcefully lobbiedtheir representatives for favorable trade terms.Members were cognizant of such lobbying

4Wilson (1986a) notes that members in this era also soughtcommittee assignments that would allow them to craft riversand harbors legislation in such a way as to insure benefitsto their districts; being on the “right” committee would thusprovide them with a more credible mechanism to claim creditwith their constituents.


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0

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Figure 2Public and private laws, first (1789–1791) through 56th (1899–1901) Congresses. Source: McIver (2006).

efforts and actively sought to signal thatthey were being responsive (often with floorspeeches and roll-call votes) and to claim creditfor specific elements in the tariff schedules(Brady 1973, Brady et al. 2002, Conybeare1991). Lastly, Civil War pensions, which wereoften funded by revenue surpluses generatedby postbellum protective tariffs, were a majorelement of policy making. Civil War veter-ans were a large client group, and legislatorsworked hard to pass general pension bills as wellas meet the individual needs of pensioners(and potential pensioners) in their districts(Finocchiaro 2005, 2006).

Interestingly, the particularistic congres-sional programs in the post–Civil War erawere rooted in the pre–Civil War era. Thatis, constituent demand, congressional policymaking, and credit claiming were componentsof political life in antebellum America. Forexample, protective tariffs were as hotly con-tested prior to the Civil War as they wereafter, and geographically centered constituentpressure and congressional responsivenesswere very much in operation (Irwin 2006,Pincus 1977). Additionally, the template for

Civil War pension legislation could be found inthe Revolutionary War pensions of the 1810sand 1830s. The particularistic elements ofveterans’ pensions originated then, as membersof Congress who represented geographic unitswith a higher concentration of pension-eligibleadults actively sought a greater distribution ofbenefits (Finocchiaro & Jenkins 2006).5

Evidence of credit claiming in the ante-bellum era can also be found in the numberof public and private laws produced. Thesedata, presented in Figure 2, show that thenumber of private laws trailed the number ofpublic laws until the 1830s, when members ofCongress recognized opportunities for creditclaiming by providing Revolutionary Warpensions to particular constituents (and theirfamilies) via private bills. This private-pensionstrategy continued through the late 1850s (as

5The creation of postal roads and postal reform more gen-erally was another distributive-policy area that was drivenby constituent demand in the antebellum era. Members ofCongress were keenly aware of constituent sentiment andendeavored to be responsive, even when that meant buckingthe party position. See Baughman (2006, 2007).


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Mexican-American War veterans were alsotargeted). After the Civil War, the numberof potential pensioners was enormous, andCongress generally worked to provide for theirneeds through public acts. By the 1880s, mem-bers of Congress once again turned to privatebills to provide pensioners and their familieswith relief—and they did so with gusto, as thenumber of private bills (and laws) skyrocketed.This massive increase coincided with the trendtoward careerism that began in the late nine-teenth century. As Cooper & Young (1989,p. 99) state, by the 1880s, “the Civil War madeprivate business in the form of pensions andrelief from political disabilities more relevantto [members’ immediate] career interests.”

In seeking evidence of member re-sponsiveness, one need not stop with thenineteenth century. One can find evidence ofconstituency-based decision making even inthe late eighteenth century. For example, theapportionment of congressional seats after thedecennial census, which precipitated battlesin Congress through the 1940s, emerged asan issue in 1791, as members debated a newHouse size and ratio of representation (Balinski& Young 2001, Schmeckebier 1941, Zagarri1987). Inevitably, different bills were intro-duced, stipulating different House sizes (105,112, and 120 representatives), that appearedto favor different regions and economic con-stituencies. As Balinski & Young (2001, p. 13)note, “The contest over division of seats arosefrom deep political divisions: the emergingconflict between North and South, between Re-publican and Federalist, between agriculturaland industrial interests.” The stakes were high,and although the 120-seat apportionment billpassed both chambers, it led to the first presi-dential veto in U.S. history, as President Wash-ington preferred the 105-seat measure. Likeapportionment, bankruptcy policy, which was amajor issue in Congress during the nineteenthand twentieth centuries, also had its roots in theeighteenth century—with the first major U.S.bankruptcy law passed in 1800. Roll-call voteson bankruptcy issues had a distinct constituencybasis, which was both regional (North versus

South) and economic (supported by bankingand trading interests) in nature (Berglof &Rosenthal 2007, Poole & Rosenthal 2007).

Why would legislators endeavor to be re-sponsive to constituents in the premodern eraif they were not interested in pursuing a careerin Congress? The answer may be quite sim-ple: As suggested above, although incumbentswere not focused on a career in Congress, theywere focused on a career in politics. It makessense that legislators would want to do thingsto keep their constituents happy, such as takingfavorable public positions on roll-call votes androutinely engaging in credit claiming.6 Afterall, the same constituents whom congressionalincumbents represented today might very wellbe their constituents later, when they ran fora state-level position. Moreover, legislator re-sponsiveness followed from party leaders’ pref-erences. Party leaders cared about maintainingmajority control of Congress, so they wantedto keep districts firmly in the party column,even if the individual placeholder was not acongressional careerist. Therefore, party lead-ers wanted legislators to satisfy constituents.Since political careers during this era werebuilt largely within party organizations (Aldrich1995), party leaders could affect legislators’ ca-reer prospects by influencing their ability to ob-tain subsequent state-level positions. Thus, leg-islators possessed a strong incentive to hew towhat party leaders wanted.

ACCOUNTABILITY

The final component of Mayhew’s concep-tion of the electoral incentive is accountability.Members of Congress must be accountable tovoters, who evaluate their performance in officeand punish (vote to remove) or reward (vote toreelect) them accordingly. Accountability thusrequires that voters have the means to evaluate

6As Bianco et al. (1996) note: “It is one thing to argue thata congressional career was less attractive or less feasible inan earlier time than it is today, but another to conclude thatmembers of the early Congress were unconcerned about theelectoral consequences of their behavior.”


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individual incumbents, as well as the generalaptitude or capacity to make a choice. Unlikethe previous three components, which focus onlegislators specifically, this final component fo-cuses on voters within the member’s geographicconstituency. Voters ultimately decide whethermembers will achieve their goal of reelection.

Voters were first provided with the meansto evaluate individual members of Congressin the late nineteenth century, with the ad-vent of the Australian ballot. As noted above,an official balloting system did not exist in theUnited States throughout most of the nine-teenth century; instead, ballots were printedand distributed largely by the parties them-selves, and provided a list of the party’s (andonly the party’s) candidates for all available of-fices (Keyssar 2000). Beginning in the late 1880sand stretching into the 1910s, states took overthe balloting process, and the unofficial partyballot was replaced by an official governmentballot (for a list of adoption dates by state,see Albright 1942, Engstrom & Kernell 2005).The new state-generated ballot—known as theAustralian ballot because it was first institutedin Australia—listed all candidates for all offices,from which the voters could pick and choose byboth candidate and office. The Australian ballotmade ticket splitting more straightforward, andthus made it much easier for voters to punishor reward candidates individually (Katz & Sala1996). The ballot thus firmed up the agency re-lationship by increasing accountability; mem-bers of Congress now had a greater incentiveto be responsive to voters’ needs.

Before the Australian ballot, the agency re-lationship was considerably softer, as the struc-ture of the party ballot constrained voters’ abil-ity to hold individual incumbents accountable.The parties constructed their ballots to pro-mote straight-ticket voting. While it was possi-ble for voters to split their tickets and punish orreward individual candidates, it required man-ual effort. For example, voters could scratchout a candidate’s name and write in anothername; they could accept small strips of pa-per (called “pasters”) with unofficial candidates’names written in, which were often hawked at

voting places, and affix them over the names thatwere on the ballot; or they could create theirown ballot at home and bring it to the pollingplace (Bensel 2004, Reynolds 2006, Summers2004, Ware 2002).

There were also dangers associated with notvoting a straight party ticket in the party-ballotera. Voting was not secret, and party hench-men were positioned at the polling places,ever watchful of how voters behaved (Bensel2004). In addition, party ballots were oftencolor coded, giving the party henchman a clearcue of voters’ intentions. Pressure or outrightviolence could be directed toward those whobucked straight party voting. Nevertheless, asReynolds (2006, p. 128) notes, “Anecdotal ev-idence of rampant ticket splitting [during theparty-ballot era] is abundant. It also finds am-ple support in the election data.” He surveystwo Colorado precincts in 1888 and 1904, andfinds that 29.6% and 37.4% of ballots, respec-tively, were of the split-ticket variety (130–31).Bensel (2004, p. 32) looks at an Ohio countyin 1868 and uncovers more moderate results:17% of ballots cast were split tickets. Reynolds& McCormick (1986) also examine ten countiesin New York and New Jersey every two yearsfrom 1880 through 1910 and find that the inci-dence of split-ticket voting was as high as 25%in certain parts of the states. In short, althoughticket splitting clearly became easier during theAustralian-ballot era, voters had possessed andexercised the ability to reward or punish candi-dates during the party-ballot era.

Did voters possess the capacity to punish orreward individual incumbents during the nine-teenth century? This was well before the eraof mass communications—radio and televisionwere still decades away—and many studies holdthat this period was characterized by very strongcitizen attachments to party (Silbey 1985,1991), with any significant election-to-electiondeviations (when they occurred) resulting fromvoters punishing the party in power across theboard for negative economic conditions (Holt1992). Still, the availability of political newswas substantial—as noted above, newspaperswere plentiful throughout the country, and


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national events (principally actions taken bythe President and Congress) made up the lion’sshare of newspapers’ political coverage (seeKernell 1986, Kernell & Jacobson 1987). Andnews—especially news that involved a memberof Congress—was a hot commodity. As Jenkins& Stewart (2012, Ch. 2) write: “In an eradevoid of mass communication and [with] fewdiversions, word from Washington about thepeople’s business was eagerly awaited, dis-tributed hand-to-hand, and discussed amongneighbors just like episodes of American Idol aretoday.” The available evidence suggests thatcitizens were sufficiently engaged politically tokeep track of their elected representatives.

Research on the nineteenth-centuryCongress supports the accountability com-ponent of the electoral connection. Threeexamples stand out. Bianco et al. (1996)examine the Compensation Act of 1816, whichretroactively increased congressional pay byas much as 100%, and find that (a) memberswho were more electorally vulnerable were lesslikely to support the legislative compensationplan and (b) members who chose to supportthe plan were less likely to seek reelection, dueto the apparent electoral risks of such action.Moreover, they note that the congressionalpay raise was sufficiently salient for voters tobecome informed about it, even during this eraof limited media, and thus made it easier tohold legislators accountable for their supportof the controversial legislation. In general,Bianco et al. (1996, p. 147) find that

voters in the 1816 elections did not indiscrim-inately punish incumbents . . . nor did votersfocus their anger on the party in power. Ratherit appears that as far as the Compensation Actis concerned, incumbents were held account-able for their individual behavior, much as inthe modern era.

As a result, they conclude that “the politics ofthe modern and early Congresses are [not] asdifferent as the conventional wisdom suggests”(p. 147).

In a similar vein, Carson et al. (2001) exam-ine the congressional elections of 1862–1863,which took place during the Civil War, todetermine the extent to which the electorate’sdissatisfaction with the Republican-organizedwar effort led to a systematic backlash againstRepublican House candidates. They findthat, much as in modern elections, bothnational forces (i.e., the course of the war) anddistrict-specific conditions (i.e., entry of qual-ity challengers against marginal incumbents,district-level war casualties, and the timing ofraces) affected incumbents’ electoral fortunes.More generally, their findings “confirm the im-portance of district-specific effects on electoraloutcomes in the nineteenth century” (p. 894).

Finally, Carson & Engstrom (2005) exam-ine the electoral aftershocks of the disputedpresidential election of 1824. The election wasdivisive, as no candidate received a popular-vote majority; thus, it had to be decided inthe House of Representatives. This made theHouse contest extremely high profile, and citi-zens throughout the nation eagerly awaited theoutcome. Carson & Engstrom find that legis-lators who (a) voted for John Quincy Adams(the eventual winner) in the House contest and(b) represented districts that supported AndrewJackson in the popular election were targetedfor ouster and suffered a substantial vote lossin the subsequent midterm election. They alsofind that the entry of a quality challenger had asizeable impact on the fortunes of incumbents.These results, they contend, “serve to confirmthat representatives could be held accountablefor their behavior in office during the antebel-lum era” (p. 746).

Overall, then, there is evidence that incum-bents could be held accountable in earlier eras.What is lacking, however, is evidence from thepremodern era that is directly comparable toevidence from the modern era. The accountsmentioned here deal with isolated events ofan exceptional nature. Without more system-atically gathered evidence to indicate that ac-countability was present on more “ordinary”votes in Congress, it is difficult to fully assess theextent to which this component of the electoral


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connection was present generally across time.Recently, Baughman (2007) has taken a step inthis direction in his analysis of basic distribu-tive politics in the early nineteenth century—the establishment of postal routes during the1810s and 1820s—finding that voters were ableto hold House members accountable on moreroutine matters of politics. Additional work inthis vein is essential for understanding the na-ture of the accountability link across time.

SUMMARY AND DISCUSSION

Since the publication of Mayhew’s (1974) sem-inal work on Congress and the electoral con-nection, conventional wisdom has held that hisargument about viewing legislators as “single-minded seekers of reelection” really only ap-plies to the contemporary era, specifically, thepost–World War II era. In many respects, thishas a certain appeal. The contemporary erais characterized by powerful committee chairsclearly advantaged by the seniority system inCongress, allowing them to wield tremendousinfluence in the policy-making process. Po-litical parties during this era are noticeablyweaker than in the past, which has led togreater independence and self-sufficiency onthe part of individual candidates running foroffice. It is during the post–World War IIera that legislators regularly utilized the typesof activities—advertising, credit claiming, andposition taking—that Mayhew outlines in hisbook. This period also witnessed a dramatic in-crease in the number of recorded roll-call votes,forcing legislators to go on the record moreoften, increasing the odds that their positionscould become costly in the next election.

The preceding discussion notwithstanding,a review of the literature on congressionalbehavior and elections yields ample evidencethat the electoral connection, as outlined byMayhew, traces back earlier in time. In spec-ifying the individual, necessary conditionsfor a Mayhewian electoral connection—ambition, autonomy, responsiveness, andaccountability—we find that all were presentin a strict sense as early as the Progressive

Era (1890–1920). In particular, congressionalcareerism (and strong reelection ambition)emerged around 1890–1910; members’ auton-omy solidified with the rise of direct primariesbetween 1900 and 1920; and voters’ abilityto keep individual members accountable wasconsolidated with the Australian ballot reformsbetween 1890 and 1910.7 Thus, it would seemthat the electoral connection, rather than beinga development of the post–World War II era,dates back roughly to the turn of the twentiethcentury.

There is also evidence that a weaker, or lessformalized, version of an electoral connectionwas present even before the Progressive Era.For example, legislators have always been po-litically ambitious—they simply pursued polit-ical careers (specifically, careers within theirparty) rather than congressional careers duringmuch of the nineteenth century. As a result oftheir general political ambition, incumbents ac-tively sought to be responsive to constituents’needs and demands. This was necessary becausewhen members of Congress moved on to seekstate-level electoral positions, they would want(a) the votes of their former congressional dis-trict constituents and (b) the support of theirparty’s leaders. Political ambition thus bred re-sponsiveness throughout the eighteenth andnineteenth centuries.

The emergence of institutional structures—party leadership positions, the standingcommittee system, the property rights norm—as far back as the early nineteenth centurysuggests that members of Congress also valued

7No formal institutional change in this period affected mem-ber responsiveness (in the same way that changes altered theother three Mayhewian conditions). Nevertheless, there isevidence that responsiveness sharpened in the late nineteenthcentury. As noted, member advertising ramped up, and op-portunities for member credit claiming (via more pork-barrellegislation, as well as more private legislation) increased. Inaddition, although some argue that responsiveness in themodern era has increased due to the rise of public polling—the claim being that members of Congress better understandconstituent demands thanks to poll data—Karol (2007) ex-amines Literary Digest Interest Polls back to the 1910s andconcludes that the rise of scientific surveys did not lead to anincrease in responsiveness.


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responsiveness to constituents well before themodern era. That incumbents were working tomeet the needs of former Revolutionary Warveterans as early as the 1810s, for example, indi-cates that legislators recognized the underlyingimportance of the constituency–representativelinkage (Finocchiaro & Jenkins 2006). Thecontinued emphasis on credit-claiming be-havior over the next two centuries furtherillustrates the importance of an electoral con-nection across much of congressional history.Once incentives for legislators to pursue policygoals or chamber influence are established,then reelection becomes extremely important.Undeniably, the most powerful and influentialmembers of Congress over time tend to bethose with the greatest levels of chamber orcommittee seniority, which has both direct andindirect implications for the emergence andgrowth of careerism in Congress.

There is also evidence that member auton-omy and accountability existed even during theparty-convention and party-ballot eras. If in-cumbents wanted to run for a congressional of-fice, they were not completely constrained bythe party-controlled nomination system. Evenif they did not receive the party nomination inconvention, they could run an independent (orsplinter) campaign by printing and distribut-ing their own ballots. Nor did voters need theAustralian ballot to keep legislators account-able. Even during the party-ballot era, voterscould split their tickets—this required more ef-fort, and it incurred the risk of upsetting partyhenchman watching the polls, but it was al-ways an available option. Thus, legislators hadto be concerned about being voted out of office,should they not be sufficiently responsive to thedemands of their constituents; they could notrely on the anti-split-ticket design of the partyballot to insulate them against voter retribution.

Among the numerous potential implicationsof the preceding discussion, one stands out

in particular. As more systematic evidence isuncovered suggesting that an electoral connec-tion has been present across congressional his-tory, this may lead scholars to revisit our un-derstanding of the institutional development ofCongress. Indeed, this could help explain whyspecific congressional institutions were adoptedat certain points in time: They may have beencreated with the express purpose of enhanc-ing or “firming up” the existing constituency–representative linkage in Congress. That is,the electoral incentive may have always beenpresent, but the adoption of institutions or insti-tutional reforms such as standing committees,the Australian ballot, and the direct primaryserved to augment the linkages already in place.

In this review, we have sought to betterunderstand how an electoral incentive mighthave manifested itself in Congress well beforethe mid-twentieth century. Although someevidence has been marshaled to suggest aninherent temporal fluidity in the electorallinkage, several questions need to be addressedmore systematically in future work in order todetermine how (and how much) the electoralconnection may have changed over time. Forinstance, why was careerism more political thancongressional during much of the nineteenthcentury? To what extent was the emergingcareerism at the end of the nineteenth centurytied to issues such as congressional compen-sation? When, and under what conditions,did legislators begin utilizing their committeeassignments to engage in credit claiming?When did the candidate-centered electoralsystem first emerge in Congress? How fre-quently were members of Congress punishedfor their expressed positions on roll-call votes?We believe that answering these questionswill offer valuable, new insights into howthe institution of Congress has respondedto internal and external changes since thefounding of our federal system.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

The authors are not aware of any affiliations, memberships, funding, or financial holdings thatmight be perceived as affecting the objectivity of this review.


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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A previous version of this paper was presented at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the Midwest PoliticalScience Association, Chicago, IL. We thank Bill Bianco, Margaret Levi, Nolan McCarty, and JasonRoberts for helpful comments and suggestions.

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PL14-frontmatter ARI 11 April 2011 17:22

Annual Review ofPolitical Science

Volume 14, 2011Contents

A Life in Political ScienceSidney Verba � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � i

Leadership: What It Means, What It Does, and What We Want toKnow About ItJohn S. Ahlquist and Margaret Levi � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 1

Examining the Electoral Connection Across TimeJamie L. Carson and Jeffery A. Jenkins � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �25

Presidential Appointments and PersonnelDavid E. Lewis � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �47

Understanding the 2007–2008 Global Financial Crisis: Lessons forScholars of International Political EconomyEric Helleiner � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �67

Presidential Power in WarWilliam G. Howell � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �89

The Politics of Regulation: From New Institutionalism to NewGovernanceChristopher Carrigan and Cary Coglianese � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 107

The New Judicial Politics of Legal DoctrineJeffrey R. Lax � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 131

The Rhetoric Revival in Political TheoryBryan Garsten � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 159

The Rhetoric of the Economy and the PolityDeirdre Nansen McCloskey � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 181

The Contribution of Behavioral Economics to Political ScienceRick K. Wilson � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 201

The Causes of Nuclear Weapons ProliferationScott D. Sagan � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 225

Network Analysis and Political ScienceMichael D. Ward, Katherine Stovel, and Audrey Sacks � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 245

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PL14-frontmatter ARI 11 April 2011 17:22

The Big Five Personality Traits in the Political ArenaAlan S. Gerber, Gregory A. Huber, David Doherty, and Conor M. Dowling � � � � � � � � � � 265

ClientelismAllen Hicken � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 289

Political Economy Models of ElectionsTorun Dewan and Kenneth A. Shepsle � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 311

Modeling Dynamics in Time-Series–Cross-Section PoliticalEconomy DataNathaniel Beck and Jonathan N. Katz � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 331

Voting TechnologiesCharles Stewart III � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 353

Indexes

Cumulative Index of Contributing Authors, Volumes 10–14 � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 379

Cumulative Index of Chapter Titles, Volumes 10–14 � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 381

Errata

An online log of corrections to Annual Review of Political Science articles may be foundat http://polisci.annualreviews.org/

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