Parties, agendas, and roll rates
| Published date | 01 April 2020 |
| Author | Shawn Patterson,Thomas Schwartz |
| DOI | 10.1177/0951629819892325 |
| Date | 01 April 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Journal of Theoretical Politics
2020, Vol.32(2) 348–359
ÓThe Author(s) 2019
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/0951629819892325
journals.sagepub.com/home/jtp
Parties, agendas, and roll
rates
Shawn Patterson, Jr
Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions,Vanderbilt University, TN, USA
Thomas Schwartz
Department of Political Science,UCLA, CA, USA
Abstract
For the US House of Representatives, Cox and McCubbins discover tiny majority-party roll rates
and offer them as evidenceof majority-party agenda control. However, the observed rollrates are
approximately what wouldresult from chance alone or from chance constrained in severalnatural
ways. Besides that, we showthat rolls themselves are not evidence of any lapse in partisan agenda
control and may even occur as the intended consequence of agenda setting by the majority party.
Innovations include a solution to the combinatorialproblem of counting all possible rolls, the asso-
ciated computations, hypothetical examples of strategically advantageous self-induced rolls, and a
review of likely real examplesof the same.
Keywords
Agenda control; Hastert rule; political parties;roll rates
Because the majority party in the US House of Representatives enjoys a ‘‘near
monopoly of formal legislative power,’’ argue Cox and McCubbins (2005: 37), we
should expect it ‘‘to keep bills off the floor that would, if passed, displease a major-
ity of its membership.’’ As a test, they reckon each party’s roll rate, the fraction of
final-passage votes in which, contrary to the Hastert rule, a majority of its mem-
bers vote against a successful bill. In the 45th through 105th Congresses (1877–
1999), they find what they expect: a tiny roll rate (0.017) for the majority party, a
greater one (0.259) for the minority party.
Corresponding author:
Shawn Patterson,Jr, Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions,Vanderbilt University,TN, USA.
Email: shawn.t.patterson@vanderbilt.edu
To continue reading
Request your trial