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Integrating Voting Theory and Roll Call Analysis: A Framework

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2017

Joshua D. Clinton  and
Adam Meirowitz
Joshua D. Clinton
Affiliation:
Department of Politics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544. e-mail: clinton@princeton.edu
Adam Meirowitz
Affiliation:
Department of Politics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544. e-mail: ameirowi@princeton.edu
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Abstract

Scholars of legislative studies typically use ideal point estimates from scaling procedures to test theories of legislative politics. We contend that theory and methods may be better integrated by directly incorporating maintained and to be tested hypotheses in the statistical model used to estimate legislator preferences. In this view of theory and estimation, formal modeling (1) provides auxiliary assumptions that serve as constraints in the estimation process, and (2) generates testable predictions. The estimation and hypothesis testing procedure uses roll call data to evaluate the validity of theoretically derived to be tested hypotheses in a world where maintained hypotheses are presumed true. We articulate the approach using the language of statistical inference (both frequentist and Bayesian). The approach is demonstrated in analyses of the well-studied Powell amendment to the federal aid-to-education bill in the 84th House and the Compromise of 1790 in the 1st House.

Type
Research Article
Information
Political Analysis , Volume 11 , Issue 4: Special Issue on Empirical Implications of Theoretical Models , Autumn 2003 , pp. 381 - 396
Copyright
Copyright © Political Methodology Section of the American Political Science Association 2003 

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