Lauren Silver POLS 540: Congress 10-15-2009

Peterson, Grossback, Stimson, and Gangle address the research question of

whether members of Congress change their voting patterns in response to an electoral
mandate. One important distinction they make is that it is irrelevant whether a true
mandate eists!only the perception on the part of members of Congress of a mandate
should be sufficient to influence their voting patterns in the direction of the mandate.
Peterson et al. posit that politicians" form a #perceived epediency position, a position
that balances policy interests with electoral security.$ %o that end, politicians usually vote
according to some equilibrium that coincides with their usual perceived epediency
position. %his equilibrium is a #position along the ma&or left'right ais of (merican
politics that is not too far from district opinion nor so moderate as to dishearten the
faithful.$
)oreover, Peterson et al. present a slightly different theory of mandates than
postulated by scholars in the past. %hey hypothesi*e that mandate effects on politicians"
voting will erode as a session moves forward rather than assuming that mandate effects
persist for the entire session. +n other words, politicians" perceived epediency position
changes!reverts toward their equilibrium and away from the mandate!with growing
temporal distance from the mandate election. %hus, a member of congress is considered
in a mandate state #when he or she deviates from personal equilibria in the direction of
the mandate at the beginning of the session following a mandate election.$
)ore specifically, Peterson et al. consider a member in the mandate state if his or
her observed liberalism for the block deviates in the direction of the mandate and is more
than a standard deviation from his or her equilibrium liberalism. ,owever, the authors
provide no eplanation for choosing the one standard deviation rule over, say, two
Lauren Silver POLS 540: Congress 10-15-2009
standard deviations. %he former means that -. percent of a member"s voting block
observations could be considered influenced by a mandate, whereas, the latter would
mean that only / percent of a member"s voting block observations could be considered
influenced by a mandate. 0y requiring that a member"s observed liberalism for a voting
block deviates in the direction of a mandate by more than one standard deviation, a
higher standard would be set for classifying that member as responding to a perceived
mandate. %he authors provide no eplanation for why one standard deviation is an
appropriate standard of deviation for this study.
(dditionally, the authors could have strengthened their argument for selecting
mandate elections if they had included additional sources in the content analysis. 0y way
of eample, it could be argued that the 1ew 2ork %imes, in general, is perceived as a
liberal newspaper staffed by &ournalists whose writing is biased toward the liberal
perspective. ( prominent regional newspaper in the south with a more conservative bent,
for instance, could offer a different perspective on whether a mandate eisted for a certain
election. %hus, it would have been interesting if the authors had included analysis of
articles appearing in prominent newspapers from different regions throughout the
country.
Overall, Peterson et al. find mandate effects on politicians" voting strategy
following a mandate election. %hey conclude that results presented in this article #close
the loop$ on the theory of dynamic representation, i.e., members of Congress not only
respond to changes in public opinion 3aggregate effects4, but they also respond to their
perception of a mandate 3individual member dynamics4.