Book Description

This dissertation examines the dynamics of congressional representation during the emergence of relatively responsible party government in the United States. Recent developments in elite-level polarization and legislative unity has led scholars to remark that the United States Congress features more responsible and stronger parties. In turn, this clarifies the degree of legislative responsibility surrounding the successful passage of congressional policies and the ideological nature of the congressional party agenda. Building on recent work positing the emergence of a party system closer to the responsible party government}ideal, this dissertation explores the dynamics by which congressional representation in the United States becomes more partisan-centered during this emerging era of responsible party government. The first chapter of the dissertation examines the changing nature of U.S. Senate election outcomes as the congressional parties become more polarized. Using a novel dataset of aggregate Senate elections during the entire direct-election era (1914-2016), I find strong evidence that, during heightened periods of polarization, the salience of partisanship in determining Senate election outcomes increases. The key exception of this illustration are Senators representing politically hostile states (i.e., Democratic Senators representing Republican leaning states), which are capable of adapting their personal brands in light of greater ideological polarization between the parties. In the second chapter, I turn my attention to the question of whether citizens use their ideological preferences and the ideological agendas of both congressional parties to evaluate the collective job performance of the U.S. Congress. Given the rise of more polarized and unified congressional parties, I find evidence for a theory suggesting that evaluations of congressional job performance are a function of both partisan identity and the ideological proximity between citizen preferences and the ideological locations of both congressional parties. Lastly, the third chapter builds on the finding that citizen approval of Congress is premised on the collective ideological representation provided by the majority party by finding support for a theory of collective accountability in congressional elections. This theory of collective accountability argues that citizen assessments of congressional job performance motivates both their propensity to participate in electoral accountability and, ultimately, their district-level electoral choice.