How Senators Decide: The Role of Predispositions

• In Event: Representation in American Legislative Politics

Abstract

This paper is part of a series about the factors that shape the roll call choices of U.S. Senators on major issues. Here, my focus is on the independent impact of member predispositions – ideological reasoning, core policy attitudes, and longstanding positions – above and beyond the imperatives of constituency, party, and other contextual factors. The evidence derives in part from approximately 100 interviews conducted by the author with top aides to 36 U.S. Senators during 1999-2000 about 20 issues that were considered by the chamber during that congress. The interview protocol is an extension of Kingdon’s (1973) research design in his classic study of roll call decision making in the House and a pilot version was first presented in Evans (2002). Additional evidence is gleaned from the personal papers of former Senators, the Clinton presidential archives, internal party whip counts, media accounts, and the roll call record. Even in a chamber polarized along partisan lines, the paper finds, the positions taken by Senators are shaped in part by their personal policy predispositions. However, the relationships that exist between core attitudes and the other factors that shape member decision making are more complex than suggested by existing empirical scholarship, which in turn has implications for the meaning of member “preferences” and our understanding of the representative process.

Author

• C. Lawrence Evans, College of William & Mary