Parties and Agenda Setting: A Final Passage Approach to Ideal Point Estimation

Abstract

Canonical approaches to the study of ideal points in Congress are all built off of a theoretical Congress that treats casting a vote on any given roll call as an individualized independent action. Ignoring the structure of votes leads to the creation of measures that obstruct how parties structure votes in such a way to ensure the legislative outcomes they desire: positive and negative agenda control. Building off of a growing literature on the problems with existing measures of legislative preferences, I propose a more straightforward approach to ideal point estimation that privileges final passage votes over others and therefore takes seriously the use of agenda control by the majority party to shape outcomes. In doing so, I find the effects of party on individual roll calls conditional on the majority status of the MC, as well as significant discrepancies in how these votes impact our existing measurements of ideal points. I further introduce a series of tests from the psychometrics literature on the viability of latent traits to identify which of these measures are most consistent and generalizable. I find that partisan centric ideal points are more accordant with these tests than existing measures. With these final-passage generated ideal points, I find more evidence of MC success and failures consistent with theories of both positive and negative agenda control.