The development and elaboration of the spatial theory of voting has contributed greatly to
the study of legislative decision making and elections. Statistical models that estimate the …

Researchers face two major problems when applying ideal point estimation techniques to
state legislatures. First, longitudinal roll‐call data are scarce. Second, even when such data …

We examine the proposition that incentives for legislative organization can be explained by
the nature of electoral competition. We argue that legislators in environments where parties …

This article reports findings for a decomposition of the roll-call voting record of the US
Congress to determine the effect of the level of aggregation on the observed dimensionality …

During the past fifty years American democracy has been transformed by the collapse of non-
ideological and decentralized traditional party organizations and also by the emergence of …

Political scientists often suppose that the informational model of legislative organization
predicts an absence of committee outliers. In fact, the model predicts that committee outliers …

The main tool measuring ideology in public opinion has historically been selfreported. But
this is now well known to be severely plagued by measurement error. While Ansolabehere …

In an earlier paper, I addressed the problem of putting state legislatures on a cross-
institutional common space with Congress. I relied on new roll call data from these …

This dissertation focuses on both the incentives and the constraints facing state legislators
during the redistricting process. Normatively, I focus on the issue of popular sovereignty in …