assumption that legislators are single-mindedly interested in reelection can be analogically inferred from this argument. This assumption does not exclude factors other than economic. (1957) is often cited An Economic Theory of Democracy Anthony Downs’ seminal work as a monumental work that examined the mechanisms of how legislators, legislative parties, and voters act. In this book, Downs presents a theory that legislative parties determine behavior of legislators because it is legislative parties that provide job positions to legislators. Actually, legislators receive significant supports from their legislative parties, such as financial resources and shortcuts for their constituents to know about those policy preferences. In the legislators’ contemporary political context, legislative parties seem to be a significant source of legislative vote choice. A criticism, which is related to the case of the Tea Party movement, is that individual legislators receive significant amount of financial contributions from their citizen supporters as well as private advocacy organizations, in political arena. today’s Another often cited Congress: the Electoral Connection work, David R. Mayhew’s (1974) sheds lights on the discretion of individual legislators. Mayhew argues that individual legislators have to make their individual efforts to gain votes from their constituents, through advertising, credit claiming, and position taking. Advertising is defined as any action to publicize name among constituents. Credit claiming is to emphasize individual contribution to legislators’ policy making, often by emphasizing specific policy area of concern. individual legislators’ Position taking means public enunciation of legislators’ policy preferences through, for example, roll-call votes. participation in the Tea Party movement can be understood as an Legislators’ effective tool of advertising. It can also be regarded as an action of credit claiming, if proposed policy goals are achieved. In other words, as was mentioned in Introduction, legislators have incentives to participate in the movement for their own sake.
assumption that legislators are single-mindedly interested in reelection can be analogically inferred from this argument. This assumption does not exclude factors other than economic. Anthony Downs’ seminal work An Economic Theory of Democracy (1957) is often cited as a monumental work that examined the mechanisms of how legislators, legislative parties, and voters act. In this book, Downs presents a theory that legislative parties determine behavior of legislators because it is legislative parties that provide job positions to legislators. Actually, legislators receive significant supports from their legislative parties, such as financial resources and shortcuts for their constituents to know about those legislators’ policy preferences. In the contemporary political context, legislative parties seem to be a significant source of legislative vote choice. A criticism, which is related to the case of the Tea Party movement, is that individual legislators receive significant amount of financial contributions from their citizen supporters as well as private advocacy organizations, in today’s political arena. Another often cited work, David R. Mayhew’s Congress: the Electoral Connection (1974) sheds lights on the discretion of individual legislators. Mayhew argues that individual legislators have to make their individual efforts to gain votes from their constituents, through advertising, credit claiming, and position taking. Advertising is defined as any action to publicize legislators’ name among constituents. Credit claiming is to emphasize individual contribution to policy making, often by emphasizing individual legislators’ specific policy area of concern. Position taking means public enunciation of legislators’ policy preferences through, for example, roll-call votes. Legislators’ participation in the Tea Party movement can be understood as an effective tool of advertising. It can also be regarded as an action of credit claiming, if proposed policy goals are achieved. In other words, as was mentioned in Introduction, legislators have incentives to participate in the movement for their own sake.
Hiromatsu_Tea%20Party%20Movement%20and%20Senatorial%20Voting%20Behavior.docx