In this paper, I explore how parties exercise power in Congress. I analyze the legislative history of the annual appropriations bills over a 33-year time period to show how party leaders routinely use their agenda-setting powers to work around pivotal voters and advance their party’s...

This paper exploits new data from original representative surveys of municipal, county, and township congress delegates and their constituents in mainland China. It presents descriptive evidence that: (1) local congress delegates have a sense of constituency, reflected in both attitudes and...

The recent rise and stability in macropartisanship has focused interest upon the long-term dynamics of party bases. Commentators cite immigration and youth as forces which will produce a natural Democratic advantage in the future while conservative writers highlight the importance of high...

The Finnish National Election Study of 2003 revealed that in Finland most voters do not identify with parties and are self-described as independents. In this article it is asserted that partisan attachments affect Finnish parties’ optimal positions despite the large amount of independents. To...

Theories of parties and lawmaking typically require measures of legislators' preferences for empirical analysis. However, existing methods for generating estimates of these preferences presume that legislators care only about their own policy preferences and not about their constituency or party...

This study presents a detailed discussion of the generational politics surrounding one of Germany’s most radical labor reforms - the Hartz reforms. How could it be that at the same time as their numbers were bigger than ever before, the old became political losers of one of the most...