Academic

Yes, there are not one, not two, but three papers on the Social Science Research Network on congress that I’d like to highlight. The papers, by Samuel Kernell, Ann Laquer Estin, and Matilde Bombardini & Francesco Trebbi,  are set forth below the fold along with their abstracts.

Samuel Kernell 
University of California, San Diego - Department of Political Science
Abstract:      

During periods of divided government, presidents commonly enlist veto threats in an effort to alter the policy content of legislation in Congress. Whether such rhetoric can achieve its intended purpose is far from clear. Indeed, theory, classifying threats as “cheap talk”, judges the president’s potential influence to be minimal. In this paper we search for effects of veto threats directed at legislation that has passed one chamber and will be subsequently voted on in the second chamber. Based on previous research we suspect that when the second chamber is the Senate its action is critical in determining whether Congress responds to the president’s threat. We find that compared to unthreatened legislation, presidential threats elicit a more partisan response in roll call voting, both on final passage in the Senate as well as on the adoption of the conference report in the House. Specifically patterns of vote-switching by members of the president’s party between rounds of voting are far more consistent with and predictable along the axis of interparty competition-the estimated primary policy dimension in Congress-in presence of threat. This is consistent with Congress making concessions in policy in response to veto threats, while peddling nonpartisan fluff in their absence. 

Ann Laquer Estin 
University of Iowa - College of Law 

Abstract:      
Despite the federalism rhetoric that still marks political debate and judicial opinions, family law in the United States today is a complex mixture of state and federal law. This paper identifies and evaluates three different forms of federalism in family law, each of which presents distinct pragmatic and constitutional questions. Congress has used its spending power to reconfigure state child support and child welfare laws on a cooperative federalism basis, and its Commerce Clause and Full Faith and Credit powers to legislate in areas that pose horizontal federalism problems. Congress has also preempted state family law with legislation in areas including civil rights, tax, pension, bankruptcy immigration, and international law. In all of these settings,Congress has been primarily responsible for defining the balance of national and state power, with the federal courts resisting national family legislation only when it seems likely to shift significant responsibility from the state courts to the federal courts.

Matilde Bombardini 
University of British Columbia
Francesco Trebbi 
University of Chicago - Graduate School of Business

Abstract:      
This paper investigates the relationship between the size of interest groups in terms of voter representation and the interest group’s campaign contributions to politicians. We uncover a robust hump-shaped relationship between the voting share of an interest group and its contributions to a legislator. This pattern is rationalized in a simultaneous bilateral bargaining model where the larger size of an interest group affects the amount of surplus to be split with the politician (thereby increasing contributions), but is also correlated with the strength of direct voter support the group can offer instead of monetary funds (thereby decreasing contributions). The model yields simple structural equations that we estimate at the district level employing data on individual and PAC donations and local employment by sector. This procedure yields estimates of electoral uncertainty and politicians effectiveness as perceived by the interest groups. Our approach also implicitly delivers a novel method for estimating the impact of campaign spending on election outcomes: we find that an additional vote costs a politician between 100 and 400 dollars depending on the district.