Measuring and accounting for strategic abstentions in the US Senate, 1989-2012

Moser, Scott; Rodr�guez, Abel

Abstract

Strategic abstentions—in which legislators abstain from votes for ideological reasons—are a poorly understood feature of legislative voting records. The paper discusses a spatial model for legislators’ revealed preferences that accounts for abstentions when missing values are non‐ignorable and allows us to measure the pervasiveness of strategic abstention by identifying legislators who consistently engage in strategic abstentions, as well as bills for which the ideology of legislators is a key driver of abstentions. We illustrate the performance of our model through the analysis of the 101st–112th US Senates.

Citation

Moser, S., & Rodríguez, A. (2015). Measuring and accounting for strategic abstentions in the US Senate, 1989-2012. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series C, 64(5), 779-797. https://doi.org/10.1111/rssc.12099

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Mar 26, 2015
• Publication Date: Nov 1, 2015
• Deposit Date: Sep 12, 2017
• Print ISSN: 0035-9254
• Electronic ISSN: 1467-9876
• Publisher: Wiley
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 64
• Issue: 5
• Pages: 779-797
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/rssc.12099
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1117356
• Publisher URL: https://rss.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/rssc.12099
• PMID: 00036269