How Lame are Lame Ducks?

C. Koopman, M. Mitchell, Emily Washington
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Abstract

A lame duck session of Congress occurs when legislators meet after an election has been held but before the next Congress has taken office. Lame duck sessions are often criticized by the victorious party in the election, and a common critique is that the lame duck members — undisciplined by electoral constraints — vote irresponsibly. There are subtle but statistically significant differences between voting patterns in regular and lame duck sessions, as revealed by analysis of over 50,000 House and Senate roll call votes.During a lame duck session, members are slightly less likely to side with their own parties and less likely to vote at all. These patterns persist in very lame duck sessions — those that take place following the loss of majority status within a single house. In these sessions, however, a new pattern emerges: House members become more likely to cast bipartisan votes and Senators become less likely to do so. Beyond these voting patterns, it is difficult to say whether members vote more or less “responsibly” during lame duck sessions of Congress. Our analysis supports the primary findings of the existing literature on lame ducks. Past studies have found lame duck legislators to be less likely to indulge most special interests, but others suggest they may be more likely to indulge one particular special interest: their next employers. In this study, we explain how incentives change for lame duck legislators, briefly review past research on lame ducks, and present our statistical findings that support and add to the existing literature.
跛脚鸭有多跛?
“跛脚鸭国会”指的是议员们在选举之后、下届国会就职之前开会。在选举中获胜的政党经常批评“跛脚鸭会议”,普遍的批评是,“跛脚鸭”议员不受选举约束,投票时不负责任。对参众两院5万多份唱名投票的分析显示,正常会议和跛脚鸭会议的投票模式存在微妙但在统计上显著的差异。在跛脚鸭会议期间,议员们站在自己政党一边的可能性略低,投票的可能性也更低。这些模式在跛脚鸭会议中持续存在-那些在一个议院中失去多数地位后发生的会议。然而,在这些会议上,出现了一种新的模式:众议院议员更有可能进行两党投票,参议员则不太可能这样做。除了这些投票模式之外,很难说议员们在“跛脚鸭”国会期间的投票是否更“负责任”。我们的分析支持现有文献关于跛脚鸭的主要发现。过去的研究发现,“跛脚鸭”议员不太可能满足大多数特殊利益,但也有人认为,他们可能更有可能满足一个特殊利益:他们的下一任雇主。在本研究中,我们解释了“跛脚鸭”立法者的激励机制是如何变化的,简要回顾了过去关于“跛脚鸭”的研究,并提出了支持和补充现有文献的统计结果。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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