Friesenhahn, Amy
At the intersection of gender and party: Legislative freedom - Political Research Quarterly - 77(1), Mar, 2024: p.59-75
This paper examines the conditional effects of legislator gender, party, and key district-level characteristics on patterns of roll-call votes. I propose and test a theory of legislative freedom conceptualized as a member of Congress’s ability to defect from their party in roll-call votes. I argue that women members of Congress (MCs) will be more able to exercise legislative freedom in women-friendly districts. I expect both Democratic and Republican women MCs representing women-friendly districts will be more likely than those representing districts that are less women-friendly to defect from party and that the women-friendly district effect will be stronger for Republican women MCs. To test these hypotheses, I use roll-call voting data, women-friendly district data (Palmer and Simon 2006), and original data collected on members of the U.S. House beginning with the 103rd Congress. In this paper, I further explore the proposed theory of legislative freedom to examine recent high-profile cases of women MCs defecting from the Republican party and the conditions in which they exercise this freedom.- Reproduced
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/10659129231191780
Legislative freedom, Roll-call voting, Party defection, Women members of Congress, Gender and representation, Women-friendly districts, Republican women legislators, Democratic women legislators, Congressional voting behavior, District-level characteristics, Political party loyalty, Electoral incentives, U.S. House of Representatives, 103rd Congress, Gendered political behavior, Conditional effects, Political risk, Partisan alignment, Legislative autonomy, Empirical analysis
At the intersection of gender and party: Legislative freedom - Political Research Quarterly - 77(1), Mar, 2024: p.59-75
This paper examines the conditional effects of legislator gender, party, and key district-level characteristics on patterns of roll-call votes. I propose and test a theory of legislative freedom conceptualized as a member of Congress’s ability to defect from their party in roll-call votes. I argue that women members of Congress (MCs) will be more able to exercise legislative freedom in women-friendly districts. I expect both Democratic and Republican women MCs representing women-friendly districts will be more likely than those representing districts that are less women-friendly to defect from party and that the women-friendly district effect will be stronger for Republican women MCs. To test these hypotheses, I use roll-call voting data, women-friendly district data (Palmer and Simon 2006), and original data collected on members of the U.S. House beginning with the 103rd Congress. In this paper, I further explore the proposed theory of legislative freedom to examine recent high-profile cases of women MCs defecting from the Republican party and the conditions in which they exercise this freedom.- Reproduced
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/10659129231191780
Legislative freedom, Roll-call voting, Party defection, Women members of Congress, Gender and representation, Women-friendly districts, Republican women legislators, Democratic women legislators, Congressional voting behavior, District-level characteristics, Political party loyalty, Electoral incentives, U.S. House of Representatives, 103rd Congress, Gendered political behavior, Conditional effects, Political risk, Partisan alignment, Legislative autonomy, Empirical analysis