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Working
Paper Series:
07.12
A Bridge to Somewhere: Mapping State and
Congressional Ideology on a Cross-Institutional
Common Space
Boris Shor, Christopher R. Berry, and Nolan McCarty
http://www.harrisschool.uchicago.edu/faculty/web-pages/boris-shor.asp
Abstract:
There are two major problems in applying ideal point estimation techniques to state
legislatures. First, there has been a scarcity of longitudinal roll call data. Second, even
where such data exist, scaling ideal points within a single state is inadequate. No
comparisons can be made across institutions, whether to other state legislatures or to
the US Congress. Our project suggests a solution to both of these problems. We use
a new comparative data set of state legislative roll calls beginning in the mid-1990s to
generate ideal points for legislators. We take advantage of the fact that state legislators
sometimes go on to serve in Congress to create a common ideological scale between
Congress and the various legislatures. These \bridge actors" are similar to members
of the House who go on to serve in the Senate, thereby providing the glue necessary to
scale the House and Senate together. We use this approach for California, Colorado,
Florida, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Using these
bridge actors, we create a new state-federal congressional common space ideological
scores. We conclude by illustrating how these common space scores can be used to
address important topics in legislative politics.
The complete
document may be downloaded or viewed using Adobe
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it from Adobe.
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