Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-vfjqv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T16:31:44.485Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The ABM Issue in the Senate, 1968–1970: The Importance of Ideology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Robert A. Bernstein  and
William W. Anthony
Robert A. Bernstein
Affiliation:
Texas A&M University
William W. Anthony
Affiliation:
Texas A&M University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Three hypotheses suggesting why senators might adopt or change positions on such an issue as the ABM are compared. The empirical analysis clearly substantiates the contention that position reflects ideology, not party commitment or potential state economic benefits. Furthermore, the influence of ideology is seen to have grown more apparent each year the issue was contested in the Senate. Virtually all the senators who changed position between 1968 and 1970 had initial positions that did not accord with their ideology, and they moved so as to bring them in accord. Virtually all those senators whose initial position was in accord with their ideology maintained that position.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 68 , Issue 3 , September 1974 , pp. 1198 - 1206
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1974

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 For an elaboration of this point, see Hinckley, Barbara, Stability and Change in Congress (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), chapter 7Google Scholar.

2 Even “real estate” questions have policy implications and the Senate has followed up on those implications, at least since the fifties; see Dawson, Raymond, “Congressional Innovation and Intervention in Defense Policy: Legislative Authorization of Weapons Systems” American Political Science Review, 56 (March, 1962), 46–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Russett, Bruce, What Price Vigilance? The Burdens of National Defence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), pp. 72–79Google Scholar.

4 This is one of the general hypotheses tested by Russett, chapter 3.

5 In regard to this issue, note the discussions of delegates, locals and opportunists in Davidson, Roger, The Role of the Congressman (New York: Pegasus, 1969), chapter 4Google Scholar; and Wahlke, J. C., Eulau, H., Buchanan, W., and Ferguson, L. C. in The Legislative System: Explorations in Legislative Behavior (New York: Wiley, 1962), part 4Google Scholar.

6 Hinckley, p. 155.

7 The American Political Science Association Committee on Political Parties in its 1950 report (American Political Science Review, 44 [September, 1950] supplement, 1–10)Google Scholar suggested that such party influence would be a desirable goal, rather than a current practice. However, Julius Turner in his Party and Constituency: Pressures on Congress (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1952)Google Scholar suggests that party influence is already felt strongly.

8 Note the discussion of delegates and statesmen in Davidson, chapter 4, and Wahlke et al., part 4.

9 While the conservative-liberal typology is sufficiently multidimensional (Lane, Robert, Political Thinking and Consciousness [Chicago: Markham, 1969])Google Scholar to cause serious conceptual problems in some cases, for this issue the subdimensions of the typology are unlikely to predict contradictory behavior.

10 Hinckley, p. 151.

11 Lane, p. 52.

12 For elaboration of these themes, see especially Goldwater, Barry, Why Not Victory? (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1962)Google Scholar; Burnham, James, Suicide of the West (New York: Day, 1964)Google Scholar; Malik, Charles, “The Challenge to Western Civilization,” in The Conservative Papers (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1964), pp. 1–17Google Scholar.

13 Lane, p. 52.

14 For more elaboration, see especially Students for a Democratic Society, “America and the New Era,” convention paper, Pine Hill, New York, June 14–17, 1963Google Scholar; Hughes, H. Stuart, An Approach to Peace (New York: Atheneum, 1962)Google Scholar; The Liberal Papers (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1962)Google Scholar.

15 For a discussion of administration pressures, including comments by Senator James Pearson regarding such pressures, see Congressional Quarterly (Fall, 1969) 99–104Google Scholar. Additionally, see Thomas Halsted's “Lobbying Against the ABM, 1967–1970,” a paper delivered at the Sixty-sixth Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, California, 1970.

16 As Hinckley notes, “With a Republican President … Democrats in Congress could give clearer voice to their ‘dovish’ inclinations than they could in the previous Democratic administration,” p. 144.

17 For a detailed discussion of this point, see Eidelberg, Paul, The Philosophy of the American Constitution (New York: Free Press, 1968) chapters 5, 7 and 8Google Scholar.

18 See Miller, Warren and Stokes, Donald, “Constituency Influence in Congress,” American Political Science Review, 57 (March 1963), 45–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for a discussion of how constituency influence varies directly with the saliency of the issue.

19 Russett, pp. 72–76. It should be noted that both this and the Russett study have been restricted to the Senate; it is probable that economic incentives would be a more significant factor in determining the position of members of the House.

20 These may both be treated as “cognitive elements,” hence we have an application of the theories developed by Festinger, Leon, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1957)Google Scholar.

21 Note also Festinger's, , “A Theory of Social Comparison Processes,” Human Relations, 7 (1954), 117–140CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Homans, George, Social Behavior: Its Elementary Forms (New York: Harcourt, 1961)Google Scholar.

22 Congressional Quarterly, Senate Votes #81, 82, 154, 155, 222, and 257.

23 Goodman, Leo J., “Simple Statistical Methods for Scalogram Analysis,” Psychometrika, 24 (March, 1959), 20–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 For example, we could have included Congressional Quarterly Senate Vote #2 2 in the scale, but it added one scale error and it created a scale step which included only four senators. For the scale we did compute the Coefficient of Reproducibility (.983) and Menzel's Coefficient of Scalability (.933).

25 Except Senator Long (Mo.) who took no position on any of the votes and Kennedy (NY) who was assassinated before his position was clearly established.

26 Congressional Quarterly, Senate Votes #53, 54, 55, 56 and 211.

27 Coefficient of Reproducibility = .990; Menzel's Coefficient of Scalability = .971.

28 Congressional Quarterly, Senate Votes #237, 238, and 242.

29 Congressional Quarterly, Senate Votes #242, 238 had nearly identical cutoff points. The Coefficient of Reproducibility and Menzel's Coefficient of Scalability for the 1970 scale were both 1.00.

30 Congressional Quarterly Almanac, 1969, p. 1070Google Scholar.

31 Reported, Congressional Quarterly, May 30, 1969, pp. 848–849Google Scholar.

32 Reported, The American Almanac, 1970, p. 318Google Scholar.

33 The procedure adopted here follows closely that used by Robert Bernstein and Ralph Meyers (“An Approach to the Study of Change Over Time,” presented at the Forty-Third Annual Meeting of the Southern Political Science Association, Gatlinburg, Tennessee; November 13, 1971) in their residual model of short term change.

34 Gamma correlations were used here and later because Gamma is the ordinal measure of association best interpretable in terms of proportional reduction in error. (See Costner, Herbert, “Criteria for Measures of Association,” American Sociological Review, 30 [June, 1965], 341–353.CrossRefGoogle Scholar)