The Moderating Role of Electoral Pressure on Congressional Ideological Polarization: A Cross-Sectional Time-Series Analysis

Reelection and self-interest are recurring themes in the study of our congressional leaders. To date, many studies have already been done on the trends between elections, party affiliation, and voting behavior in Congress. However, because a plethora of data has been collected on both elections and congressional voting, the ability to draw a connection between the two provides a very reasonable prospect. This project analyzes whether voting shifts in congressional elections have an effect on congressional voting. Will a congressman become ideologically more polarized when his electoral margins increase? Essentially, this paper assumes that all congressmen are ideologically polarized, and it is elections which serve to reel congressmen back toward the ideological middle. The election and ideological data for this study, which spans from the 56th to the 107th Congress, finds statistically significant relationships between these two variables. In fact, congressman pay attention to election returns when voting in Congress. When broken down by party, Democrats are more exhibitive of this phenomenon, which suggest that Democrats may be more likely to intrinsically follow the popular model of representation. Meanwhile, it can be hypothesized that insignificant results for Republicans indicate that Republicans may follow a trustee model of representation.

Managing Moral Motivations

Firms confront three problems: (1) shirking (sub-optimal provision of effort), (2) smooth transfer of knowledge, and (3) eliciting new knowledge. The motivations possessed by firm members are four: (a) instrumental rationality (i.e., self-interest), (b) moral motivations and integrity, (c) intrinsic motivations, and (d) fairness motivations. The trick for the firm is to manage motivations in a way that solves its particular problems. The purpose of this paper is to provide the foundations for moral motivations and moral integrity, and to discuss the kinds of problems that they can and cannot solve, particularly in context of the complex motivational mix.