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39 Legis. Stud. Q. 1 (2014)

handle is hein.journals/lgvessqy39 and id is 1 raw text is: ® - °Comparative Legislative Le' fv Studies Quarterly Oesea Introduction In the past year, it sometimes seemed that political polarization had gotten to the point where the U.S. Congress was paralyzed. In the first article in this issue of the Quarterly, Adam Bonica examines how the U.S. Senate came to be as polarized as it has recently appeared. He develops a novel dynamic ideal point estimation technique that allows him to track polarization within and across legislative sessions. Examin- ing roll-call vote data from 1971 to 2010, Bonica reports that replace- ment of Senate members accounted for much of the increased polarization from the early 1970s to the mid-1990s. From the mid-1990s on, however, ideological adaptation (where members alter their voting behavior to fit changing political tides), appears to explain the additional increase in polarization. Interestingly, and perhaps more controversially, Bonica suggests particular political events, notably the budget fight and government shutdown in 1995, the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the healthcare reform battle of 2010, caused sharp and enduring spikes in polarization. Left open for future research is whether the paralysis evident in Congress in the last year will have the same impact or whether other forces will bring the parties closer together again. One of the more conspicuous places where polarization has sur- faced in the U.S. Senate in recent decades is on judicial nominations. The recent rise in the use of the filibuster to block the confirmation of judges generated such controversy that in late 2013 the Democrats instituted rules changes to subject most judicial nominations to a simple majority vote. The potential impact of these changes is examined in Jed Stiglitz's analysis of 218 judicial confirmations to U.S. Courts of Appeals between 1976 and 2001. Stiglitz tests eight theoretical models that attempt to explain the observed ideology of these judges. He finds that the existence of the filibuster and, most likely, the preferences of the majority party, best explain the outcomes witnessed. Interestingly, Stiglitz reports that the sorts of judges confirmed did not change in the wake of the ugly Robert Bork Supreme Court confirmation battle, an event many assume altered the way the Senate considered judicial nominations. The most intriguing finding, however, is that the existence of the filibuster produces a more moderate judiciary and that its absence would increase the con- tentiousness of nomination battles and result in a more polarized bench. An alleged contributor to partisan polarization in the United States is the manner in which legislative districts get drawn. Although gerry- mandering cannot, of course, account for polarization in the U.S. Senate, LEGISLATIVE STUDIES QUARTERLY, XXXIX, 1, February 2014 1 DOI: 10.1111/lsq.12037 © 2014 The Comparative Legislative Research Center of The University of Iowa

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