Substance and Change in Congressional Ideology: NOMINATE and Its Alternatives
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Caughey_Substance and change.pdf
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398.41 KB
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Author(s)
Schickler, Eric
Caughey, Devin
Date Issued
July 2016
Journal
Studies in American Political Development
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Citation
Caughey, Devin, and Eric Schickler. “Substance and Change in Congressional Ideology: NOMINATE and Its Alternatives.” Studies in American Political Development 30.2 (2016): 128–146.
Version
Original manuscript
Abstract
Poole and Rosenthal’s NOMINATE scores have been a boon to the study of Congress, but they are not without limitations. We focus on two limitations that are especially important in historical applications. First, the dimensions uncovered by NOMINATE do not necessarily have a consistent “ideological” meaning over time. Our case study of the 1920s highlights the challenge of interpreting NOMINATE scores in periods when party lines do not map well onto the main contours of ideological debate in political life. Second, commonly used DW-NOMINATE scores make assumptions that are not well suited to dealing with rapid or non-monotonic ideological change. A case study of Southern Democrats in the New Deal era suggests that a more flexible dynamic item response model provides a better fit for this important period. These applications illustrate the feasibility and value of tailoring one’s model and data to one’s research goals rather than relying on off-the-shelf NOMINATE scores.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Political Science
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Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0898588X16000092
