Scholars@Duke
David W. Rohde

David W. Rohde CV

Ernestine Friedl Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science
Political Science
rohde@duke.edu
Box 90209, Durham, NC 27708-0209
408B Old Chemistry, Durham, NC 27708
CV

Selected Publications

Does the gift keep on giving? House leadership PAC donations before and after majority status

Journal Article Journal of Politics · October 1, 2017 Party leaders face a significant trade-off financing races when the party is out of power: while they care about gaining control of the House, they do not know how willing a potential representative will be to work with and for the party once elected. Lead ... Full text Cite

Setting the Table: Majority Party Effects in the United States Senate

Journal Article Congress and the Presidency · January 2, 2016 This article joins the growing tide of research that studies party effects in the United States Senate. Previous work has shown that certain procedural tools disproportionately advantage the majority party at the expense of the minority. We build on this r ... Full text Cite

Joseph A. Schlesinger In Memoriam

Journal Article PS-POLITICAL SCIENCE & POLITICS · October 1, 2015 Link to item Cite

Blame, Responsibility, and the Tea Party in the 2010 Midterm Elections

Journal Article Political Behavior · September 2014 Full text Cite

Reflections on the practice of theorizing: Conditional party government in the twenty-first century

Journal Article Journal of Politics · October 1, 2013 This article focuses on the theory of Conditional Party Government (CPG). It seeks to recapitulate the development of the argument for CPG, pulling together various strands articulated during work on the theory over the last four decades in order to explai ... Full text Cite

Measuring variations in party unity voting: An assessment of agenda effects

Journal Article Party Politics · January 1, 2013 Measures of party divisiveness have been widely used in scholarly literature for a variety of different purposes. However, conventional measures of party divisiveness, such as the percentage of party votes in a particular Congress, fail to consider importa ... Full text Cite

House Appropriations After the Republican Revolution

Journal Article Congress and the Presidency · September 1, 2012 This article applies the theory of "conditional party government" (CPG) to the interaction between the majority party and the Appropriations Committee in the period following the Republican Revolution of 1995. We extend the analysis of Aldrich and Rohde (2 ... Full text Cite

Rules to Live By: Agenda Control and the Partisan Use of Special Rules in the House

Journal Article Congress and the Presidency · January 1, 2012 A great deal of research in the 1990s was devoted to exploring the consequences of the ceding of greater agenda control to the majority leadership in the House during the era of Democratic control.The intent of this article is to build on that earlier work ... Full text Cite

The Gingrich Senators and party polarization in the U.S. Senate

Journal Article Journal of Politics · October 1, 2011 The political parties in the Senate are almost as polarized at they are in the House. Nevertheless, the explanations for party polarization work better in the House than they do in the Senate. In this article, we argue that the polarization in the House ha ... Full text Cite

Dimensions, issues, and bills: Appropriations voting on the house floor

Journal Article Journal of Politics · October 1, 2010 One of the fundamental findings in the congressional literature is that one or sometimes two dimensions can successfully describe roll-call voting. In this paper we investigate if we can reach the same conclusions about low dimensionality when we divide th ... Full text Open Access Cite

Consensus, conflict, and partisanship in House decision making: A bill-level examination of committee and floor behavior

Journal Article Congress and the Presidency · September 1, 2010 Although conflict and partisanship are deeply entrenched in the public's view of the U.S. Congress, political scientists have noted that consensus characterizes much of the legislative branch's operations. We build on an expanding literature that moves bey ... Full text Cite

Studying American Elections

Other · May 2, 2010 This article reviews what American elections, through the National Election Study (NES) and similar survey-based analyses of the electorate, have accomplished. What were the major intellectual questions and theoretical debates that have arisen as a result ... Full text Cite

Change and continuity in the 2008 elections

Book · January 1, 2010 One of the first texts to make use of the 2008 National Election Study results, this new edition of Change and Continuity will put the momentous recent elections into historical context for your students. Questions considered include: What were the impact ... Full text Cite

Consequences of Electoral and Institutional Change: The Evolution of Conditional Party Government in the U.S. House of Representatives1

Chapter · January 1, 2010 The U.S. Congress has changed in many ways over the last fifty years, but perhaps the most dramatic has been the changing role of the political parties. David Mayhew’s study of the Congress (published in 1974) argued that political parties were weak instit ... Full text Cite

“On Elections.”

Chapter · 2010 Cite

The Thrill of Defeat

Other New Republic · 2008 Cite

War for the floor: Partisan theory and agenda control in the U.S. house of representatives

Conference Legislative Studies Quarterly · January 1, 2008 This article extends recent research on partisan agenda control in the U.S. House of Representatives to the issue of procedural control of the legislative agenda via special rules. In particular, we draw out a facet of cartel and conditional party governme ... Full text Cite

Redistricting and party polarization in the U.S. house of representatives

Journal Article American Politics Research · November 1, 2007 The elevated levels of party polarization observed in the contemporary Congress have been attributed to a variety of factors. One of the more commonly recurring themes among observers of congressional politics is that changes in district boundaries resulti ... Full text Cite

Advising and consenting in the 60-vote senate: Strategic appointments to the supreme court

Journal Article Journal of Politics · August 1, 2007 The requirements of presidential nomination and Senate confirmation of Supreme Court nominees present two anomalies: under what circumstances can ideologically extreme nominees win confirmation and, given political polarization and the possibility of a fil ... Full text Cite

Fear in the voting booth: The 2004 presidential election

Journal Article Political Behavior · June 1, 2007 Every presidential election offers interesting questions for analysis, but some elections are more puzzling than others. The election of 2004 involves two linked and countervailing puzzles. The first is: How did President George W. Bush manage to win at al ... Full text Cite

On Elections

Journal Article · 2007 Cite

Ideology, electoral incentives, and congressional politics: The republican house class of 1994

Journal Article American Politics Research · March 1, 2006 Following the work of Downs and Mayhew, some theories of legislative politics assume that candidates are motivated only by electoral interests and their behavior is driven by the median voter in their district. Other theories, however, posit that legislato ... Full text Cite

Change and Continuity in the 2004 Elections

Book · 2006 Featured Publication Cite

Fear in the Voting Booth: The Presidential Election of 2004

Journal Article Political Behavior · 2006 Cite

The 2004 presidential election: The emergence of a permanent majority?

Journal Article Political Science Quarterly · January 1, 2005 Full text Cite

Partisanship and the purse: The money committees and procedures in the post-reform congress

Journal Article Politics and Policy · January 1, 2001 We analyze floor decision making on taxing and spending legislation during the 96th, 100th, and 104th Congresses in order to assess how electoral forces, fiscal pressures, and institutional change have affected the role of the money committees. Examination ... Full text Cite

The impact of national tides and district-level effects on electoral outcomes: The U.S. Congressional elections of 1862-63

Journal Article American Journal of Political Science · January 1, 2001 Featured Publication We examine the U.S. Congressional elections of 1862-63, which resulted in a stunning setback for President Abraham Lincoln and the incumbent Republican Party. After the electoral "dust" had cleared, the Republicans lost control of the House, as their share ... Full text Cite

Distributive and partisan issues in agriculture policy in the 104th house

Journal Article American Political Science Review · January 1, 2001 Featured Publication Distributive, informational, and partisan rationales provide contrasting accounts of legislative politics. Which of these theories best explains the decisions and policies of the House Agriculture Committee? We contend that all are appropriate, at various ... Full text Cite

Preference Conflict and Electoral Uncertainty: The Congress in the Next Decade

Journal Article Extensions of Remarks A.P.S.A Legistudies Section Newsletter · 2000 Cite

The republican revolution and the house appropriations committee

Journal Article Journal of Politics · January 1, 2000 This study applies the theory of "conditional party government" to the interaction between the Republican party and the Appropriations Committee in the 104th House, seen in the context of developments since the 96th Congress. As expected by the theory, we ... Full text Cite

Challenges to the American two-party system: Evidence from the 1968, 1980, 1992, and 1996 presidential elections

Journal Article Political Research Quarterly · January 1, 2000 Recent successes by independent presidential candidates raise questions about the stability of the American two-party system. Students of electoral behavior point to party decline, whereas analysts of party organization see growth and transformation. Analy ... Full text Cite

Fighting fire with water: Partisan procedural strategies and the senate appropriations committee

Journal Article Congress and the Presidency · January 1, 1999 While White (1989) thoroughly examined the House Appropriations Committee after the congressional reforms of the 1960s and 1970s, we begin to offer an updated picture of the counterpart committee in the Senate. We find that there has been considerable chan ... Full text Cite

The Inevitability and Solidity of the ’Republican Solid South’

Journal Article The American Review of Politics 17 · 1996 Cite

Third-Party and Independent Candidates in American Politics

Journal Article Political Science Quarterly 110 · 1995 Cite

Conditional Party Government Revisited: The House GOP and the Committee System in the 104th Congress

Journal Article Extensions of Remarks A.P.S.A Legistudies Section Newsletter 19 · 1995 Cite

The Fall Elections: Realignment and Dealignment

Journal Article Chronicle of Higher Education · 1994 Cite

Clinton and Congress Under Semi-Unified Government

Journal Article Extensions of Remarks A.P.S.A Legistudies Section Newsletter 17 · 1993 Cite

Committee Assignments

Chapter · 1992 Cite

“Sophisticated” Voting in the 1988 Presidential Primaries

Journal Article American Political Science Review · January 1, 1992 Voters in multicandidate contests may confront circumstances under which it is in their interest to vote for a second- or even lower-ranked candidate. The U.S. electoral system, typically offering a choice between only two major contenders, rarely presents ... Full text Cite

Studying congressional norms: Concepts and evidence

Journal Article Congress and the Presidency · January 1, 1988 Edward Schneier argues that the research of the last fifteen years that has concluded that congressional norms have changed greatly since the 1950s is mistaken, and that congressional norms persist today essentially unchanged. This paper dissents from that ... Full text Cite

Progressive Ambition among United States Senators: 1972-1988

Journal Article Journal of Politics · February 1987 Cite

The Changing Shape of Partisanship Among Democrats in Congress

Journal Article A.P.S.A. Legislative Studies Section Newsletter 10 · 1987 Cite

Leaders and followers in the house of representatives: Reflections on woodrow wilson’s congressional government

Journal Article Congress and the Presidency · January 1, 1987 This paper examines the role of leadership in the U.S. House in the context of arguments raised in Woodrow Wilson’s Congressional Government. It begins with a discussion of the speakerships of Henry Clay and Thomas Reed as counterexamples to Wilson’s gener ... Full text Cite

Vetoes

Chapter · 1987 Cite

Presidential Vetoes and Congressional Response: A Study of Institutional Conflict

Journal Article American Journal of Political Science 29 · 1985 Cite

Some Clarifications Regarding a Theory of Supreme Court Coalition Formation

Journal Article American Journal of Political Science 21 · 1977 Cite

Committee reformin the House of Representatives and the 'Subcommittee Bill of Rights'

Journal Article The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences · 1974 Cite

Public Financing of Federal Election Campaigns

Journal Article Columbia Human Rights Law Review · 1974 Cite

Policy Goals and Opinion Coalitions in the Supreme Court

Journal Article Midwest Journal of Political Science · 1972 Cite

Comments on 'A Cost Theory of Judicial Alignments'

Journal Article Midwest Journal of Political Science · 1970 Cite