A PROBIT ANALYSIS OF THE SENATE VOTE ON WIRTH/WILSON

Abstract

Environmental legislation has received extensive empirical scrutiny; however, to my knowledge, no one has analyzed the congressional vote on the 1990 Clean Air Act (Wirth‐Wilson) Amendment. The Congressional votes on environmental issues that have been analyzed suggest constituent preferences or personal ideology explain roll call voting. Three works suggest that members of Congress respond to constituent preferences. Simon and Alm (1994) state that public opinion can in certain instances be powerful enough to get different issues (such as acid‐rain legislation) onto the governmental agenda. Junor (1994) presents results that suggest that a state's constituency preferences influence the likelihood of a Superfund site being declared in that state. Ferejohn (1974) suggests that officeholders considering government funded projects act in a manner that would benefit them in regards to reelection and/or constituent approval. Contrastingly, John A. Hird (1991) found that Senators may be motivated by ideological concerns rather than typical constituent pork barrel concerns.

Citation

High, S. (1999), "A PROBIT ANALYSIS OF THE SENATE VOTE ON WIRTH/WILSON", Humanomics, Vol. 15 No. 4, pp. 48-54. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb018837