Study of United States Senate voting behavior : the issue of "law-and-order", 1969-1970.

A sharp increase in crise and radicalism during the last half of the 1960's brought a new issue before the American public. "Law-and-order" was the war cry of the two out-of-office candidates, Richard Nixon and George C. Wallace, during the 1968 presidential campaign. Several pieces of legislation concerning proposal which their sponsors hoped would move toward restoring law-and-order to the country were acted upon by the United States Senate during the Ninety-first Congress. This research has endeavored to study the voting behavior of senators on roll-call votes taken on these bills. A composite dependent variable of legislative behavior was constructed through the use of the scaling techniques developed by Louis Guttman. A theoretical model was proposed which stated that a senator's voting behavior was a reflection of an integration of his personal attitude structures and his perception oi the opinions of influential factors. The relationship between a senator's party identification, region, tendency to support the president and political ideology and his voting behavior on law-and-order proposals was analyzed through nonparametric statistical tests. Supporters of law-and-order were typically Republican, strong supporters of President Richard Nixon, and conservative in their ideology. Those who opposed law-and-order positions were typically Democrat, weak supporters of President Nixon, and liberal in ideology. Region was found to be weakly associated with voting behavior, and only senators from Southern states were found to demonstrate a trend toward one end of the attitude continuum. Studies of legislative behavior using empirical techniques can help in the quest to obtain greater predictability of roll-call voting behavior. It is the hope of the researcher that this study has added to the Literature of this field and has aided in the quest for explanation and theory-building in legislative behavior.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.A.

Level thesis:degree_level

Masters

Grantor

Baylor University.

Year dc:date.issued

1971

Author dc:creator

• Millegan, Michael, 1948-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Miller, Robert T. (Robert Thomas), 1920-1996.

• United States Congress.
• United States Senate.

Statement dc:rights

• Baylor University works are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. Contact libraryquestions@baylor.edu for inquiries about permission.

Language dc:language.iso

en

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/2104/13280

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:baylor-ir.tdl.org:2104/13280