Abstract
Previous work measuring the voting patterns of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention largely focused on either individual delegate positions for a handful of key votes or on state delegation positions for a far broader set of votes. We remedy this limitation by modeling the key first two months of the Convention including both some individual-level and all delegation-level voting, while simultaneously estimating the effect of various economic interests on that voting, controlling for various cultural and ideological factors. The findings suggest that economic factors mattered a great deal at the Convention. The effect of such interests vary however by the dimension of debate-representation, national institutional design, or federalism. We conclude that economic interests exerted a powerful influence on the deep structure of voting at Convention, though not consistently by issue or dimension. Specific interests only mattered on specific dimensions.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 519-534 |
Number of pages | 16 |
Journal | Journal of Politics |
Volume | 77 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Apr 2015 |
Externally published | Yes |