@article {227356,
	title = {The Majority-Party Disadvantage: Revising Theories of Legislative Organization},
	year = {Submitted},
	abstract = {Dominant theories of legislative organization in the U.S. rest on the notion that the majority party arranges legislative matters to maximize its electoral fortunes. \&nbsp;Yet, as we demonstrate in this paper, there is little or no short-term electoral advantage for the majority party in U.S. state legislatures, and there is a pronounced downstream majority-party disadvantage. \&nbsp;To establish these findings, we propose a technique for aggregating the results of close elections to obtain "as-if" random variation in majority-party status, allowing us to overcome the central empirical obstacle of selection bias that typically prevents scholars from studying effects of majority-party control. \&nbsp;We argue that the results from this approach are consistent with a phenomenon of inter-temporal balancing, which we link to other forms of partisan balancing in U.S. elections. \&nbsp;The paper thus necessitates revisions to our theories of legislative organization, offers new arguments for balancing theories, and provides an empirical technique for studying the effects of majority-party status in legislative contexts.},
	author = {James J. Feigenbaum and Alexander Fouirnaies and Hall, Andrew B.}
}
