Office Ambitions and Voting Behavior in the U.S. Senate

Abstract

Joseph Schlesinger's ambition theory of political behavior argues that differing oppor tunities and the aspirations of politicians for them cause politicians to make political choices today in terms of the office or status they aspire to gain in the future. We have looked at the behavior of continuing members of the Senate from 1967-1972 to establish norms of roll call behavior among southern and nonsouthern Democrats and Republicans on major dimensions of policy. We have looked specificially at the behavior of several subsets of senators: aspirants for party leadership positions and nominations to the U.S. presidency and the committee leaders of each party for the prestigious committees. The data rather clearly show that behavior conforms to hypotheses based upon ambition theory. The theory has applied significance for possible legislative reforms.