Digital Commons Network^™

Testing Democracy: The Case Of The 17th Amendment And Constituency Representation, Rhonda Wrzenski

LSU Master's Theses

This paper examines a unique aspect of Congressional history centering on the passage of the 17th amendment in 1913, which shifted the power of U.S. Senate elections from the state legislature to state electorates. This paper examines how the passage of the amendment affected the relationship between characteristics of the state electorate and the roll call behavior of U.S. Senators. Due to the historical nature of the time period, I use Presidential election results by state, party control of the governorship and upper and lower chambers of the state legislature, as well as a number of demographic variables, to estimate …