Does the Decision to Retire Increase the Amount of Political Shirking?

Abstract

This article tests the hypothesis that removing the reelection constraint on congres-sional representatives will alter their voting behavior. This article uses 1977 and 1978 congressional voting records to determine residuals that are taken as a proxy for shirking. The contribution of this article is to test the hypothesis by implementing timing variables to indicate when the decision to retire occurs. Despite many different tests of the hypothesis, there is no evidence that removing the reelection constraint actually causes a change in representatives' voting behavior when they do vote.