Concerned with explanation and prediction of legislative decision-making, this thesis was based on the premise that relatively structured, discernable patterns of behavior underlie the everyday decisions made by legislators. It has focussed on the final stage of legislative decision-making, the recording of preferences on roll call votes, and has tested the hypothesis that legislators form voting groups as they take voting "cues" from each other.Using "Q" factor analysis, the roll-call voting of the 1971 Session of the Indiana Senate was examined and five voting groups were found. The voting groups were named according to casual inferences made by the researcher.The implications of the findings of this thesis were discussed and specific suggestions for further research were presented.

The focus of this dissertation is the political career of R. Vance Hartke, Democratic Senator from Indiana 1958-1976. The areas of emphasis include Hartke's role in the creation of the Veterans' Affairs Committee of the Senate and his chairmanship of the Committee, several of the controversies of his career, and his political style and philosophy.Books and articles written by Hartke were used extensively as were various newspapers and the Conqressional Record. Information was also obtained from interviews with Hartke and Frank Brizzi, who was staff director of the Veterans' Affairs Committee during Hartke's term as chairman.That Hartke philosophically was a liberal and politically was a risk-taker are among the conclusions reached in this study. Hartke's strongest asset in winning election to the Senate three times in a relatively conservative state was an energetic and personalized political style. Despite the controversies which surrounded Hartke and some apparent conflicts of interest," there is no evidence he committed illegal or unethical acts. Hartke used his power as chairman of the Veterans' Affairs Committee of the Senate to infuse his liberal ideology into public policy for American veterans. Furthermore, he expanded veterans' benefits during his tenure. / Department of Political Science

This dissertation provides a narrative analysis of the political career of former Senate Majority Leader Howard H. Baker, Jr. Based principally upon findings from interviews, public papers, newspapers, and other primary sources, the study includes accounts of Mr. Baker's bids for Senate Republican Leader in 1969, 1971, and 1977, his campaign for the Presidency in 1980, and his failure to secure the nods for the position of Vice President in 1968, 1973, 1974, and 1976. Its focus, however, lies upon his legislative work and his role in the development of a statewide two-party system in his native Tennessee. It can be said without question that Baker defined the overriding issue of all Watergate investigations with his query, "What did the President know and when did he know it?" Equally evident from this treatise is Baker's role as the de facto architect of the coalition which emerged in the mid 1960s to challenge Democratic hegemony at the state level in Tennessee. With well-reasoned appeals to those groups disenchanted with those inBaker won a landslide victory in 1966 and even larger margins in 1972 and 1978. In the meantime, several younger Tennessee Republicans captured other onetime Democratic seats using much the same strategy.Much of Baker's success at the polls sprang from the perception that his outlook coincided sharply with the moderately conservative weltanschuung predominant within his constituency. Unlike many to his right, however, Baker believed his party could not be merely naysayers, but had a duty to offer alternatives to Democratic proposals for the alleviation of societal problems. Upon becoming Leader, he, following the pattern of Robert Taft, rallied his caucuses behind solutions utilizing the free-market approach. Well established by this time was his reputation as a problem-solver and a conciliator. Prior to 1977, he had played integral roles in the development of the Fair Housing Act, revenue sharing, the monumental antipollution bills of the early 1970s, the opening of the highway trust fund to mass transit programs, and legislation accelerating the reapportionment of state legislatures. Thereafter, he played equally significant, and sometimes determinative parts in the approval of the Panama Canal Treaties, the sale of jets to Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the creation of the Department of Education, the Reagan economic program, the lifting of the arms embargo on Turkey, and the designation of the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as a federal holiday. Only Hubert Humphrey, Henry Jackson, and Russell Long among the Democrats with whom he served has as broad a scope of accomplishment. Within his own caucus, his only equal was Everett Dirksen, his father-in-law.

Based on the author's Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Kansas, 1998. / Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (p. 297-325) and index.

Thesis (M.A.)--Louisiana State University, 1963. / Vita. HTML version of 1963 master's thesis. Last viewed: 5/8/2008 Includes bibliographical references (leaves 143-147).

Thesis--Auburn University, 2008. / Abstract. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 138-146).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1998. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 420-430). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Riverside, 2009. / Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 115-123). Issued in print and online. Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1970. / Vita. Typescript. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Boston University, 1976. / Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 311-329).