Accomplished
Inaugurating Rationalization: Three Field Studies Find Increased Rationalization When Anticipated Realities Become Current
Kristin Laurin
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
People will often rationalize the status quo, reconstruing it in an exaggeratedly positive light. They will even rationalize the status quo they anticipate, emphasizing the upsides and minimizing the downsides of sociopolitical realities they expect to take effect. Drawing on recent findings on the psychological triggers of rationalization, I present results from three field studies, one of which was preregistered, testing the hypothesis that an anticipated reality becoming current triggers an observable boost in people’s rationalizations. San Franciscans rationalized a ban on plastic water bottles, Ontarians rationalized a targeted smoking ban, and Americans rationalized the presidency of Donald Trump, more in the days immediately after these realities became current compared with the days immediately before. Additional findings show evidence for a mechanism underlying these behaviors and rule out alternative accounts. These findings carry implications for scholarship on rationalization, for understanding protest behavior, and for policymakers.
Do Businessmen Make Good Governors?
Florian Neumeier
Economic Inquiry, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper evaluates the economic performance of U.S. state governors with a business background (chief executive officer [CEO] governors). Applying a matching method, I find, first, that businesspeople tend to take office in times of economic and fiscal strain. Second, the tenures of CEO governors are associated with a 0.5 percentage points (pp.) higher annual income growth rate, a 0.4 pp. higher growth rate of the private capital stock, and a 0.6 pp. lower unemployment rate than are the tenures of non‐CEO governors. State‐level income inequality is not affected by CEO governors holding office, indicating that low‐income households benefit from the economic upswing.
Pushing Boundaries: Political Redistricting and Consumer Credit
Pat Akey et al.
Federal Reserve Working Paper, March 2018
Abstract:
Consumers lose access to credit when their congressional district boundaries are irregularly redrawn to benefit a political party (i.e., are gerrymandered). We identify this effect by matching a longitudinal panel of consumer credit data with changes in congressional district boundaries following decennial censuses. Reductions in credit access are concentrated in states that allow elected politicians to draw political boundaries and in districts where subsequent congressional elections are less competitive. We find similar reductions in credit access when state senate district boundaries are irregularly redrawn and when states make it more difficult for constituents to vote. Overall, our findings are consistent with theories suggesting that less-competitive political races reduce politicians’ incentives to cater to their constituents’ preferences.
How Do Electoral Incentives Affect Legislator Behavior?
Alexander Fouirnaies & Andrew Hall
Stanford Working Paper, March 2018
Abstract:
Democratic elections are thought to control the behavior of representatives by forcing them to consider reelection incentives, but it is unclear whether or how elections achieve this goal. We compile a new dataset containing roughly 780,000 bills, combined with more than 16 million roll-call voting records for roughly 6,000 legislators serving in U.S. state legislatures with term limits. Using an individual-level difference-in-differences design, we find that legislators who can no longer seek reelection sponsor fewer bills, are less productive on committees, and are absent for more floor votes, on average. These effects are largest for legislators who never seek office again in the future, and are concentrated in states with high legislative salaries. Studying four states which provide estimates of the budget impact of specific bills, we find no evidence that electoral incentives encourage incumbents to propose or pass more fiscally irresponsible legislation, contrary to theories of myopic electorates and political business cycles. Taken together, the evidence suggests that electoral incentives successfully induce incumbents to exert productive effort.
Who Conducts Oversight? Bill-Writers, Lifers, and Nail-Biters
Brian Feinstein
University of Chicago Working Paper, March 2018
Abstract:
The landmark Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946 charges Congress, through its standing committees, to “exercise continuous watchfulness” over the executive branch. Yet committees differ markedly in their performance of this responsibility; the modal House committee convenes no oversight hearings in the typical year, while other committees hold many dozens of hearings. This Article compares the characteristics of committee chairs that pursue oversight vigorously with those that do not. Surprisingly, I find that chairs’ previous prosecutorial or other legal experience has no discernable connection with oversight activity. Instead, committees that engage in frequent oversight tend to be chaired by productive lawmakers (“bill-writers”), members with long tenures in office (“lifers”), and members facing competitive elections (“nailbiters”). Should congressional leaders desire to increase their branch’s role in governance after the passage of laws, they ought to encourage members with these characteristics to chair committees.
Representation When Constituent Opinion and District Conditions Collide
Scott Adler, Adam Cayton & John Griffin
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
When constituent opinion and district conditions point in two different directions, which factor is most influential for representatives who face important legislative roll calls? To address this question, we combine four types of data for the period from 2000 to 2012: key congressional roll call votes, district-level survey data, objective measures of district conditions, and other district demographics. We show (1) that material conditions in a district have an effect on legislative behavior independent of constituents’ opinions; (2) that opinions are not always a better predictor of lawmaker decisions, compared to conditions; and (3) that whether lawmakers tend to reflect constituent opinions or district conditions is a function of the demographic makeup of their districts.
Do Constituents Influence Issue-Specific Bill Sponsorship?
Philip Waggoner
American Politics Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Bill sponsorship is a valuable form of legislative activity in which all legislators are free to signal priorities, stake out positions, and influence legislative agendas. However, decisions to hone in on specific issues have been mostly overlooked, resulting in drivers of issue-specific sponsorship remaining unclear. A reasonable place to look for drivers is constituent preferences, given the representational responsibilities underlying most legislative behavior. To address this question, I leverage advances in opinion estimation to generate a new fine-grained measure of constituent issue preferences at the district level. By keeping the focus on issues, this approach is preferable to other measures of constituent preferences, in that it assumes nothing about constituents’ ideology. Through numerous tests across several issues spanning the 109th to 113th Congresses, I find a largely indirect effect of preferences on sponsorship through employment proxies, yet no consistent direct impact from constituents, opposite expectations of the delegate model of representation.
Family ties and informed trading: Evidence from Capitol Hill
Serkan Karadas
Journal of Economics and Finance, April 2018, Pages 211–248
Abstract:
Members of Congress (politicians) are required to report their own and their family members’ financial transactions to the public via periodic statements. This paper investigates the performance of portfolios owned by politicians’ family members. We construct buy-minus-sell calendar-time portfolios using 22,159 common stock transactions over the 2004-2010 period, and find that the portfolios of politicians’ spouses have annualized abnormal returns exceeding 12 % at a 1-week holding period. We also show that the portfolios of powerful politicians’ spouses outperform the market, while the portfolios of non-powerful politicians’ spouses earn only average returns. However, we further find that spouses’ portfolios underperform the market over the 2011-2014 period. Overall, our findings suggest that members of Congress shared value-relevant private information with their spouses, and that heightened public scrutiny and the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act of 2012 led to changes in the trading behavior of politicians and their spouses.
Market Demand for Civic Affairs News
Georgia Kernell, PJ Lamberson & John Zaller
Political Communication, Spring 2018, Pages 239-260
Abstract:
This paper uses time series methods to test the relationship between civic affairs content and audience share for the ABC, CBS, and NBC evening news in the mid-1990s. Because these programs competed in the same market, but varied the amount of their civic affairs coverage, they present an excellent opportunity to analyze this relationship. The study uses hand-coded news abstracts and O.J. Simpson murder trial coverage as separate measures of news content. The study finds that lower levels of civic affairs content and higher levels of O.J. news are associated with greater audience share.
Public Ignorance or Elitist Jargon? Reconsidering Americans’ Overestimates of Government Waste and Foreign Aid
Vanessa Williamson
American Politics Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Widespread and profound public misinformation about government presents a serious challenge for democratic accountability. This article demonstrates that two of the most commonly-cited examples of public misperception of government are overstated, due in substantial part, to differences of elite and popular terminology. “Foreign aid” is widely understood to encompass overseas military spending, and the term “government waste” is popularly used to discuss systemic failures of the democratic process. Failing to take account of what members of the public mean by “waste” and “foreign aid,” existing studies overestimate public ignorance and obscure the substance of public critiques of U.S. policy, particularly among the less educated. The results of this article suggest the need for a reconsideration of what qualifies as evidence of public misinformation, and what that evidence implies for voters’ capacity to assess their government.
Revenge: John Sherman, Russell Alger and the origins of the Sherman Act
Patrick Newman
Public Choice, March 2018, Pages 257–275
Abstract:
This paper argues that Senator John Sherman of Ohio was motivated to introduce an antitrust bill in late 1889 partly as a way of enacting revenge on his political rival, General and former Governor Russell Alger of Michigan, because Sherman believed that Alger personally had cost him the presidential nomination at the 1888 Republican national convention. When discussing his bill on the Senate floor and elsewhere, Sherman repeatedly brought up Alger’s relationship, which in reality was rather tenuous, with the well-known Diamond Match Company. The point of mentioning Alger was to hurt Alger’s future political career and his presidential aspirations in 1892. Sherman was able to pursue his revenge motive by combining it with the broader Republican goals of preserving high tariffs and attacking the trusts. As a result, this paper reinforces previous public choice literature arguing that the 1890 Sherman Act was not passed in the public interest, but instead advanced private interests.
Political Connections and Government Subsidies: State-Level Evidence
Daniel Aobdia, Allison Koester & Reining Petacchi
Georgetown University Working Paper, February 2018
Abstract:
This paper examines whether corporate political connections are associated with government-awarded subsidies, and how this relation impacts subsidy effectiveness in spurring state future economic growth. Subsidies relate to foregone government revenues through income, sales, property, and payroll tax credits/abatements, and to government resource transfers through grants and cost reimbursement programs. Using novel datasets to identify state-awarded corporate subsidies and corporate contributions to state political candidates, we find that political contributions increase both the likelihood a company is awarded a state subsidy and the dollar value of subsidy awarded. Companies contributing to a greater number of candidates, to both Republican and Democratic Party candidates, and to both gubernatorial and legislative candidates reap the greatest subsidy benefits. We find some evidence that subsidies are positively associated with a state’s future intra-industry jobs growth, but only for subsidies awarded to politically unconnected companies. This finding suggests quid pro quo behavior in the state subsidy award process results in a less efficient allocation of government resources.
Limited Time, Limited Resources: Trade-Offs in Congressional Earmarking and Policymaking
Scott Guenther & David Searle
American Politics Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Earmarks are an important tool of a legislators’ reelection strategy, as they provide a prime opportunity to benefit their district and increase their chances at reelection. Yet, some legislators secure substantially more earmarks than others. Our study offers a new explanation for why this occurs. With limited legislative resources at their disposal, members of Congress are forced to make trade-offs in how they allocate their resources among legislative activities. In a world with resource constraints, members less engaged in earmarking are likely engaged in policymaking activities. We take advantage of new earmark and policymaking data to explore this hypothesized negative relationship between earmarking and policymaking effort. We find that legislators who exert greater effort on policymaking secure significantly fewer earmark dollars.
Legislators Off Their Leash: Cognitive Shirking and Impending Retirement in the U.S. House
Michael Romano
Social Science Quarterly, forthcoming
Method: I analyze monthly speeches made by members of the U.S. House between the 105th and 109th terms, and collect data on psychological indicators found to indicate changes in cognition. A mixed effect logistic regression examines whether these indicators increase the probability of retirement before the end of the term.
Results: The probability of retirement is amplified by increases in the level of cognitive inconsistency they display in public speeches.
New Deal Mass Surveillance: The “Black Inquisition Committee,” 1935–1936
David Beito
Journal of Policy History, April 2018, Pages 169-201
Abstract:
At the behest of the Roosevelt administration in 1935, the U.S. Senate established a special committee to investigate lobbying activities by opponents of the “death sentence” of the Public Utility Holding Company Bill. Chaired by Hugo L. Black (D-Ala.), the “Black Committee” expanded its mission into a more general probe of anti–New Deal organizations and individuals. The committee used highly intrusive methods, notably catch-all dragnet subpoenas, to secure evidence. It worked closely with the IRS for access to tax returns and with the FCC to obtain copies of millions of telegrams. When the telegram search became public information, there was a major backlash from the press, Congress, and the courts. Court rulings in 1936, resulting from suits by William Randolph Hearst and others, not only limited the committee’s powers but provided important checks for future investigators, including Senator Joseph McCarthy.
The Birth of Pork: Local Appropriations in America’s First Century
Sanford Gordon & Hannah Simpson
American Political Science Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
After describing a newly assembled dataset consisting of almost 9,000 local appropriations made by the U.S. Congress between 1789 and 1882, we test competing accounts of the politics surrounding them before offering a more nuanced, historically contingent view of the emergence of the pork barrel. We demonstrate that for most of this historical period — despite contemporary accusations of crass electoral motives — the pattern of appropriations is largely inconsistent with accounts of distributive politics grounded in a logic of legislative credit-claiming. Instead, support for appropriations in the House mapped cleanly onto the partisan/ideological structure of Congress for most of this period, and only in the 1870s produced the universalistic coalitions commonly associated with pork-barrel spending. We trace this shift to two historical factors: the emergence of a solid Democratic South, and growth in the fraction of appropriations funding recurrent expenditures on extant projects rather than new starts.
Leveraging Who You Know by What You Know: Specialization and Returns to Relational Capital
Heejung Byun, Justin Frake & Rajshree Agarwal
Strategic Management Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper investigates the interaction effects of specialization and relational capital on performance. We distinguish between upstream and downstream relational capital, and theorize that higher levels of specialization will buffer against decreases in upstream relational capital, because of deeper domain expertise and stronger downstream relational capital. Conversely, higher levels of generalization permit greater gains from increases in upstream relational capital, due to leverage across a more diversified downstream portfolio of activities. We test and find support for these hypotheses in the context of the US lobbying industry. Our study contributes to the strategic human capital literature by isolating the dimension of specialization and relational capital embodied within individuals, and providing performance implications of the interactions.