Be Careful What You Wish For
It's Not Just Trump: Americans of Both Parties Support Liberal Democratic Norm Violations More Under Their Own President
Levente Littvay, Jennifer McCoy & Gabor Simonovits
Public Opinion Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
There is a growing worry about the health of American democracy, and political scientists and pundits alike are looking for possible explanations. Surveys conducted during the Trump presidency showed considerable citizen support for liberal democratic norm erosions, especially among Republicans. However, recent experimental research also shows that voters of both parties are more tolerant of norm erosion committed by politicians of the party they prefer. In this note, we aim to reconcile these contradictory findings by analyzing surveys spanning from 2006 to 2021 on the public's tolerance of executive concentration of power. We also collect original data under both the Trump and Biden administrations gauging support for a broad array of liberal democratic norm erosions. Support for such erosions, in fact, has been relatively similar across Democrats and Republicans once we account for the party of the president. Support for executive aggrandizement has been prevalent among supporters of the president's party at least since the second term of the Bush administration. Increased checks and balances on the executive, through divided government, amplifies this effect further. Taken together, these findings suggest that universal support for the liberal democratic status quo has been weaker among those who support the president's party, well before and since the Trump presidency.
Partisan (A)Symmetries in Hardball: Mass Level Support of Hardball Equivalent Across Party and Race
William Kidd
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Constitutional hardball is when partisan actors engage in legal tactics that violate democratic norms for political advantage. The Republican Party seems to have engaged in hardball more than the Democratic Party in recent years, which is surprising as both parties should be similarly incentivized to use hardball. This asymmetry in elite behavior could reflect differences in what each parties' coalitions tolerate. For example, non-white voters might oppose hardball tactics more than white voters for reasons such as hardball historically being used to enforce racial hierarchies. If true, that could constrain on Democratic elites' actions more Republican elites due to Democrats' more racially diverse base. I draw on a long line of research on partisanship and group interest to argue instead that both white and non-white voters of both parties should be similarly disposed towards hardball. This article then marshals data from the American National Election Survey (ANES) and original surveys to test that argument. In support of my hypotheses, I find white and non-white members of both parties have similar levels of support and similar motivations for hardball. Political elites are likely free to engage in undemocratic acts such as hardball with little fear of backlash from their supporters.
Competence and advice
Anna Denisenko, Catherine Hafer & Dimitri Landa
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
We develop a theory of policy advice that focuses on the relationship between the competence of the advisor (e.g., an expert bureaucracy) and the quality of advice that the leader may expect. We describe important tensions between these features present in a wide class of substantively important circumstances. These tensions point to the presence of a trade-off between receiving advice more often and receiving more informative advice. The optimal realization of this trade-off for the leader sometimes induces her to prefer advisors of limited competence -- a preference that, we show, is robust under different informational assumptions. We consider how institutional tools available to leaders affect preferences for advisor competence and the quality of advice they may expect to receive in equilibrium.
Buying Evidence? Policy Research as a Presidential Commodity
Rachel Augustine Potter
Journal of Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
The U.S. federal government routinely commissions policy research from the private sector and this research, in turn, often forms an evidence base for future policy decisions. Given its potential to influence the policymaking process, I argue that the procurement power over research production is a previously unappreciated tool in the president's policy arsenal. Focusing on federally-funded policy research and using an original dataset of federal procurement from 2000-2019, I explore how government-funded research can enhance a president's prospects for accomplishing political goals. The analysis shows that agencies that are prioritized by the president award larger research contracts. Further, new presidential administrations are more likely to discontinue research initiated by their predecessors. The implication is that policy research commissioned by the federal government is a commodity for the executive, harnessed in service of political agendas.
The Price of Legislative Success: The President's Legislative Agenda and Midterm Seat Loss
Jacob Holt
American Politics Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
The president's party normally loses seats in the House of Representatives during US midterm elections. While many studies have examined the causes of seat loss, one area often mentioned by media pundits but not examined in midterm elections is the role of presidential agendas. In this paper, I examine whether legislative success is costly for the president's party during midterm elections. I find passing a larger number of legislative items and passing a larger percentage of the president's agenda costs the president's party seats in the midterm election. However, the president's party only suffers this penalty when the president's party also controls Congress. The president's party is not punished for legislative success when the president serves under divided government.
Sorting for K-Street: Post-Employment Regulations and Strategic Wage Setting in Congress
Elisa Maria Wirsching
Journal of Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
While post-employment regulations are a common tool to slow the revolving door in government, little is known about their effectiveness and consequences. Using the 2007 Honest Leadership and Open Government Act (HLOGA), I argue that policymakers strategically adjust their behaviors to maintain lucrative career options in the lobbying industry. HLOGA prohibited staffers-turned-lobbyists who earn at least 75% of a Congress member's salary from contacting their ex-employers in Congress for one year. Using data on the complete set of congressional staff (2001-2016), I show that staffers sort below the salary threshold post-HLOGA. Employing various panel data analyses, I also find that selecting out of the regulation increases a staffer's probability to become a lobbyist and ensures a substantial premium in revenues at the beginning of their lobbying career. These results explain why reforms of the revolving door fail and provide insights on institutional determinants of career incentives for non-elected public officials.
Legislative Organization and Political Representation
Michael Olson & Jon Rogowski
Quarterly Journal of Political Science, June 2024, Pages 275-305
Abstract:
The emergence of the standing committee system is arguably the most important organizational innovation in the history of the US Congress. Previous scholarship has considered theoretical explanations for the organization of congressional committees and studied the consequences of committee membership for individual legislators. We evaluate how committee membership affects individual legislators' responsiveness to constituency preferences. Using data on issue-specific voting behavior for members of the U.S. House from 1969 to 2011, we show that committee membership reduces legislative responsiveness to constituency preferences on the issue area associated with the committee's policy domain. These results are robust across model specifications, policy areas, and subsets of observations. Our findings provide new evidence about how committee membership affects legislative voting behavior and illustrate how institutional arrangements affect political representation.
Electoral Turnover and Government Efficiency: Evidence from Federal Procurement
Kyuwon Lee
Journal of Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
The president's dominant influence on administrative policymaking has sparked public concerns about resulting inefficiencies at federal agencies. I examine how the possibility of future electoral turnover can limit agencies' engagement in presidential favoritism, focusing on policy areas where Congress can use informal means to constrain agencies' actions under the separation of powers system. In those areas, forward-looking agencies might alter their behavior to accommodate future constraints from the opposition Congress, even given substantial presidential influence. I evaluate these incentives using federal contract data in the United States. I find that as the probability of congressional turnover increases, federal agencies under unified government are more likely to award lower-cost contracts through competitive bidding in the expectation that the future Congress might compel agencies to abandon non-competitive contracts given to firms politically connected to the president. My findings challenge the dominant perspective that electoral turnover necessarily degrades bureaucratic performance.
The Elected Official Next Door
Daniel Jones, Randall Walsh & Jiangnan Zeng
University of Pittsburgh Working Paper, November 2023
Abstract:
This paper examines whether the election of a city council member generates highly localized benefits within their own neighborhoods. We use housing prices as a summary statistic to capture the numerous and difficult to observe ways in which local government allocates localized amenities. Drawing on data on North Carolina city council elections and the universe of housing transactions, we use a close-elections regression discontinuity strategy. We find that housing prices substantially increase for houses very close (within 0.2 miles) to a newly elected councilmember's place of residence, especially when the councilmember is white, male, or Republican.