Constitutional officers and gentlemen
My Trust in Government Is Implicit: Automatic Trust in Government and System Support
Chanita Intawan & Stephen Nicholson
Journal of Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
How distrustful are people of government? Although large majorities of Americans express distrust in government, we propose that most of these same individuals also possess an implicit, gut-level trust in government. Using a common method to measure attitudes that people are either unwilling or unable to self-report, we found that most respondents implicitly trust government and that implicit trust is largely unrelated to explicit trust (as self-reported in surveys) and does not meaningfully vary by party identification or demographic characteristics. We also found that implicit trust is politically consequential, helping illuminate why a distrustful public nevertheless exhibits diffuse support and trust in the government to address crisis events, both foreign and domestic. We conclude that most Americans are of two minds about government, possessing both a positive, implicit trust and negative, explicit trust, and that each type matters in explaining orientations toward government.
Tax-Exempt Lobbying: Corporate Philanthropy as a Tool for Political Influence
Marianne Bertrand et al.
University of Chicago Working Paper, January 2018
Abstract:
We explore the role of charitable giving as a means of political influence, a channel that has been heretofore unexplored in the political economy literature. For foundations associated with Fortune 500 and S&P 500 corporations, we show that grants given to charitable organizations located in a congressional district increase when its representative obtains seats in committees that are of policy relevance to the firm associated with the foundation, a pattern which parallels that of Political Action Committee (PAC) spending. We additionally show that charities directly linked to politicians in personal financial disclosure forms exhibit similar patterns of political dependence. Our analysis suggests that firms deploy their charitable foundations as a form of tax exempt influence-seeking. Based on a simple model of political influence, our empirical results imply that 8.8 percent of corporate charitable giving is politically motivated, which would imply that this channel of influence is economically substantial, potentially involving sums that are larger than that of PAC contributions or federal lobbying expenditures. Given the lack of formal electoral disclosure requirements, charitable giving may further be a form of political influence that goes mostly undetected by voters and is subsidized by taxpayers.
The Public Cost of Unilateral Action
Andrew Reeves & Jon Rogowski
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Scholarship on democratic responsiveness focuses on whether political outcomes reflect public opinion but overlooks attitudes toward how power is used to achieve those policies. We argue that public attitudes toward unilateral action lead to negative evaluations of presidents who exercise unilateral powers and policies achieved through their use. Evidence from two studies supports our argument. In three nationally representative survey experiments conducted across a range of policy domains, we find that the public reacts negatively when policies are achieved through unilateral powers instead of through legislation passed by Congress. We further show these costs are greatest among respondents who support the president's policy goals. In an observational study, we show that attitudes toward unilateral action in the abstract affect how respondents evaluate policies achieved through unilateral action by presidents from Lincoln to Obama. Our results suggest that public opinion may constrain presidents' use of unilateral powers.
Politics, partisanship and the power to veto: Does gubernatorial line-item veto power affect state budgets?
Joseph McCormack & Yaniv Reingewertz
Applied Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
How does line-item veto (LIV) power affect a governor's ability to structure the state budget? Is LIV power only relevant as a partisan tool? Is it still relevant when the state legislature can override the veto? We use a rich disaggregated data set to test the effect of the gubernatorial LIV on state budgets, controlling for political factors such as party affiliation of the governor and legislature, minority status of the governor, and the legislature's ability to override a LIV. Our results suggest that LIV power has very weak influence, if any, on governors' ability to influence state budgets.
Stop, Collaborate, and Listen: Women's Collaboration in US State Legislatures
Mirya Holman & Anna Mahoney
Legislative Studies Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Collaboration plays a key role in crafting good public policy. We use a novel data set of over 140,000 pieces of legislation considered in US state legislatures in 2015 to examine the factors associated with women's collaboration with each other. We articulate a theory that women's collaboration arises from opportunity structures, dictated by an interaction of individual and institutional characteristics. Examining the effect of a combination of characteristics, we find support for an interactive view of institutions, where women's caucuses accelerate collaboration in Democratic-controlled bodies and as the share of women increases. Collaboration between women also continues in the face of increased polarization in the presence of a caucus, but not absent one. Our findings speak to the long-term consequences of electing women to political office, the importance of institutions and organizations in shaping legislative behavior, and the institutionalization of gender in politics.
Lawmaker Age, Issue Salience, and Senior Representation in Congress
James Curry & Matthew Haydon
American Politics Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Political scientists have demonstrated the importance of lawmakers' identities, showing that race, gender, socioeconomic status, and sexual orientation affect legislative and representational behavior. Is the same true for age? We argue it is, but the effect is conditioned by the salience of different "senior issues." Analyzing the bill introductions by members of Congress during the 109th and 110th Congresses, we show that older lawmakers are more likely to introduce legislation addressing lower salience senior issues than their younger colleagues. In contrast, sizeable senior constituencies in a district influence lawmaker attention to higher salience senior issues, regardless of a lawmaker's age. These findings have implications for our understanding of senior power and personal roots of representation in the United States.
More Effective than We Thought: Accounting for Legislative Hitchhikers Reveals a More Inclusive and Productive Lawmaking Process
Andreu Casas, Matthew Denny & John Wilkerson
University of Washington Working Paper, January 2018
Abstract:
For more than half a century, scholars have been studying legislative effectiveness using a single metric -- whether the bills a member sponsors progress through the legislative process. We investigate a less orthodox form of effectiveness -- bill proposals that become law as provisions of other bills. Counting these "hitchhiker" bills as additional cases of bill sponsorship success reveals a more productive, less hierarchical and less partisan lawmaking process. We argue that agenda and procedural constraints are central to understanding why lawmakers pursue hitchhiker strategies. We also investigate the legislative vehicles that attract hitchhikers and find, among other things, that more Senate bills are enacted as hitchhikers on House laws than become law on their own.
Delegation or Unilateral Action?
Kenneth Lowande
Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
Unilateral presidential actions often face implementation problems in the executive branch. I argue these actions are better studied as delegation. I model the conditions under which a president is likely to delegate and provide discretion to subordinates either insulated or uninsulated from their control. I find legislators benefit from agency discretion when presidents pursue policymaking in the executive branch. The threat of legislative sanction induces agents to deviate from presidential priorities, and inter-branch disagreement increases bureaucratic non-compliance in insulated agencies. Nonetheless, in equilibrium, the president is more likely to delegate to insulated agents. Ultimately, the model demonstrates how the politics of direct action are influenced by the need for bureaucratic cooperation. Case studies on US presidential directives mandating public funding of gun violence research and security reforms at government facilities illustrate key features of the model.
The Consequences of Legislative Term Limits for Policy Diffusion
Susan Miller, Jill Nicholson-Crotty & Sean Nicholson-Crotty
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Policy diffusion scholarship has long sought to understand when lawmakers will imitate innovations adopted by other jurisdictions and when they actually invest the time and resources necessary to learn about potential policies. We develop the theoretical rationale that term limits will reduce the incentive and capacity of state legislatures to gather information about policies available from previous adoptions in other states. We hypothesize that this will decrease the importance of previous adopters when term-limited legislators consider policy innovations. A multilevel analysis of the diffusion of eighty-seven policies between 1960 and 2009 provides support for this expectation. Our findings provide insight into the way in which institutional features shape policy diffusion.
How Newspapers Reveal Political Power
Pamela Ban et al.
Political Science Research and Methods, forthcoming
Abstract:
Political science is in large part the study of power, but power itself is difficult to measure. We argue that we can use newspaper coverage - in particular, the relative amount of space devoted to particular subjects in newspapers - to measure the relative power of an important set of political actors and offices. We use a new dataset containing nearly 50 million historical newspaper pages from 2,700 local US newspapers over the years 1877-1977. We define and discuss a measure of power we develop based on observed word frequencies, and we validate it through a series of analyses. Overall, we find that the relative coverage of political actors and of political offices is a strong indicator of political power for the cases we study. To illustrate its usefulness, we then apply the measure to understand when (and where) state party committees lost their power. Taken together, the paper sheds light on the nature of political news coverage and offers both a new dataset and a new measure for studying political power in a wide set of contexts.