Governance
Local leaders and the pursuit of growth in US cities: The role of managerial skill
Maria Carreri & Julia Payson
Political Science Research and Methods, forthcoming
Abstract:
Do the choices of city leaders matter for local economic conditions? While existing literature focuses on how the preferences of local officials influence city policy, we argue that the managerial skill of local leaders should condition their ability to achieve their goals. We conduct an original phone survey of over 300 mayors and city managers across the USA to learn about their management practices. Using a two-way fixed effects design that holds fixed a rich battery of individual and city-level characteristics, we examine how changes in leadership affect economic growth, a common goal for local officials. We find that when local leaders employ the “best practices” of organizational management, their cities grow across a range of indicators. These results are strongest for the subset of leaders who mention a growth-related goal for their time in office, suggesting that managerial skill allows local leaders to more effectively achieve their objectives.
Partisan Asymmetries in Earmark Representation
Chris Cassella, EJ Fagan & Sean Theriault
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper examines how Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives vary in their earmarking behavior. After a 10-year moratorium, Congress enabled members to request small grants for community programs in their districts in the 2021 appropriations process. As part of a reform designed to limit corruption and wasteful spending, members had to submit written justifications for the grants, which provides insight into how members of Congress view their role as representatives. In performing a content analysis on 3007 earmark justifications, we find that Democrats are more likely to name the specific social groups comprising their party coalition in their justifications; Republicans rarely do so. Democrats are also more likely to request grants on their core partisan priorities, while Republicans tend to focus on large local infrastructure projects that are seemingly unrelated to their national priorities. Finally, we find some, but limited, evidence that earmark requests are a result of the different kinds of districts that members represent.
Citizens United and State Environmental Policy, Regulations, and Outcomes
Micah Farver
Environmental Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
The impact of corporate political spending on environmental policy has drawn numerous attention from researchers and policymakers. However, few studies have analyzed the empirical effect of corporate spending on environmental policy in aggregate. In this study, I analyze the impact of corporate independent spending bans on state environmental policy, utilizing the repeal of such bans in 23 states following the 2010 Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision as a research design. Through difference-in-differences tests, I find no evidence that the removal of independent expenditure bans influenced state environmental policy, regulations, or outcomes, or overall policy liberalism. I also find that corporate direct contributions did not increase in treated states, which may explain the lack of environmental policy effects. These results demonstrate that corporations did not utilize the new spending avenue after Citizens United to influence state environmental policy in aggregate and raise questions concerning corporate political spending and environmental preferences.
Corporate Lobbying and ESG Reports: Patterns among US Companies, 1999–2017
Huchen Liu, Sijing Wei & Jiarui Zhang
Business and Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
To lobby legislators, it is important for interest groups to signal their ability to help legislators win elections and provide them with policy-relevant information. We explore for-profit companies’ use of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reports as a signaling device to promote their reputation to legislators and convey their ability to provide electoral and policymaking support, which is valuable for lobbying. To this end, we create a panel dataset by combining ESG reports issued by US companies and the same companies’ lobbying and campaign contribution records from 1999 to 2017. We expect companies to issue more ESG reports, as well as reports containing more quantitative content, when they lobby. The data conform to our expectations. We also reason that lobbying may be more strongly related to ESG reporting when it is coupled with campaign contributions made by affiliated corporate political action committees, but the data do not support this expectation.
Revisiting a Natural Experiment: Do Legislators with Daughters Vote More Liberally on Women’s Issues?
Donald Green et al.
Journal of Political Economy Microeconomics, forthcoming
Abstract:
The pioneering work of Washington in 2008 shows that legislators with daughters cast more liberal roll call votes on women’s issues. Costa and coauthors in 2019 find that this pattern subsides in more recent congresses and speculate that increasing party polarization might diminish the “daughter effect.” We investigate patterns of change over time by looking at eight congresses prior to the four studied by Washington and eight subsequent congresses, including three not included by Costa and coauthors. Contrary to the party polarization hypothesis, we find no daughter effect prior to the period that Washington studied and no effect thereafter.
Legislative Gridlock and Policymaking Through the Appropriations Process
Josh Ryan & Scott Minkoff
American Politics Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Divergent preferences within and across American lawmaking institutions make it difficult to enact legislation. Yet, individual legislators and parties have incentives to effect policy change, even during periods of gridlock. We claim appropriations offer an alternative means of policymaking when legislation is likely to be unsuccessful using authorizations because appropriations bills have an extreme reversion point. Using an original dataset of appropriations laws, we measure the quantity of policy enacted given distributions of House, Senate, and executive preferences. The findings show that a larger gridlock interval and greater distance between the House and Senate medians promote the use of appropriations bills as substantive policymaking vehicles. This effect is especially pronounced when new chamber majorities come to power. We conclude that divergent preferences among lawmaking institutions affect legislative productivity, but winning coalitions can still make substantive policy changes using unorthodox lawmaking processes.
Explaining Citizen Hostility against Women Political Leaders: A Survey Experiment in the United States and Sweden
Sandra Håkansson
Politics & Gender, forthcoming
Abstract:
We know that women politicians are harassed by constituents to a greater extent than men, but we know less about why this difference exists. This study tests potential drivers of hostility against women politicians using an original survey experiment with 7,500 respondents in the United States and Sweden. First, I test whether constituents hold more lenient attitudes toward hostility directed at women than men, which would make hostility in messages targeting women representatives more likely. Second, I test whether constituents prefer to direct their complaints to women, which would increase the risk of hostility by generating a higher number of angry contacts. Results from both countries show a preference for directing complaints to women representatives over men, but no evidence of more leniency toward hostility directed at women.
Policy Consequences of Revolving-Door Lobbying
Amy Melissa McKay & Jeffrey Lazarus
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article presents the first direct analysis of the influence of revolving-door lobbyists over the content of adopted public laws. We use earmarks to evaluate both the effects of lobbying and the possible additional effects of lobbying by individuals who formerly worked as congressional members and staff. Employing a fixed-effects panel approach, we evaluate original data describing the lobbying efforts of the more than 5000 accredited U.S. colleges and universities over a 12-year timeframe. Our analysis indicates that schools that lobby in a given year can expect to receive 54% more earmarks and 24% more earmarked funds relative to other schools and other years. Further, there is an additional significant effect of revolving-door lobbying that is greatest at lower levels of lobbying expenditures. Our results contribute to the emerging literature on comparative lobbying and speak to concerns about the possible corrupting influence of revolving-door lobbying over public policy.
(The Impossibility of) Deliberation-Consistent Social Choice
Tsuyoshi Adachi, Hun Chung & Takashi Kurihara
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
There is now a growing consensus among democratic theorists that we should incorporate both “democratic deliberation” and “aggregative voting” into our democratic processes. But how should the two democratic mechanisms of deliberation and voting interact? In this article, we introduce a new axiom, which we call “Nonnegative Response toward Successful Deliberation” (NNRD). The basic idea is that if some individuals change their preferences toward other individuals’ preferences through democratic deliberation, then the social choice rule should not make everybody who has successfully persuaded others through reasoned deliberation worse off than what they would have achieved without deliberation. We prove an impossibility theorem that shows that there exists no aggregation rule that can simultaneously satisfy NNRD along with other mild axioms that reflect deliberative democracy's core commitment to unanimous consensus and political equality. We offer potential escape routes; however, each escape route can succeed only by compromising some core value of deliberative democracy.
What Explains a Representative’s Staffing “Style”? Exploring the Relationship between Congressional Staffing Decisions and Electoral Considerations
Jason Byers & Laine Shay
American Politics Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Students of legislative politics are divided over the relationship between electoral vulnerability and the type of “home style” members of Congress adopt in terms of their district staffing decisions. The conventional wisdom asserts that an increase in electoral vulnerability corresponds with a legislator increasing the number of district staffers. However, another body of works implies that the inverse relationship should occur. To settle these competing claims, we explore the staffing decisions of legislators serving in the House of Representatives between the 101st and 113th Congress. We find that an increase in electoral vulnerability is associated with a decrease in district staffers. These results cast doubt on the widely held view that a legislator’s electoral vulnerability results in an increase in district attentiveness at least in terms of their district staff. Additionally, our findings provide several insights into the relationship between elections and representation.
Bank Influence at a Discount
Hans Gersbach & Stylianos Papageorgiou
Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, forthcoming
Abstract:
In a general equilibrium framework, we show that banks may "buy" political influence at a discount: They offer disproportionately small campaign contributions compared to the influence they exert, thus generating abnormal returns. We distinguish between the direct effect of contributions which, as a cost, reduce bank returns, and the indirect effect of contributions which boost returns via inducing bank-favoring policies. Therefore, abnormal returns may or may not increase with the amount of contributions, depending on which effect dominates: Stricter capital requirements decrease contributions and abnormal returns. When politicians attach more weight to households’ welfare, contributions increase and abnormal returns decrease.