Governing Fools
Going into Government: How Hiring from Special Interests Reduces Their Influence
Ryan Hübert, Janna King Rezaee & Jonathan Colner American
Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Governments routinely decide to involve special interests in the development of public policy, a practice that can distort policy outcomes away from the public interest. Many are concerned that these policy distortions increase when special interest aligned individuals—such as lobbyists, activists or industry insiders—go into government. Using a formal model that centers the role of policymaking capacity in the development of policy, we demonstrate this is not always what happens. Our analysis provides two core insights. First, when an individual from a special interest group goes into government, this can paradoxically reduce the special interest's influence over public policy. Second, this individual has an endogenous incentive to enter government even though doing so weakens the special interest, whose preferences the individual shares. The model suggests that politicians' efforts to stop the practice of hiring individuals from special interest groups can counterintuitively increase special interest influence over politics.
The relationship between power and secrecy
Shane Schweitzer, Rachel Ruttan & Adam Waytz
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Seven studies test and find evidence for a relationship between secrecy and power. People who received secret information from another person felt more powerful than people who did not, both in terms of secrets they recalled from life (Studies 1, 2, and 4) as well as secrets from strangers (Studies 3 and 5). The effect of receiving secret information on experiencing increased power is not driven by changes in affect, nor is it contingent on the secret offering any instrumental advantage to the self. We test potential psychological mechanisms across three studies, specifically, exclusivity of the secret (Study 2), whether receiving a secret increases people's sense of felt reliance (Study 3), and whether receiving a secret makes people feel more trusted (Study 4). We find the effect is not dependent on the exclusivity of the secret, but that both a sense of reliance and feeling trusted drive the relationship between receiving a secret and feeling powerful. We also find that receiving a secret not only increases power, but also has downstream consequences in terms of increasing illusory control over the secret-giver and over others (Study 5). Studies 6 and 7 test and show that power reduces people's willingness to share secret information. People induced to feel powerful were less likely to share secrets about an organization with others (Study 6) and were more likely to approve of non-compete agreements in employment contracts (Study 7).
The Great Interstate Divergence: Partisan Bureaucracies in the Contemporary United States
Ben Merriman & Josh Pacewicz
American Journal of Sociology, January 2022, Pages 1221–1266
Abstract:
Among American states, differences in welfare programs and civil rights protections are growing. Conventional explanations point to conservative organizations that score flashy legislative victories. We draw on case studies of Medicaid and election administration in Rhode Island and Kansas to show that much policy divergence is due to a banal and ideologically symmetric process of partisan administration. Most federal policies rely on state governments for implementation. In the cases studied here, agency workers turned to interstate networks of experts, advocates, and nonprofit workers that provide competing models of policy implementation that mirror party priorities: backdoor expansion of social services and voter registration in Rhode Island and introduction of market principles into Medicaid and restrictive registration practices in Kansas. Partisan administration makes state implementation of federal policy a key field of political struggle, on which administrators working beyond public view advance partisan priorities that often cannot be realized by other means.
Constituents Ask Female Legislators to do More
Daniel Butler, Elin Naurin & Patrik Öhberg
Journal of Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We test whether constituents ask women representatives to do more. In partnership with Republican and Democratic state legislators in multimember districts we conducted a field experiment where the politicians sent a survey to their constituents, asking about the issues they should work on; it was randomized whether each citizen was contacted by their male or female representative. We find that female legislators receive 14 percent more issue requests per constituent they contact than male legislators. This increase in workload requests of female legislators occurs on a wide range of issues. Put simply, constituents ask female legislators to do more.
Time Spent in the House: Gender and the Political Careers of U.S. House Members
Jeffrey Lazarus, Amy Steigerwalt & Micayla Clark
Politics & Gender, forthcoming
Abstract:
More women are running for and serving in the U.S. House of Representatives than ever before, but how does gender influence the careers of House members once they arrive in Congress? We find that gender matters in two important ways: first, freshmen women are older than freshmen men. Second, women are both more likely to lose a reelection race and more likely to retire because of electoral concerns than men. The result is that women have significantly shorter careers in the House than men. Both factors — women's delayed entry and early exit — produce fewer women in the House at any given time than if these disparities did not exist. These findings have significant consequences for the House's demographic makeup, ideological makeup, and policy agenda. The broader implication of our findings is that more women in the electoral arena is a necessary but not sufficient condition to make the representation of women truly equal.
All (Mayoral) Politics Is Local?
Sanmay Das et al.
Journal of Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
One of the defining characteristics of modern politics in the United States is the increasing nationalization of elite- and voter-level behavior. Relying on measures of electoral vote shares, previous research has found evidence indicating a significant amount of state-level nationalization. Using an alternative source of data — the political rhetoric used by mayors, state governors, and members of Congress on Twitter — we examine and compare the amount of between-office nationalization throughout the federal system. We find that gubernatorial rhetoric closely matches that of members of Congress, but that there are substantial differences in the topics and content of mayoral speech. These results suggest that, on average, American mayors have largely remained focused on their local mandate. More broadly, our findings suggest a limit to which American politics has become nationalized — in some cases, all politics remains local.
Sortition as Anti-Corruption: Popular Oversight against Elite Capture
Samuel Bagg
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Random selection for political office — or “sortition” — is increasingly seen as a promising tool for democratic renewal. Critics worry, however, that replacing elected and appointed officials with randomly selected citizens would only exacerbate elite manipulation of political processes. This article argues that sortition can contribute to democratic renewal, but that its genuine promise is obscured by the excessive ambition and misplaced focus of prevailing models. Casting random selection as a route to accurate representation of the popular will, most contemporary proposals require randomly selected citizens to perform legislative tasks, whose open-endedness grants substantial discretion to elite agenda setters and facilitators. The real democratic promise of sortition-based reforms, I argue, lies in obstructing elite capture at critical junctures: a narrower task of oversight that creates fewer opportunities for elite manipulation. In such contexts, the benefits of empowering ordinary people — resulting from their immunity to certain distorting influences on career officials — plausibly outweigh the risks.
Guardians of Democracy or Passive Bystanders? A Conjoint Experiment on Elite Transgressions of Democratic Norms
Inga Saikkonen & Henrik Serup Christensen
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Emerging literature shows that citizens in established democracies do not unconditionally support central democratic principles when asked to weigh them against co-partisanship or favored policy positions. However, these studies are conducted in highly polarized contexts, and it remains unclear whether the underlying mechanisms also operate in more consensual contexts. Furthermore, it is unclear whether “critical citizens” or satisfied democrats are more eager to support democratic principles. We study these questions with evidence from a conjoint experiment conducted in Finland (n = 1030), an established democracy with high levels of democratic satisfaction and a consensual political culture. We examine how transgressions of two central democratic norms, the legitimacy of political opposition and the independence of the judiciary, affect leader favorability. We also explore how these differ across ideological and policy congruence and across levels of political disaffection. Our results show that some segments of the Finnish population are willing to condone authoritarian behavior if this brings them political benefits. Furthermore, we find that satisfied rather than “critical” citizens are more likely to sanction such behavior. These findings suggest that dangers of democratic deconsolidation may appear even in consensus democracies with relatively low levels of political polarization.
Motions to instruct conferees as a majoritarian tool in the U.S. house
Josh Ryan
Research & Politics, March 2022
Abstract:
The extent to which the policymaking process is majoritarian, rather than controlled by the majority party, is a fundamental question in U.S. congressional politics, and in collective choice institutions broadly. Previous research has examined whether some House rules empower the minority party to propose alternative legislation to the floor and circumvent the majority party’s agenda power. I argue the motion to instruct conferees allows the minority to influence policy during the conference process. Motions to instruct are the prerogative of the minority party, are frequently offered, and are frequently passed by the chamber. They substantially moderate conference bills as compared to those bills without a motion to instruct, suggesting that the procedure weakens majority party agenda power. Further, the minority may offer a motion to instruct intended to fail as a way of demonstrating policy extremity to voters, consistent with blame-game bargaining models.
Model Bills, State Imitation, and the Political Safeguards of Federalism
Mary Kroeger, Andrew Karch & Timothy Callaghan
Legislative Studies Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Recent media reports imply that corporations, industry groups, and think tanks exercise outsized influence in state legislatures by promoting model legislation. Before making sweeping claims about how special interests dominate the legislative process, it is essential to compare their purported influence to that of other sources. This article performs such a comparison by applying textual analysis to two original datasets — one including over 2400 state bills that challenge 12 national policies and one including more than 1000 model bills. It finds that lawmakers are more likely to develop legislation internally or rely on legislation from other states than to use model bills. These results suggest that while special interests can sometimes exploit the safeguards of federalism to advance their partisan goals, that dynamic is far from the norm.
Laboratories of Politics: There is Bottom-up Diffusion of Policy Attention in the American Federal System
Alex Garlick
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
A persistent question in the study of American federalism is if the states actually serve as “laboratories of democracy” for the country as a whole. I argue that political attention to policy areas can diffuse upwards, from state legislatures to Congress. National and state legislators share a party brand and can learn from policy debates in other levels. In particular, we should expect to see the diffusion of messaging legislation, or bills that were introduced without the intention of becoming law, after members of Congress observe their political effects in the states. Using an original dataset of introduced bills in all 50 state legislatures in 22 policy areas since 1991 drawn from LexisNexis, I show a positive association between changes in the number of state legislative bills introduced in 12 policy areas and the number of Congressional bills introduced in the next session, which is taken as evidence of “bottom-up” diffusion. This relationship is more prevalent between Republican state legislators and members of Congress, within state delegations, and in issue areas where the interest group community lobbies before both the states and national government. To the extent that states are laboratories for the nation, they may be political laboratories.
K Street on Main: Legislative Turnover and Multi-Client Lobbying
James Strickland & Jesse Crosson
Political Science Research and Methods, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study explores the consequences of legislative turnover for the hiring of lobbyists and influence of interest groups. We argue that lobbyists develop durable relationships with lawmakers in assemblies with low turnover. Such relationships allow lobbyists to attract clients. We use a new, state-level measure of multi-client lobbying to show that legislative turnover and multi-client lobbying are inversely related: decreases in turnover are correlated with more multi-client lobbying. In a second set of analyses, we find that legislative term limits are associated with less multi-client lobbying. Since multi-client lobbying poses risks to the representation of individual interests and magnifies the effects of resource differences between interests, our results suggest that turnover may help more diverse interests to achieve political influence.