Institutional Pressure
The Broken Republic
Alasdair Roberts
University of Massachusetts Working Paper, March 2025
Abstract:
Advocates for the American republic have long celebrated its capacity for reinvention in the face of new challenges. But there are reasons to question that claim today. The American system of government is broken. It cannot respond effectively to major problems or reconfigure itself to perform better. It would be misguided to blame President Trump alone for this state of affairs. Trump policies are largely a symptom of systemic failure, not the cause. The weaknesses of the American republic go to the core of its current design, which is not equal to the requirements of a large and complex society. The system is over-centralized. Federal institutions are incapable of expressing and reconciling the aspirations of American citizens. States lack capacity to compensate for dysfunction in Washington. Political innovation and systemic reform are hampered by a nationalized party duopoly, constitutional rigidity, and populist political culture. In large part, design flaws in the current system are an unintended consequence of a century of good-government reforms. If these flaws are not repaired, social and political instability within the United States is likely to increase.
Revolving Door Laws and Political Selection
Raymond Fisman et al.
NBER Working Paper, March 2025
Abstract:
Revolving door laws restrict public officials from representing private interests before government after leaving office. While these laws mitigate potential conflicts of interest, they also may affect the pool of candidates for public positions by lowering the financial benefits of holding office. We study the consequences of revolving door laws for political selection in U.S. state legislatures, exploiting the staggered roll-out of laws across states over time. We find that fewer new candidates enter politics in treated states and that incumbent legislators are less likely to leave office, leading to an increase in uncontested elections. The decline in entry is particularly strong for independent and more moderate candidates, which may increase polarization. We provide a model of politician career incentives to interpret the results.
US governors populism database: Assessing the impact of Donald Trump on state-level discourse
Semir Dzebo et al.
Party Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
The election of Donald Trump in 2016 has often been characterized as part of a larger populist wave sweeping Western democracies. However, claims about populism's pervasiveness often lack empirical support, particularly at the subnational level. This research note introduces the US Governors Populism Database (USGPD), providing the first quantitative measures of populist rhetoric among state-level officials in the United States. Analyzing 400 speeches from 100 governor terms across all 50 states, we find that a political system with a populist national leader is not necessarily associated with high levels of subnational populism. While Republican governors show higher levels of populist rhetoric than Democrats, this difference predates Trump's presidency and shows no evidence of intensifying following his first election. By providing systematic evidence about populism's presence and diffusion across different levels of government, this study demonstrates how populist rhetoric manifests differently across governmental tiers and contributes to scholarship examining populist discourse in multi-level political systems.
The Democratic Dilemma among Elites: Do Legislators Make More Reasoned Decisions than the Public?
Adam Zelizer, Elizabeth Dorssom & Patricia Kirkland
Political Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Are legislators knowledgeable enough to make good public policy decisions? We examine three aspects of legislators' decision-making: how much they know about the consequences of policy proposals, specifically their fiscal impact; how much they learn when provided expert research about these proposals; and how much their evaluations of these proposals reflect their consequences. We compare their performance on each of these tasks to a large sample of the public. Legislators' beliefs about fiscal impacts are inaccurate and biased, but become more accurate and correlated with legislators' policy positions in response to fiscal expertise. In terms of knowledge, learning, and incorporating information into their policy evaluations, legislators largely resemble the public. Legislators do not exhibit stronger reasoning skills. However, by the time legislators vote on bills, legislators do appear to base their decisions on accurate beliefs about policy. Our results suggest legislators cast informed votes because of legislative institutions and processes rather than any superior, pre-existing policy expertise or learning skills relative to the general public. These findings highlight the importance of designing legislative institutions with lawmakers' decision-making constraints in mind.
I'm Coming Out! How Voter Discrimination Produces Effective LGBTQ Lawmakers
Jacob Lollis & Mackenzie Dobson
PS: Political Science & Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Are LGBTQ legislators effective lawmakers? We build on theories that link voter discrimination to legislative effectiveness by arguing that voters' biases against LGBTQ candidates narrow the candidate pool, leading to the election of only the most experienced and qualified LGBTQ candidates. As a result of this electoral selection effect, we expect that LGBTQ legislators will be more effective lawmakers than their non-LGBTQ counterparts. To test this, we combine data on state legislators' LGBTQ identification with their State Legislative Effectiveness Scores (SLES). Our findings reveal that LGBTQ legislators are meaningfully more effective than non-LGBTQ legislators. To link our findings to voter discrimination, we leverage over-time variation in discrimination toward LGBTQ individuals. Across four tests, we consistently find that LGBTQ lawmakers elected in high-discrimination environments are more effective than those elected from less discriminatory environments.
From Cradle to Congress: The Effect of Birthplace on Legislative Decision-Making
Colin Emrich, Hillary Style & Ryan Vander Wielen
Political Science Research and Methods, forthcoming
Abstract:
The extent to which legislators pursue their privately held preferences in office has important implications for representative democracy and is exceedingly difficult to measure. Many models of legislative decision-making tacitly assume that members are willing and able to carry out the wishes of their constituents so as to maximize their reelection prospects and, in so doing, relegate their personal preferences. This project explores this assumption by examining the role that members' place of birth plays in shaping legislative behavior, apart from other politically relevant factors like partisanship. We find that birthplace exerts an independent influence on members' voting behavior. Using a variety of geographic measures, we find that members who are born in close proximity to one another tend to exhibit similar patterns in roll call voting, even when accounting for partisanship, constituency attributes, and a variety of other determinants of voting. We also demonstrate in a secondary analysis that the agricultural composition of members' birthplace influences their support for agricultural protection. Our findings suggest that members' personal history shapes the representational relationship they have with their constituents.
The Intergenerational Transmission of Policy Feedback in the United States: Evidence From Racial Violence
David Schwegman, Eric Brunner & Bill Simonsen
Public Administration Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Do government actions, or inactions, committed decades (or centuries) ago toward a specific community influence how members of that community trust and perceive government today? Past government actions that extracted resources (a negative resource effect) and communicated an individual's place within American Society (a negative interpretative effect) may diminish trust. This paper explores this question by examining the relationship between the county-level lynching rate of Black Americans from 1882 to 1936 and contemporary trust in local and state governments. We find that Black individuals living in U.S. counties exposed to higher rates of historical racial violence are less trusting of their local and state governments than Black individuals living in the same state but in counties exposed to lower levels of historical racial violence. We find no such relationship for White individuals. These relationships are robust to controlling for measures of contemporary use of force by governments and government performance.
Political Activism and Market Power
Elia Ferracuti, Roni Michaely & Laura Wellman
Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, forthcoming
Abstract:
We document an increase in market power for politically active firms during times of heightened policy uncertainty, when their information and influence advantage is greater. The effect is long-lasting and stronger for large politically active firms. We show that relatively large investments during high uncertainty periods serve as a potential mechanism for gains in market power. Industries populated with politically active firms experience lower business dynamism and import penetration, consistent with active firms leveraging investment timing to restrict competition. Results suggest that political activism is a likely contributing factor to the dominance of large firms over the last two decades.
Plutopopulism: Wealth and Trump's Financial Base
Sean Kates et al.
American Political Science Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Comparative scholarship suggests authoritarian candidates often rely on backing from the wealthy. The wealthy are also said to play an important role in American campaign finance. Studies of Donald Trump, however, found that he drew significant support from white Americans with less education and privilege. We evaluate wealthy and non-wealthy Americans' financial support for Trump, compared to other candidates, by constructing a comprehensive dataset of property values matched to contributions and voter files. We find Trump underperformed among wealthy Republican donors while mobilizing new non-wealthy donors. Trump also diversified the donorate, especially by education. That is, Trump built an unusual coalition of wealthy and non-wealthy donors. Our results support an alternative, "plutopopulist" model of Trump's financial base. This study demonstrates the importance of studying both non-wealthy and wealthy Americans, the group who give the most but whose individual behavior has been studied the least.