Political Calculus
Can Learning Constituency Opinion Affect How Legislators Vote? Results from a Field Experiment
Daniel Butler & David Nickerson
Quarterly Journal of Political Science, August 2011, Pages 55-83
Abstract:
When legislators are uninformed about public opinion, does learning constituents' opinion affect how legislators vote? We conducted a fully randomized field experiment to answer this question. We surveyed 10,690 New Mexicans about the Governor's spending proposals for a special summer session held in the summer of 2008. District-specific survey results were then shared with a randomly selected half of the legislature. The legislators receiving their district-specific survey results were much more likely to vote in line with constituent opinion than those who did not. Our results suggest that legislators want to be more responsive to public opinion than they are in their natural state and can be if given solid information about constituent beliefs.
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The Democratic Deficit in the States
Jeffrey Lax & Justin Phillips
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
We study how well states translate public opinion into policy. Using national surveys and advances in subnational opinion estimation, we estimate state-level support for 39 policies across eight issue areas, including abortion, law enforcement, health care, and education. We show that policy is highly responsive to policy-specific opinion, even controlling for other influences. But we also uncover a striking "democratic deficit": policy is congruent with majority will only half the time. The analysis considers the influence of institutions, salience, partisan control of government, and interest groups on the magnitude and ideological direction of this democratic deficit. We find the largest influences to be legislative professionalization, term limits, and issue salience. Partisanship and interest groups affect the ideological balance of incongruence more than the aggregate degree thereof. Finally, policy is overresponsive to ideology and party - leading policy to be polarized relative to state electorates.
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Does the Party Matter? Endorsements in Congressional Primaries
Casey Dominguez
Political Research Quarterly, September 2011, Pages 534-544
Abstract:
Research suggests that endorsements should affect outcomes in low-information elections such as primaries, but that hypothesis has not yet been tested empirically. Based on a survey of 2002 congressional campaigns, this article describes the universe of individuals and groups that offer endorsements to primary candidates and analyzes their effects on primary election results. It finds that a primary candidate's share of the partisan endorsements issued in the race significantly affects the candidate's vote share, even controlling for campaign funds and candidate quality. Implications for theories of candidate emergence and success are discussed.
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Newspaper Coverage of Political Scandals
Riccardo Puglisi & James Snyder
Journal of Politics, July 2011, Pages 931-950
Abstract:
We study the coverage of U.S. political scandals by U.S. newspapers during the past decade. Using automatic keyword-based searches we collected data on 32 scandals and approximately 200 newspapers. We find that Democratic-leaning newspapers - i.e., those with a higher propensity to endorse Democratic candidates in elections - provide relatively more coverage of scandals involving Republican politicians than scandals involving Democratic politicians, while Republican-leaning newspapers tend to do the opposite. This is true even after controlling for the average partisan leanings of readers. In contrast, newspapers appear to cater to the partisan tastes of readers only for local scandals.
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Riccardo Puglisi & James Snyder
NBER Working Paper, July 2011
Abstract:
We propose a new method for measuring the relative ideological positions of newspapers, voters, interest groups, and political parties. The method uses data on ballot propositions. We exploit the fact that newspapers, parties, and interest groups take positions on these propositions, and the fact that citizens ultimately vote on them. We find that, on average, newspapers in the U.S. are located almost exactly at the median voter in their states. Newspapers also tend to be centrist relative to interest groups.
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Elite Influence on Public Opinion in an Informed Electorate
John Bullock
American Political Science Review, August 2011, Pages 496-515
Abstract:
An enduring concern about democracies is that citizens conform too readily to the policy views of elites in their own parties, even to the point of ignoring other information about the policies in question. This article presents two experiments that undermine this concern, at least under one important condition. People rarely possess even a modicum of information about policies; but when they do, their attitudes seem to be affected at least as much by that information as by cues from party elites. The experiments also measure the extent to which people think about policy. Contrary to many accounts, they suggest that party cues do not inhibit such thinking. This is not cause for unbridled optimism about citizens' ability to make good decisions, but it is reason to be more sanguine about their ability to use information about policy when they have it.
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Anthony Bertelli & Christian Grose
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
While the president's relationship to Congress has been carefully studied, the broader executive branch has received far less attention in that context. Scholars rely on assumptions about the relationship between the president and cabinet departments that remain untested. We construct the first statistical portrait of executive branch ideology by estimating ideal points for members of Congress, presidents, and the heads of cabinet-level departments between 1991 and 2004 in a Bayesian framework. We empirically assess claims about the composition of the president's administrative team and the influence of institutions on the ideology of principal executive decision makers. We also test an important claim regarding the trade-off between ideological congruence and budgetary authority to demonstrate the utility of our estimates for other scholars. Our analysis reveals a new picture of the executive branch as ideologically diverse, casting into doubt some essential assumptions in a substantial body of work on the separation of powers.
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Peter Leeson, Matt Ryan & Claudia Williamson
Journal of Comparative Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper is the first to investigate the relationship between think tanks and economic policy empirically. We use panel data for the US states to examine state-based, free market (SBFM) think tanks' relationship to eight key economic policy objectives. We find little evidence that SBFM think tanks are associated with more "pro-market" policies along the policy dimensions they aim to influence. However, we find stronger evidence that SBFM think tanks are associated with more "pro-market" citizen attitudes about the role of government vs. markets in economic policy. These results suggest that if think tanks' connection to economic policy is important at all, its importance may be long term and operate via the channel of "ideas." In contrast to think tanks, we find evidence that political lobby groups are associated with current policy. This may reflect the fact that, unlike think tanks, lobby groups are legally permitted to lobby for policy changes directly. Thus they don't need to engage in a long-run "battle of ideas" to secure desired policy outcomes.
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Michael Bailey & Albert Yoon
Journal of Theoretical Politics, July 2011, Pages 293-316
Abstract:
Many observers of the US Supreme Court suspect that justices time their departures from the Court based on ideological and political factors. This paper assesses the theoretical effects of such behavior. Does political timing of retirement devalue the appointment process and thereby make the Court less responsive to the public? Do politically motivated retirements lead to more justices serving beyond their productive years? Based on a formal model of retirements, we find that politically motivated retirements have little effect on political influence on the Court because, on average, for every liberal justice who declines to retire because there is a Republican president, there is a conservative justice who retires early because there is a Republican president. The model also implies modest, but non-linear effects of politically motivated retirement on the age composition of the Court as small amounts of such behavior leads to an older Court, but large amounts of politically motivated behavior lead to a younger Court. Imposing term limits on justices would increase responsiveness to electoral outcomes, lower the age of justices and dramatically increase Court turnover.
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Thomas Nelson, Gregory Gwiasda & Joseph Lyons
Political Psychology, October 2011, Pages 813-835
Abstract:
Social values are an important foundation of political attitudes, yet political controversies often embody conflicts between values, placing the citizen in an awkward position of having to prioritize competing values. One strategy is to consider the groups that are symbolically associated with the competing values. Groups held in high esteem will enhance associated values; groups held in disregard will diminish associated values. Persuasive communicators exploit this process by assailing groups that have been publicly associated with certain issue positions or values as "extreme" or "radical." Even if the group represents a consensus value like equal opportunity, the extremist label suggests the group's agenda embodies an excessive and uncompromising imposition of this value. This article reports on four experiments that investigated how the extremist label can undermine support for a group's position. We further examine how reputation affects judgments of value priorities.
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Patronage and Elections in U.S. States
Olle Folke, Shigeo Hirano & James Snyder
American Political Science Review, August 2011, Pages 567-585
Abstract:
Does control of patronage jobs significantly increase a political party's chances of winning elections in U.S. states? We employ a differences-in-differences design, exploiting the considerable variation in the dates that different states adopted civil service reforms. Our evidence suggests that political parties in U.S. states were able to use state-level patronage to increase the probability of maintaining control of state legislatures and statewide elective offices. We also find that an "entrenched" party, in power for a longer time, can use patronage more effectively. We consider several alternative hypotheses that might plausibly account for the patterns in the data, but find no evidence to support them.
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Ellen Seljan & Nicholas Weller
State Politics & Policy Quarterly, September 2011, Pages 348-368
Abstract:
Many theories of policy diffusion contend that the flow of information is the driving force in the diffusion process. Prior scholarship has identified at least two types of information: information about policy and information about political viability. Few empirical approaches have been able to distinguish between these separate mechanisms. The authors argue that an analysis of policy proposals can untangle political information from policy-based information. They employ their strategy with data on the proposal of tax and expenditure limits (TELs) in the U.S. states since 1970 through direct democracy. The authors find that states in close geographic proximity to states that have rejected TELs are significantly less likely to propose TELs themselves. Since this event does not reveal information about policy effectiveness, the authors conclude that information about political viability systematically diffuses from state to state at the proposal stage of policy making.
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Electoral Selection with Parties and Primaries
James Snyder & Michael Ting
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
We develop a model of intraparty candidate selection under partisan electoral competition and voter uncertainty. Candidates for office belong to parties, which are factions of ideologically similar candidates. Each party's candidate for a general election can be selected either by a "centralized" mechanism that effectively randomizes over possible candidates or by voters in a primary election. The electorate cares about ideology and valence, and both primary and general elections may reveal candidate valences. Our main theoretical result is that while primaries raise the expected quality of a party's candidates, they may hurt the ex ante preferred party in a competitive electorate by increasing the chances of revealing the opposing party's candidates as superior. Thus, primaries are adopted in relatively extreme districts where a clear favorite party exists. An empirical analysis of the adoption of direct primaries and the competitiveness of primary elections across U.S. states supports these predictions.
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A Political Theory of Populism
Daron Acemoglu, Georgy Egorov & Konstantin Sonin
NBER Working Paper, August 2011
Abstract:
When voters fear that politicians may have a right-wing bias or that they may be influenced or corrupted by the rich elite, signals of true left-wing conviction are valuable. As a consequence, even a moderate politician seeking reelection chooses "populist' policies - i.e., policies to the left of the median voter - as a way of signaling that he is not from the right. Truly right-wing politicians respond by choosing more moderate, or even left-of-center policies. This populist bias of policy is greater when the value of remaining in office is higher for the politician; when there is greater polarization between the policy preferences of the median voter and right-wing politicians; when politicians are indeed more likely to have a hidden right-wing agenda; when there is an intermediate amount of noise in the information that voters receive; when politicians are more forward-looking; and when there is greater uncertainty about the type of the incumbent. We show that similar results apply when some politicians can be corrupted or influenced through other non-electoral means by the rich elite.
We also show that 'soft term limits' may exacerbate, rather than reduce, the populist bias of policies.
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A signal-jamming model of persuasion: Interest group funded policy research
Daniel Stone
Social Choice and Welfare, September 2011, Pages 397-424
Abstract:
This article analyzes a simple model of policy making under uncertainty in the presence of an interest group that may fund and lobby research. In the model, if research is not disclosed via lobbying it enters the public domain and, subsequently, is randomly observed by the policy maker (PM). Consequently, the interest group strategically chooses both whether to fund research and whether to lobby it versus let it be randomly observed. The main result is that for a range of parameter values, in equilibrium the interest group sometimes funds, but never lobbies, research. This behavior effectively "jams" the public signal of the PM, making the policy choice worse on average. This occurs despite all research being unbiased. The results provide qualified theoretical support for the value of research funding transparency and implications for the interpretation of interest group funded research.
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Constituencies and Legislation: The Fight over the McFadden Act of 1927
Raghuram Rajan & Rodney Ramcharan
NBER Working Paper, August 2011
Abstract:
The McFadden Act of 1927 was one of the most hotly contested pieces of legislation in U.S. banking history, and its influence was still felt over half a century later. The act was intended to force states to accord the same branching rights to national banks as they accorded to state banks. By uniting the interests of large state and national banks, it also had the potential to expand the number of states that allowed branching. Congressional votes for the act therefore could reflect the strength of various interests in the district for expanded banking competition. We find congressmen in districts in which landholdings were concentrated (suggesting a landed elite), and where the cost of bank credit was high and its availability limited (suggesting limited banking competition and high potential rents), were significantly more likely to oppose the act. The evidence suggests that while the law and the overall regulatory structure can shape the financial system far into the future, they themselves are likely to be shaped by well-organized elites, even in countries with benign political institutions.
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Shifting Ideologies? Re-examining Media Bias
John Gasper
Quarterly Journal of Political Science, August 2011, Pages 85-102
Abstract:
This research note engages the current research on measuring media bias. I present a reanalysis of the results found in Groseclose and Milyo (2005) and show that the original parameter estimates of the ideological positions of media outlets are not stable over time. Using the same data but analyzed over different periods of time, I find a different conclusion than the previous article. I examine four-year rolling time periods and find that the data produce different parameter estimates in the early- to mid-1990s as compared to after 2000, with all analyzed outlets appearing more moderate or conservative in later time periods. My results indicate that the estimated positions are sensitive observations in the data and the time period of observation of the outlet.
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Hanming Fang, Dmitry Shapiro & Arthur Zillante
NBER Working Paper, September 2011
Abstract:
We experimentally study the effect of alternative campaign finance systems - as characterized by different information structure about donors - on donations, election outcomes, political candidates' policy choices, and welfare. Three alternative campaign finance systems are considered: a full anonymity (FA) system in which neither the politicians nor the voters are informed about the donors' ideal policies or levels of donations; a partial anonymity (PA) system in which only the politicians, but not the voters, are informed about the donors' ideal policies and donations; and finally a no anonymity (NA) system in which both the politicians and the voters are informed about the donors' ideal policies and donations. We find that donors contribute less in the FA system than in the PA and NA system, and candidates are less likely to deviate from their ideal policies under FA than under the PA and NA systems. The effect of donations on the candidate's policy deviations differs in FA from that in PA and NA. Specifically, in the FA system larger donations lead to smaller deviations from the candidate's ideal policy; but in the NA and PA systems, larger donations lead to larger deviations. As a result we observe that the donations lead to a centrist bias in the candidate's policy choices, i.e., donations are more likely to make extreme candidate move to the center than to make centrist candidate move to the right. This centrist bias is present more robustly in FA treatments. Finally, we find that donors greatly benefit from the possibility of donations regardless of the finance system. Voter welfare remains virtually unchanged under the PA and NA systems, especially when there is competition among the donors. Our findings provide the first experimental evidence supportive of Ayres and Ackerman's (2002) campaign finance reform proposal.
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Partisan Differences in Opinionated News Perceptions: A Test of the Hostile Media Effect
Lauren Feldman
Political Behavior, September 2011, Pages 407-432
Abstract:
The proliferation of opinion and overt partisanship in cable news raises questions about how audiences perceive this content. Of particular interest is whether audiences effectively perceive bias in opinionated news programs, and the extent to which there are partisan differences in these perceptions. Results from a series of three online experiments produce evidence for a relative hostile media phenomenon in the context of opinionated news. Although, overall, audiences perceive more story and host bias in opinionated news than in non-opinionated news, these perceptions - particularly perceptions of the host - vary as a function of partisan agreement with the news content. Specifically, issue partisans appear to have a "bias against bias," whereby they perceive less bias in opinionated news with which they are predisposed to agree than non-partisans and especially partisans on the other side of the issue.
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"Lost Our Lease": Issue Attention and Partisan Defection in the 2008 Presidential Election
Matthew Vandenbroek
American Politics Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article advances a bounded rationality approach to account for a fundamental challenge in the study of voting behavior; finding a model that allows voters to be driven by both affective partisan attachments and rational issue considerations. Voters choose candidates they feel will perform best on the issues, but on the issues about which they care most, and on the issues as they see them. Party identification acts as the crucial bound on individual rationality, canalizing attention to issues either owned by or successfully leased by their own party and biasing expectations of issue handling. My empirical analysis of the 2008 presidential election shows the recession was a powerful predictor of defection, but rather than valence - was the economy better or worse - what mattered was the level of importance an individual placed on the economy.
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Smooth Politicians and Paternalistic Voters: A Theory of Large Elections
Marco Faravelli & Randall Walsh
NBER Working Paper, September 2011
Abstract:
We propose a new game theoretic approach to modeling large elections that overcomes the "paradox of voting" in a costly voting framework, without reliance on the assumption of ad hoc preferences for voting. The key innovation that we propose is the adoption of a "smooth" policy rule under which the degree to which parties favor their own interests is increasing in their margin of victory. In other words, mandates matter. We argue that this approach is an improvement over the existing literature as it is consistent with the empirical evidence. Incorporating this policy rule into a costly voting model with paternalistic voters yields a parsimonious model with attractive properties. Specifically, the model predicts that when the size of the electorate grows without bound, limiting turnout is strictly positive both in terms of numbers and proportions. Further, the model preserves the typical comparative statics predictions that have been identified in the extant costly voting models such as the underdog effect and the competition effect. Finally, under the case of selfish agents, we are able to extend Palfrey and Rosenthal's (1985) zero turnout result to a general class of smooth policy rules. Thus, this new approach reconciles the predictions of standard costly voting, both in terms of positive turnout and comparative statics predictions with the assumption of a large electorate environment.