Position of authority
A decline in prosocial language helps explain public disapproval of the US Congress
Jeremy Frimer et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 26 May 2015, Pages 6591-6594
Abstract:
Talking about helping others makes a person seem warm and leads to social approval. This work examines the real world consequences of this basic, social-cognitive phenomenon by examining whether record-low levels of public approval of the US Congress may, in part, be a product of declining use of prosocial language during Congressional debates. A text analysis of all 124 million words spoken in the House of Representatives between 1996 and 2014 found that declining levels of prosocial language strongly predicted public disapproval of Congress 6 mo later. Warm, prosocial language still predicted public approval when removing the effects of societal and global factors (e.g., the September 11 attacks) and Congressional efficacy (e.g., passing bills), suggesting that prosocial language has an independent, direct effect on social approval.
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Is the Revolving Door of Washington a Back Door to Excess Corporate Returns?
Mehmet İhsan Canayaz, Jose Vicente Martinez & Han Ozsoylev
University of Oxford Working Paper, April 2015
Abstract:
In this paper, we look into the so-called "revolving door of Washington", which is the movement of individuals between federal government positions and jobs in the private sector, and examine its link to long-run stock returns. We find that firms where current public officials become future employees outperform other firms by a statistically significant 7.43% per year in terms of four-factor alpha. This result is robust to different weighting methodologies and risk adjustments, and to plausible reverse causality arguments. We also show that firms receive more valuable government contracts from a government agency when a future firm employee is holding a post at that agency. Such financial gains are significantly reduced during periods in which presidential executive orders restrict revolving door movements. Our results are consistent with the notion that some public officials could be favoring certain companies while in office with a view to gaining future corporate employment.
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Meet the Press or Meet the Men? Examining Women's Presence in American News Media
Gail Baitinger
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Why are women still a minority presence in American news media? Some accounts attribute the dearth of women as political newsmakers to sexism, but journalistic norms to attain the best source for a story suggest that sex should be irrelevant. To date, however, no study has systematically tested these competing hypotheses. Based on a new, original data set of more than 4,200 appearances by elected officials and non-elected political actors on the Sunday morning talk shows, I find that female elected officials, journalists, and political activists appear as guests less frequently than men do. But the gender gap does not result from overt sexism. Rather, the characteristics that contribute to repeated appearances on Sunday morning are consistent with journalistic norms to provide balance and credibility in reporting. Because there are few women in the positions and professions from which guests are selected, though, these norms also perpetuate a gendered news environment.
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Why So Few (Republican) Women? Explaining the Partisan Imbalance of Women in the U.S. Congress
Danielle Thomsen
Legislative Studies Quarterly, May 2015, Pages 295-323
Abstract:
This article examines why the percentage of Democratic women in Congress has increased dramatically since the 1980s while the percentage of Republican women has barely grown. The central claim is that ideological conformity with the party influences the decision to run for office, and I suggest that partisan polarization has discouraged ideological moderates in the pipeline from pursuing a congressional career. The findings have gendered implications because, first, Republican women in the pipeline have historically been to the left of their male counterparts, and second, there is a dearth of conservative women in the pipeline.
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Campaign Contributions Facilitate Access to Congressional Officials: A Randomized Field Experiment
Joshua Kalla & David Broockman
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Concern that donations to political campaigns secure preferential treatment from policy makers has long occupied judges, scholars, and the public. However, the effects of contributions on policy makers' behavior are notoriously difficult to assess. We present the first randomized field experiment on the topic. The experiment focuses on whether contributions facilitate access to influential policy makers. In the experiment, a political organization attempted to schedule meetings between 191 congressional offices and the organization's members in their districts who were campaign donors. However, the organization randomly assigned whether it revealed to congressional offices that prospective attendees had contributed to campaigns. When informed prospective attendees were political donors, senior policy makers made themselves available between three and four times more often. These findings underscore concerns about the Supreme Court's recent decisions deregulating campaign finance.
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Does Economics Make Politicians Corrupt? Empirical Evidence from the United States Congress
René Ruske
Kyklos, May 2015, Pages 240-254
Abstract:
The present article analyzes the differences between economists and non-economists with respect to observed corruption behavior used as a proxy for selfishness. For this purpose, I analyzed real world data of relating to the 109th-111th US Congress between 2005 and 2009, including 695 representatives and senators. I show that those who hold a degree in economics are significantly more prone to corruption than 'non-economists'. These findings hence support the widespread, but controversial hypothesis in the 'economist vs. non-economist literature' that economists lack what Frey and Meier (2004) call 'social behavior'. Moreover, by using real world data, these findings overcome the lack of external validity, which impact on the (low cost) experiments and surveys to date.
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How Do Public Goods Providers Play Public Goods Games?
Daniel Butler & Thad Kousser
Legislative Studies Quarterly, May 2015, Pages 211-240
Abstract:
We study how policymakers play public goods games, and how their behavior compares to the typical subjects we study, by conducting parallel experiments on college undergraduates and American state legislators. We find that the legislators play public goods games more cooperatively and more consistently than the undergraduates. Legislators are also less responsive to treatments that involve social elements but are more likely to respond to additional information that they receive. Further, legislators' fixed characteristics explain much of the variation in how legislators play the game. We discuss the implications of these findings for understanding how institutions affect the provision of public goods.
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Sarah Binder
Annual Review of Political Science, 2015, Pages 85-101
Abstract:
Is the US Congress dysfunctional? The American public thinks so: In the summer of 2014, just 7% approved strongly of Congress (Riffkin 2014). Still, legislative scholars disagree about the severity of Congress's legislative challenges. Is legislative deadlock a sign that Congress can no longer identify and resolve major public problems? Or are Congress's difficulties temporary and correctable? In this article, I review theoretical and empirical literatures on the dynamics of lawmaking and evaluate alternative methods for testing lawmaking theories. Finally, I draw on recent research to put contemporary stalemate into historical perspective. I argue that even when Congress and the president have reached agreement on the big issues of the day, Congress's problem-solving capacity appears to have fallen to new lows in recent years. Whether and how well our political system can or will self-correct in the coming years remains an open question.
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Congressional dysfunction: An information processing perspective
Jonathan Lewallen, Sean Theriault & Bryan Jones
Regulation & Governance, forthcoming
Abstract:
The public's approval of Congress is at an all time low. The parties seem to have taken the legislative process hostage for their own electoral gain. Whereas traditional arguments about congressional dysfunction focus on polarized voting coalitions or outputs - particularly legislation - in this article we highlight congressional information processing and how it has changed in this highly partisan era. By coding congressional hearings according to the kind of information on which they focus, we find that members of Congress are receiving one-sided information to a greater degree and are spending less time learning about potential solutions. We use these results to make numerous recommendations for improving how Congress gathers its information.
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Divided Government and the Fragmentation of American Law
Sean Farhang & Miranda Yaver
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
We investigate institutional explanations for Congress's choice to fragment statutory frameworks for policy implementation. We argue that divided party government, which fuels legislative-executive conflict over control of the bureaucracy, motivates Congress to fragment implementation power as a strategy to enhance its control over implementation. We develop a novel measure of fragmentation in policy implementation, collect data on it over the period 1947-2008, and test hypotheses linking separation-of-powers structures to legislative design of fragmented implementation power. We find that divided party government is powerfully associated with fragmentation in policy implementation, and that this association contributed to the long-run growth of fragmentation in the postwar United States. We further find that legislative coalitions are more likely to fragment implementation power in the face of greater uncertainty about remaining in the majority.
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Political Connections, Incentives and Innovation: Evidence from Contract-Level Data
Jonathan Brogaard, Matthew Denes & Ran Duchin
University of Washington Working Paper, May 2015
Abstract:
This paper studies the relation between corporate political connections and the allocation, design, and outcomes of government contracts. Using hand-collected data on federal procurement contracts, we find that connected firms are 10% more likely to win a contract. Connected firms receive larger contracts, with longer durations and weaker incentive structures. Politically-connected firms are also more likely to increase contract amounts and extend deadlines through contract renegotiations. While government contracts enhance firm-level innovation on average, political connections and weak contractual incentives are associated with less innovation, as measured by patents and patent citations. Overall, we show that connections between firms and politicians are associated with distortions in contract allocation and design.
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A Structural Model of Electoral Accountability
Boragan Aruoba, Allan Drazen & Razvan Vlaicu
NBER Working Paper, May 2015
Abstract:
This paper proposes a structural approach to measuring the effects of electoral accountability. We estimate a political agency model with imperfect information in order to identify and quantify discipline and selection effects, using data on U.S. governors for 1982-2012. We find that the possibility of reelection provides a significant incentive for incumbents to exert effort. We also find a selection effect, although it is weaker in terms of its effect on average governor performance. According to our model, the widely-used two-term regime improves voter welfare by 4.2% compared to a one-term regime, and find that a three-term regime may improve voter welfare even further.
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How Policy and Procedure Shape Citizens' Evaluations of Senators
David Doherty
Legislative Studies Quarterly, May 2015, Pages 241-272
Abstract:
I report findings from survey experiments that improve our understanding of how people want individual Senators to approach their role as representatives. The findings show that people are committed to the idea that Senators should prioritize their states' preferences over those of the national public. This preference persists in situations where a Senator's advocacy for her state plays a key role in defeating nationally supported legislation. This finding contradicts popular claims that voters are hungry for Senators who prioritize national preferences over those of their constituents. I also find that people who support a piece of legislation - but not those who oppose it - evaluate a Senator who helps to defeat the legislation by filibustering substantially less favorably than one who accomplishes the same ends through majoritarian means. This suggests that how people respond to some procedural characteristics of politicians' behavior depends on how they feel about the outcomes it yields.
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Taking Matters into Their Own Hands: Presidents' Personality Traits and the Use of Executive Orders
Maryann Gallagher & Bethany Blackstone
Presidential Studies Quarterly, June 2015, Pages 221-246
Abstract:
Existing studies of executive orders tend to focus on two issues: how the frequency of executive orders has changed over time and whether the nature of presidential power has changed such that we should reconsider Neustadt's thesis that bargaining is the essence of presidential power. Although institutionalists bemoan the literature's focus on the "personal presidency," no study of unilateral uses of power has taken into account the systematic influence of presidents' personalities. Instead, studies that consider why some presidents issue more executive orders than others focus on contextual factors, not attributes of the presidents. In this article we address this gap in the literature by examining whether presidents' personality traits significantly influence their propensity to issue executive orders. The results of our analysis demonstrate that both personality and institutional factors play a significant role in presidents' decisions to act unilaterally.