Governing Signals
Cover Bills
Nicolas Florez & Christian Fong
Legislative Studies Quarterly, February 2026
Abstract:
Legislators sometimes vote on bills that fail but, in the process, allow lawmakers to take an extreme position before ultimately voting to compromise. We call these proposals Cover Bills. Through two survey experiments, we show that primary voters are more supportive of a compromiser if that legislator first votes for a cover bill. Through a causal mediation analysis, we show that cover bills are effective not because they prove that the compromise was the best deal the legislators could get, but because they demonstrate that the legislator shares the voter's ideological commitments. They reduce the punishment associated with compromising even if respondents find out about the cover bill from legislators who opposed the compromise.
Issue Specialization and Effective Lawmaking in the U.S. Congress
Craig Volden & Alan Wiseman
Journal of Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Members of Congress are naturally generalists, needing to vote on a wide array of issues. In formulating their own legislative portfolios, however, they face greater opportunities to specialize and gain expertise in specific policy areas, perhaps positioning them to be more effective lawmakers. We compare members of the U.S. Congress who have more specialized policy agendas to those with more diverse agendas in both the House and Senate from 1973 to 2023. We find that those legislators who dedicate about half of their legislative portfolio to a single issue area experience enhanced lawmaking effectiveness in comparison to their peers who are less specialized. Such benefits from specialization seem to be linked to expertise acquisition over time in the House and to deference and cue-taking in the Senate. We also find that the vast majority of Representatives and Senators are insufficiently specialized to achieve their highest lawmaking potential.
Negativity and Misinformation
Stuart Soroka & Christopher Wlezien
Political Communication, forthcoming
Abstract:
There are large and growing bodies of research highlighting inaccuracies in news coverage. In this paper, we suggest that negativity biases account for a substantial portion of longstanding inaccuracies (or “misinformation”) in coverage of a broad range of social, medical, environmental, political, and economic domains. As an illustrative example, we use automated content analyses of over 20 years of television news transcripts merged with unemployment data to measure the accuracy of unemployment coverage across the six major US broadcasters (ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC), and then examine the degree to which variation in accuracy is associated with variation in the tendency to overweight negative information relative to positive information. Results reveal a connection between inaccuracy and negativity biases, a finding that we interpret as it relates to our understanding of misinformation in the news.
Democracy and the Academy
Hrishikesh Joshi
Philosophy & Public Affairs, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper defends a provocative thesis: namely, that the present structure and composition of the academy undermine democratic legitimacy. Political philosophers have often stressed that universal suffrage by itself is not sufficient for such legitimacy. In these critiques, they have focused on the disproportionate power of the wealthy to shape politics and public discourse. I argue here that there is a deeper and relatively unnoticed problem in this vein: the university system exerts enormous power in shaping the perspectives of the public through a variety of means. Yet, the academy is democratically unaccountable for all practical purposes. Moreover, as has been documented in a range of empirical work, it is politically homogeneous. As a result, I argue, this asymmetric power undermines the legitimacy of the political system, viewed as a whole. This can be seen from within three influential accounts of democratic legitimacy: republicanism, public reason liberalism, and consent theories. The paper concludes by exploring some potential remedies in the service of moving towards democratic legitimacy.
How shifting priorities and capacity affect policy work and constituency service: Evidence from a census of legislator requests to U.S. federal agencies
Devin Judge-Lord, Eleanor Neff Powell & Justin Grimmer
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
When elected officials gain power, do they use it to provide more constituent service or affect policy? The answer informs debates over how legislator capacity, term limits, and institutional positions affect legislator behavior. We distinguish two countervailing effects of increased institutional power: shifting priorities and increased capacity. To assess how institutional power shapes behavior, we assemble a massive new database of 611,239 legislator requests to a near census of federal departments, agencies, and subagencies between 2007 and 2020. We find that legislators prioritize policy work as they gain institutional power (e.g., become a committee chair) but simultaneously maintain their levels of constituency service. Moreover, when a new legislator replaces an experienced legislator, the district receives less constituency service and less policy work. Rather than long-serving and powerful elected officials diverting attention from constituents, their increased capacity enables them to maintain levels of constituency service, even as they prioritize policy work.
Political costs and strategic corporate communication
Christine Cuny, Jungbae Kim & Mihir Mehta
Journal of Accounting and Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
When subject to public scrutiny, do firms strategically use advertising to reduce expected political costs? Advertising can ease public concerns, thereby reducing the pressure on politicians to act harshly against scrutinized firms and their industries. We use repeated congressional testimony by industry members as a novel way to identify political scrutiny. Our central finding is that scrutinized industries increase their advertising spending 132 percent more in the electorates of politicians overseeing the hearings than in the electorates of other politicians. Further, strategic advertising is complementary to income-decreasing accounting choices and a substitute for lobbying. Overall, our study sheds light on a previously undocumented mechanism through which firms attempt to manage expected political costs.
Gender, Party Status, and Lawmaking in the American States: A Reassessment of Legislative Effectiveness
Abby Child, Laura Pacheco & Michael Barber
Legislative Studies Quarterly, May 2026
Abstract:
Volden et al.'s study of the US House of Representatives found that congresswomen in the minority party exhibit greater legislative effectiveness than their male counterparts, while effectiveness levels are comparable in the majority party. This paper re-examines the relationship between gender, majority party status, and legislative effectiveness within the diverse institutional contexts of US state legislatures. Using the State Legislative Effectiveness Scores (SLES) developed by Bucchianeri et al. for the period 1987–2018, we replicate and extend the original congressional analysis. Contrary to the findings at the national level, our analysis of over 80,000 legislator scores across 97 state legislative chambers reveals no measurable advantage in legislative effectiveness between women and men in the minority or majority party. Instead, we find that in most cases female state legislators are less effective than their male counterparts. These results suggest that the institutional dynamics shaping the conditions for women's legislative success may operate differently in state-level versus congressional settings, highlighting the importance of context in studies of gender and lawmaking.
When Legislators Change Their Minds: Understanding Foreign Policy Waffling in the U.S. House of Representatives
Sinjae Kang et al.
American Politics Research, May 2026, Pages 366-381
Abstract:
This article examines why legislators reverse their positions on foreign policy bills they initially endorse. Using roll-call data from the U.S. House of Representatives (1990–2024), we identify systematic variations in waffling patterns across foreign policy domains. Our analysis shows that majority party members are generally less likely to waffle than their minority party counterparts, especially in defense/security and international affairs, though the pattern is less pronounced in trade policy. We also find that ideological extremity substantially increases the likelihood of waffling, particularly among senior legislators. Moreover, we distinguish between waffling and strategic waffling, revealing a distinct pattern in trade policy, where majority party members are more inclined to be absent strategically. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that legislative position-taking on foreign policy is shaped by the interplay of party pressure, ideological commitments, and political experience in the post–Cold War era.
Is Mr. Smith Afraid to Leave Washington? Congressional District Gun Homicides and Legislator Absenteeism
Steven Caudill, Franklin Mixon & Fady Mansour
American Journal of Economics and Sociology, forthcoming
Abstract:
The impact of violent crime has been shown to extend to business confidence, the timing and types of employment, and investments in human capital. The impact of violent crime on human behavior also potentially touches upon whether U.S. Representatives perform their legislative responsibilities or instead engage in shirking behavior. More specifically, the current political debate surrounding violent crime in Washington, D.C., gives rise to an interesting question: Do U.S. Representatives who reside in and represent notably dangerous Congressional districts view the nation's capital as a refuge from the violent crime that is persistent in those districts? To the extent they do, one would predict that the rates of vote-skipping by U.S. Representatives from notably dangerous Congressional districts would be lower than those realized for all other U.S. Representatives. Using vote-skipping (i.e., legislator shirking) data from the 118th Congress, this study undertakes such an investigation, finding that representatives from notably dangerous Congressional districts tend to skip almost 0.9%-points fewer votes than representatives from all other Congressional districts. This impact represents almost 35% of mean percentage of votes skipped across all legislators in the U.S. House during the 118th Congress.
Presidential Messages on Legislation and the Congressional Targets of Lobbying
Huchen Liu
Presidential Studies Quarterly, March 2026
Abstract:
Despite strong reasons to expect presidents' announced stances on legislation to influence how organized interests lobby Congress, this effect remains underexplored. I advance a theory that Statements of Administration Policy (SAPs), sent by presidents to Congress to convey their positions on legislation, may also send signals to interest groups about when to lobby Congress and which legislators to lobby. To test it, I analyze panel data combining SAPs issued by Clinton to Biden, records of lobbying contact extracted from reports filed under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), and committee and floor agendas in Congress. Analysis of both committee and legislator data shows that SAPs strongly predict whom lobbyists choose to target, and more so than congressional agendas alone can explain. Furthermore, SAPs predict more advocacy specifically by elite lobbying firms. These findings suggest that presidential position-taking may elicit responses not only from Congress but also from organized interests and draw battle lines for both institutional and outside actors.