Government Actors
Computational analysis of US congressional speeches reveals a shift from evidence to intuition
Segun Aroyehun et al.
Nature Human Behaviour, forthcoming
Abstract:
Pursuit of honest and truthful decision-making is crucial for governance and accountability in democracies. However, people sometimes take different perspectives of what it means to be honest and how to pursue truthfulness. Here we explore a continuum of perspectives from evidence-based reasoning, rooted in ascertainable facts and data, at one end, to intuitive decisions that are driven by feelings and subjective interpretations, at the other. We analyse the linguistic traces of those contrasting perspectives in congressional speeches from 1879 to 2022. We find that evidence-based language has continued to decline since the mid-1970s, together with a decline in legislative productivity. The decline was accompanied by increasing partisan polarization in Congress and rising income inequality in society. The results highlight the importance of evidence-based language in political decision-making.
Knowledge of politician stock trading reduces congressional legitimacy and compliance with the law
Raihan Alam & Tage Rai
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 27 May 2025
Abstract:
Institutional legitimacy is essential for democracies, yet public trust and confidence in the United States Congress are at an all-time low. A significant predictor of attitudes toward Congress is perceptions of corruption, with perceptions of corruption in government linked to less legitimacy. This study tests whether knowledge of Congressional stock trading affects legitimacy and compliance with Congressional authority. In a preregistered experiment with US citizens (n = 506), participants who read a report detailing how Congressmembers made higher-than-expected profits from stock trading in 2024 reported increased perceptions of corruption and decreased legitimacy in Congress. They also viewed laws passed by Congress as less fair and were less willing to comply with such laws. Perceptions of Congressional legitimacy mediated the effect of stock trading knowledge on willingness to comply with congressional laws and perceptions of congressional laws as fair. A preregistered follow-up experiment (n = 664) shows that these effects are not driven by how much Congressmembers profit but by how trading negatively affects broader perceptions of legitimacy. These findings highlight the detrimental effects of Congressional stock trading on perceptions of legitimacy and respect for the law.
The Local News Crisis and Political Scandal
Danny Hayes
Political Communication, forthcoming
Abstract:
The local news crisis in the United States has raised concerns about accountability in state and local government. But existing research has provided only indirect evidence that the decline of local news reporting has made it harder for voters to punish poor-performing elected officials. In this paper, I examine local newspaper coverage of state and congressional political scandals from 1990 through 2022. I first show that scandals now receive about 25% of the coverage they once did, a development that is directly related to the decline in newsroom reporting resources. I then show that the volume of scandal reporting is associated with whether officials face sanction for their behavior. When newspapers devote less coverage to a scandal, incumbents are less likely to leave office or receive a lower vote share when they run for reelection. Because scandals get significantly less coverage than they did even a decade ago, it may now be easier for politicians to ride them out and avoid punishment for bad behavior.
Descriptive representation and attitudes about local government: An experimental test using real-world stimuli
David Doherty, Madeline Schade & Dana Garbarski
Research & Politics, May 2025
Abstract:
Does descriptive representation lead people to evaluate elected officials and their institutions more favorably? Does it improve political efficacy and engagement? We report findings from a survey experiment that uses treatments drawn from respondents' real political context -- elected officials who make policy in respondents' county of residence. Specifically, we present a sample of Cook County residents with a member of the Cook County Board of Commissioners -- who may or may not "match" the respondents gender or ethnoracial identity -- to assess whether signaling that the respondent is "descriptively represented" on the Board affects their assessments of the Board and other attitudinal outcomes. Our pre-registered design positions us to identify effects of roughly one-eighth of a standard deviation in our full sample, but the estimated effects of signals of ethnoracial- and gender-based descriptive representation are null across the five outcomes we consider. In pre-registered exploratory analysis re-estimating effects by subgroup, we find evidence that suggests that descriptive representation affects some attitudes among women and Black respondents. This said, the effects we find in these groups are modest in magnitude, scattered, and, in most cases, statistically indistinguishable from those that emerge in other groups.
Wealth and Policymaking in the U.S. House of Representatives
Darrian Stacy
Legislative Studies Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Do members of Congress with relatively more and less wealth approach policymaking differently, or succeed at different rates? This paper examines data on the personal wealth and legislative effectiveness of representatives between 1979 and 2021 to assess how wealth shapes legislative outcomes. The analysis finds that legislators in the top wealth quintile are significantly more successful at advancing their policy agendas than their less-wealthy colleagues, while those in the bottom quintile face persistent disadvantages in the legislative process. These gaps emerge over time and are moderated by institutional factors rather than differences in prior legislative experience or preexisting legislative ability. The findings suggest that economic inequality among legislators translates into unequal policymaking influence in Congress.
Voice and Value: How Elected Officials Evaluate Online and Offline Constituent Feedback
Nathan Lee et al.
Public Opinion Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Social media has made it easier than ever for citizens to voice their opinion to their elected representatives. However, officials may infer that constituents who write to them via low-effort online mediums care less about the issues than those who communicate in person. To test how policymakers evaluate messages from constituents, we fielded a national survey of local US policymakers to examine responsiveness to different types of messages. Our findings indicate that online communication presents a double-edged sword: while it lowers the effort needed for constituents to communicate, officials discount information conveyed through social media. We examine this trade-off using an embedded conjoint experiment. Our results suggest that a social media message would have to be sent by more than 47 constituents for it to exceed the value of a single face-to-face meeting. These findings illustrate that, all else equal, in-person meetings likely remain the most persuasive form of grassroots communication. However, using social media can be an effective choice to the extent that it facilitates a large increase in overall levels of constituent engagement.
Political Control Over Redistricting and the Partisan Balance in Congress
Kenneth Coriale, Daniel Kolliner & Ethan Kaplan
NBER Working Paper, May 2025
Abstract:
We estimate the impact of a political party's ability to unilaterally redistrict Congressional seats upon partisan seat share allocations in the U.S. House of Representatives. Controlling for state-decade and year effects, we find an 8.2 percentage point increase in the Republican House seat share in the three elections following Republican control over redistricting in the past two decades. We only find significant effects for Democrats in large states. Effects are one half of the average seat gap between the parties in the 2010s. Differences across parties reflect more denied trifectas due to an opposite party governor in Democratic states and greater impacts for Republicans in small states. Differences do not reflect a rise in racial gerrymandering.
Getting what you pay for: Resource allocations and legislative success
Emily Cottle Ommundsen
Legislative Studies Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Members of Congress run for office with a variety of goals they hope to achieve if elected. How members go about achieving these goals is constrained by numerous institutional factors. Yet there exist two areas in which members are afforded broad discretion: the allocation of their time and budget. In this paper, I assess the personal qualities and institutional circumstances that motivate members' budgetary decisions, and take an important step further to evaluate the consequences of such choices. I find that members who spend a greater proportion of their budget are more effective lawmakers than those who do not spend their full budgets. Further, I demonstrate that members who invest more in legislative staff have the highest rates of legislative productivity. Members make strategic choices in how they divide their budget. This paper demonstrates that investing in skilled staff is a wise strategy for members desiring legislative success.
The weakness of weak ties: Do social capital investments among leaders pay off during times of disaster?
Branda Nowell & Toddi Steelman
Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, April 2025, Pages 180-198
Abstract:
The theoretical literature on social capital and disasters, as well as conventional wisdom, suggests the importance of pre-disaster relationship building among leaders of responding organizations and agencies for disaster readiness and response. Often implied, but rarely tested empirically, research presumes a positive and linear relationship associated with investments in social capital for effective disaster response. Any amount of relationship building is better than none, but more is better. But is it? In this article, we use a rare longitudinal, pre-post disaster dataset of dyadic ties among leaders to examine key questions related to investments in social capital before a disaster, the expected payoffs from these investments, the actual payoffs of these investments, and the marginal effects of such investments. Our findings indicate that pre-disaster relationship building has a nonlinear relationship to expected payoffs and actual payoffs. Marginal effects analyses suggest three interesting, though perhaps counter-intuitive, relationships between the investment and expected and actual payoffs in social capital. First, leaders reported expecting disproportionately high payoffs from relatively small relationship investments prior to the disaster. Second, infrequent pre-disaster interactions were found to be no different than no prior interaction when looking at actual payoffs from these investments. Finally, relationships that were deemed most problematic were among those with weak ties. Overall, results suggest that the efficacy of pre-disaster relationship building is more complicated than one would expect based on extant literature. More investment in social capital may be better in some cases, but the benefits from these investments appear only after a certain threshold is met and, in some cases, may have diminishing returns. Potential theoretical drivers for these seemingly counter-intuitive findings are discussed while calling for further research to investigate these dynamics in other contexts.
Prior Experience and State Legislative Effectiveness
Eric Hansen & Sarah Treul
Legislative Studies Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
How do the prior experiences of lawmakers shape their performance in office? Representatives who have held prior elected office or professional backgrounds in relevant fields -- specifically law, government, or politics -- seem to have an advantage in winning elections. It is unclear whether those experiences help them become more effective legislators. Using a variety of data sources, we assess whether lawmakers with relevant prior experiences are more effective in advancing bills in the 50 state legislatures. We find mixed results. We find that state senators are more effective than their colleagues if they first served in the state house, but that prior local officeholders are no more effective than first-time officeholders. Among occupational groups, lawyers alone seem to make more effective lawmakers than their colleagues. The results suggest that some narrow types of experience may help lawmakers be more effective in office, but that general experience in government and politics does not predict effectiveness. The results can help political observers and voters assess candidates' claims about how their prior experience will help them contribute to governance.