Model Institutions
Extremists Not on Board: Labor market costs to radical behavior in elected office
Benjamin Egerod & Hai Tran
Journal of Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Board appointments represent highly lucrative career opportunities for former politicians. We investigate how board service relates to the strength of ideological partisanship for former Members of Congress. We find that strong ideological partisanship is associated with a lower likelihood of being appointed to a board after Congress, and that this holds for both liberals and conservatives. In addition, we use a difference-in-differences design to show that when the supply of Senators willing to accept a directorship increases, firms become less likely to appoint ideological extremist Senators to their boards. The results show that extremist legislators are effectively shut out of one of the most lucrative post-elective career paths, placing a cost on radical behavior.
The Limits of Lobbying: Null Effects from Four Field Experiments in Two State Legislatures
Matthew Camp, Michael Schwam-Baird & Adam Zelizer
Journal of Experimental Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
It is widely thought that lobbyists exert influence over legislators' policy positions and, as a result, over policy outcomes. One mechanism of influence is the provision of policy expertise. Yet, there is little credible empirical evidence that lobbyists' expertise influences legislative outcomes. Across four experiments fielded with three lobbyists in two state legislatures that examine two public measures of legislators' positions, we find no evidence that lobbyists' expertise influences legislators' policy positions. We do find, in contrast, that the same policy expertise treatment is influential when provided by a legislative staffer. We conclude that policy information can influence legislators' positions, but that legislators are cautious when that information is provided by lobbyists.
Public perceptions of local influence
Joshua Hochberg & Eitan Hersh
Research & Politics, January 2023
Abstract:
Who do people think are influential in their own community? This question is important for understanding topics such as social networks, political party networks, civic engagement, and local politics. At the same time as research on these topics has grown, measurement of public perceptions of local influence has dried up. Years ago, researchers took active interest in the question of community influence. They found that most ordinary Americans could identify a person who they thought had influence in their community. Respondents usually named business leaders. Where does the public stand today? In three different ways, we ask respondents who has local influence. The vast majority of respondents today cannot think of anyone. Those who do identify someone as influential rarely choose a businessperson. This article aims to reintroduce the public opinion of community influence and situate findings in related scholarship.
Does the Musk Twitter Takeover Matter? Political Influencers, Their Arguments, and the Quality of Information They Share
Deana Rohlinger et al.
Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World, February 2023
Abstract:
In October 2022, Elon Musk took over Twitter. Although conservatives cheered the takeover, progressives decried it as dangerous for democracy. Despite scholarly interest in Twitter, little is known about the impact of "old" Twitter's policies on the information environment, making it difficult to speculate about Musk's effects. The authors begin to address this gap through an analysis of 245,020 tweets collected before and after Twitter suspended eight accounts calling for state audits of the 2020 presidential election results. In this analysis of message amplifiers, or accounts receiving 200 or more retweets, and message drivers, or top-ranked accounts, no evidence is found that the Twitter ban improved the ideas or the quality of information shared about the election, nor did it dramatically change who posted about the audit. The authors conclude with a discussion of the implications of these findings for future research on Twitter under Musk's control.
Morality and the Glass Ceiling: How Elite Rhetoric Reflects Gendered Strategies and Perspectives
Laura Brisbane, Whitney Hua & Thomas Jamieson
Politics & Gender, forthcoming
Abstract:
Moral rhetoric presents a strategic dilemma for female politicians, who must navigate stereotypes while appealing to copartisan voters. In this article, we investigate how gender shapes elite moral rhetoric given the influence of partisanship, ideology, gender stereotypes, and moral psychology. Drawing on moral foundations theory, we examine how female and male representatives differ in their emphasis on the five foundations of care, fairness, authority, loyalty, and purity. Using the Moral Foundations Dictionary, we analyze a corpus of 2.23 million tweets by U.S. Congress members between 2013 and 2021. We find that female representatives are more likely to emphasize care and less likely to emphasize authority and loyalty than their male peers. However, when subsetting by party, we find that gender effects are most pronounced among Democrats and largely negligible among Republicans. These findings offer insight into the rhetorical dynamics of political leadership at the intersection of gender and partisan identities.
Symbols of the Struggle: Descriptive Representation and Issue-Based Symbolism in U.S. House Speeches
Bryce Dietrich & Matthew Hayes
Journal of Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
The rhetoric legislators use to discuss race is both important and understudied. In this paper, we explore whether the presence of Black legislators influences symbolic representation in the U.S. House. We ask three questions. First, do Black and white MCs talk about issues involving race at different rates? Second, when Black and white MCs talk about race, do they do so in different ways? Third, do these rhetorical differences matter for Black constituents? Using data from 790,654 U.S. House floor speeches, the Cooperative Election Study, and data from an original survey experiment, we demonstrate that Black legislators are more likely to talk about civil rights, and they employ significantly more symbolic references when they do. This symbolism is linked to an increase in Black voter turnout as well as changes in the evaluations of Black constituents, underscoring that symbolic responsiveness is an important facet of representation for African Americans.
The Health of Democracies During the Pandemic: Results from a Randomized Survey Experiment
Marcella Alsan et al.
NBER Working Paper, January 2023
Abstract:
Concerns have been raised about the "demise of democracy", possibly accelerated by pandemic-related restrictions. Using a survey experiment involving 8,206 respondents from five Western democracies, we find that subjects randomly exposed to information regarding civil liberties infringements undertaken by China and South Korea to contain COVID-19 became less willing to sacrifice rights and more worried about their long-term-erosion. However, our treatment did not increase support for democratic procedures more generally, despite our prior evidence that pandemic-related health risks diminished such support. These results suggest that the start of the COVID-19 crisis was a particularly vulnerable time for democracies.
Abstentions and Social Networks in Congress
Marco Battaglini, Valerio Leone Sciabolazza & Eleonora Patacchini
Journal of Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We study the extent to which personal connections among legislators influence abstentions in the U.S. Congress. Our analysis is conducted by observing representatives' abstention for the universe of roll call votes held on bills in the 109th-113th Congresses. Our results show that a legislator's propensity to abstain increases when the majority of his or her alumni connections abstains, even after controlling for other well-known predictors of abstention choices and a large set of fixed effects. We further reveal that a legislator is more prone to abstain than to take sides when the demands from personal connections conflict with those of the legislator's party.
Careerism, Status Quo Bias, and the Politics of Congressional Apportionment
Jason Roberts
Journal of Historical Political Economy, Fall 2022, Pages 391-414
Abstract:
The apportionment of House seats to the several states based on population is one of the defining features of the U.S. Congress. The fact that power in the lower chamber and in the electoral college routinely shifts as the population shifts is taken as a given by most political observers today. This has not always been true, however. Apportionment was a controversial issue for much of American history, culminating in the failure of Congress to enact a reapportionment bill following the 1920 Census. In this article, I recount the history of apportionment and analyze the apportionment failure in the 1920s. I argue that a series of electoral reforms combined with institutional changes inside Congress to increase the value of a House seat to incumbent members and made retention of a seat more dependent on the actions of individual incumbent members. I demonstrate that members responded to these institutional changes by pursuing strategies that would increase their likelihood of retaining their seats and extending their House careers. This growth of individualistic and careerist behavior by members of the House best explains why the crisis occurred and persisted in the 1920s. This article highlights the important role that institutions -- both endogenous and exogenous -- play in shaping political outcomes.
The Supply-Equity Trade-off: The Effect of Spatial Representation on the Local Housing Supply
Michael Hankinson & Asya Magazinnik
Journal of Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Institutions that structure representation have systematically disadvantaged racial and ethnic minorities in the United States. We examine an understudied dimension of this problem: how local electoral rules shape the provision of collective goods in relation to racial groups. We leverage the California Voting Rights Act of 2001, which compelled over one hundred cities to switch from at-large to district elections for city council, to causally identify how equalizing spatial representation changes the permitting of new housing. District elections decrease the supply of new multifamily housing, particularly in segregated cities with sizable and systematically underrepresented minority groups. But district elections also end the disproportionate channeling of new housing into minority neighborhoods. Together, our findings highlight a fundamental trade-off: at-large representation may facilitate the production of goods with diffuse benefits and concentrated costs, but it does so by forcing less politically powerful constituencies to bear the brunt of those costs.
Career Specialization, Involuntary Worker-Firm Separations, and Employment Outcomes: Why Generalists Outperform Specialists When Their Jobs Are Displaced
Heejung Byun & Joseph Raffiee
Administrative Science Quarterly, March 2023, Pages 270-316
Abstract:
Existing theories offer conflicting perspectives regarding the relationship between career specialization and labor market outcomes. While some scholars argue it is better for workers to specialize and focus on one area, others argue it is advantageous for workers to diversify and compile experience across multiple work domains. We attempt to reconcile these competing perspectives by developing a theory highlighting the voluntary versus involuntary nature of worker-firm separations as a theoretical contingency that alters the relative advantages and disadvantages associated with specialized versus generalized careers. Our theory is rooted in the notion that the characteristics of involuntary worker-firm separations (i.e., job displacement) simultaneously amplify the disadvantages associated with specialized careers and the advantages associated with generalized careers, thereby giving displaced generalists a relative advantage over displaced specialists. We find support for our theory in the context of U.S. congressional staffing, using administrative employment records and a regression discontinuity identification strategy that exploits quasi-random staffer displacement resulting from narrowly decided congressional reelection bids. Our theoretical contingency is further supported in supplemental regressions where correlational evidence suggests that while specialists tend to be relatively penalized in the labor market after involuntary separations, specialists appear to be relatively privileged when separations are plausibly voluntary.