The Impression of Influence: Legislator Communication, Representation, and Democratic Accountability by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Legislative Branch, Democracy, Campaigns & Elections, Political Ideologies, Comparative Politics, Political Science, Political Process, American Government
ISBN: 9781400852666
Google: zHQYBAAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 23132991
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2014-11-23T00:00:00+00:00

FIGURE 5.4. Constituents Are Responsive to the Type of Project Allocated.

This figure shows that constituents are highly responsive to the type of project legislators claim credit for securing. Liberals reward legislators for claiming credit for projects that help Planned Parenthood, while punishing legislators who claim credit for a gun range. Conservatives, in contrast, are unresponsive to legislators who claim credit for Planned Parenthood, but reward legislators who claim credit for a gun range.

The variation in Figure 5.4 shows constituents are responsive to the type of project in the credit claiming messages. Consider the response to money for Planned Parenthood. Liberals have a strong and positive response to funding for Planned Parenthood: claiming credit for money directed towards Planned Parenthood increases the fictitious legislator’s approval rating 52.8 percentage points among liberals (95 percent confidence interval, [0.40, 0.66]). In fact, Planned Parenthood causes the largest increase in approval rating for liberal respondents.

Conservative respondents, however, are essentially unresponsive to a legislator’s claiming credit for Planned Parenthood—and much less responsive to spending on Planned Parenthood than liberals. Conservative respondents increase their approval rating of the legislator only 0.5 percentage points over the control condition, an increase that is substantively small and statistically indistinguishable from zero (95 percent confidence interval, [−0.27, 0.28]). Planned Parenthood causes the smallest change in legislator approval rating among conservatives. Given the low approval rate for the representative in the control condition—about 30%—this result is indicative of conservative respondents who are displeased with the representative.

Claiming credit for gun ranges has a strikingly different effect on legislators’ approval ratings. Liberal respondents punish legislators: claiming credit for money to be spent on a gun range causes a 23.4-percentage point decrease in legislators’ approval rating among liberals (95 percent confidence interval, [−0.35, −0.12]). Conservative constituents, however, reward legislators when they claim credit for spending allocated to gun ranges. Claiming credit for a gun range causes a 16-percentage point increase in approval rating among conservatives (95 percent confidence interval, [−0.15, 0.47]), a significantly more positive response than the moderate or liberal response to the gun range—though we fail to reject the null that the increase in approval among conservative respondents is different than zero.

On other expenditures there is more agreement across ideological types. Liberals, conservatives, and moderates all reward legislators for claiming credit for money directed to fire departments, police departments, and road projects. And moderates and liberals reward legislators for parks in the district.11

Constituents also condition on who is announcing an expenditure when deciding how to allocate credit. The legislator’s (or legislators’) party is one of the strongest pieces of information. A burgeoning literature shows that constituents tend to have an automatic response to partisan information, with a more favorable orientation to copartisans and a more negative orientation to opposing partisans.12 Because we randomly assign our fictitious legislator’s party—as well as any collaborator’s party—we are able to assess how constituents use party labels in their credit allocation.

Figure 5.5 shows that constituents incorporate information about a legislator’s partisanship. The bottom two lines show that partisans are more responsive to credit claiming messages from their copartisans.

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