Ideology and Interests in the Political Marketplace

124

Some studies of policy representation test hypotheses about the relationship between citizens' views and elites' positions on multiple issues by proceeding one issue at a time. Others summarize citizens' and elites' preferences with “ideology scores” and test hypotheses with these. I show that approach is flawed. It misinterprets citizens' ideology scores as summaries of policy preferences, but these scores actually measure ideological consistency across areas: how often citizens' ideal policies are liberal or conservative. Examples show how attending to this distinction overturns conventional wisdom: legislators appear similarly moderate as citizens, not more extreme; however, politically engaged citizens appear especially moderate.

Section: Example: Studying Extremism With Ideological Scalesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Approaches to Studying Policy Representation

Broockman¹

2016

124

“…Previous work finds that donors influence voting behavior (Bonica, McCarty, and Rosenthal ), but there has been virtually no work on how a legislator attempts to temper the perception of her votes to constituents via strategic communication. Because of their size and intense interest in policy, donors are more likely and more able to hold legislators accountable for votes than the average voter.…”

Section: Discussion: Voting Versus Communicatingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The aggregate effect of this self‐censoring is for legislators to present an ideological version of self in communications that may differ systematically from that suggested by their voting behavior. I situate my theory of strategic communication against literature analyzing ties between financial donors and legislator voting behavior to assess likely sources for the potential divergence of voting and communicating (Bartels ; Bonica, McCarty, and Rosenthal ; Gilens ). I seek to provide answers to the following questions: (1) Do legislators engage in systematic attempts to shift ideological perceptions of their policy preferences in their communications?…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Extremity in Congress: Communications versus Votes

Cormack

2016

Extremity in Congress: Communications versus VotesI propose a theory of legislator-to-constituent communication that describes a relationship between the types of votes a legislator reveals and the partisan composition of her constituency. To test this theory, I use an original data set of 40,000 official communications containing 30,000 vote revelations from the 111th Congress. I find evidence substantiating this theory; the extent to which a legislator endeavors to appear more ideologically extreme in communications varies systematically with the relative amounts of different types of voters in her district. This result is contrasted with an analysis of voting extremism where I find that the ideological preferences of donors better explain voting patterns.

“…Thus, both parties in Congress today are, relative to 1970, more homogenous internally and more polarized, but this similarity is not a perfect equality. For example, events in the 1990s might suggest a more united Republican than Democratic Party in those days, and there is evidence that the Democratic caucus remains somewhat more heterogeneous than the Republican caucus today (Bonica ) even though public attention has focused on differences between “establishment” and “Tea Party” or “House Freedom Caucus” Republicans.…”

Section: Theoretical Explanationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Party, Policy, and the Ambition to Run for Higher Office

Aldrich

Thomsen

2016

This article examines why some state legislators run for Congress and others do not. Our main argument is that there are differences in the expected value of a state legislative seat and the expected benefits of being a member of Congress. One key component of this value is how closely the candidate fits with her party. We find that the probability of seeking congressional office increases among state legislators who are distant from the state party and proximate to the congressional party and decreases among those who are distant from the congressional party and proximate to the state party.