Issue Politics in Congress

Sulkin, Tracy

doi:10.1017/cbo9780511616013.001

Cited by 26 publications

(41 citation statements)

References 95 publications

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“…Finally, like most other work on campaign strategy, the implications of our findings for democratic responsiveness remain unclear (although see Sulkin 2005). Do officeholders who emphasize issues in their campaigns pursue these issues once elected?…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 81%

Campaign Communications in U.S. Congressional Elections

Druckman¹,

2009

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E lectoral campaigns are a defining feature of democratic polities. Yet scholarship on electoral campaigns, particularly on the content of campaign communications, remains disjointed. The field has not changed very much since Riker's (1996, 4) description over a decade ago: "we have very little knowledge about the rhetorical content of campaigns, which is, however, their principal feature . . . the fact remains that we know very little about what to say in campaigns-but this is what both political scientists and candidates want to know." Shortcomings are particularly acute in the United States for nonpresidential campaigns. "From reading our literature," notes Perloff (2002, 621), "you would assume that the only campaigns in America are for the presidency."In what follows, we advance research on campaigns, focusing on communication in U.S. congressional campaigns. We begin by offering a framework for studying campaign communication that integrates and extends prior work. The analysis focuses on the extent to which candidates take risks or play it safe in their campaign strategies. We test expectations from the framework James N. Druckman is Associate Professor of Political Science and Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University, 601 University Place, Evanston, IL 60208 (druckman@ northwestern.edu).Martin J. Kifer is Assistant Professor of Political Science and Director of the Survey Research Center, High Point University, 833 Montlieu Avenue, High Point, NC 27262 (mkifer@highpoint.edu).Michael Parkin is Assistant Professor of Politics, Oberlin College, 10 N. Professor Street, Oberlin, OH 44074 (Michael. Parkin@oberlin.edu).We thank Nora Paul and Brian Southwell for critical guidance in constructing our original coding framework, Gary Jacobson for providing candidate background data, and the dozens of individuals who assisted in data collection. We also thank Lonna Atkeson, Amber Wichowsky, and many others for providing advice. We owe a special debt of gratitude to the APSR's reviewers and editors for insightful guidance that fundamentally shaped all aspects of the paper. Support for this research was provided by the University of Minnesota McKnight Land-Grant Professorship, Northwestern University's AT&T Research Scholar Fund, and, for the survey of website designers, the National Science Foundation (SES-0822819 and SES-0822819). Authors' names are listed in alphabetical order.with new data based on candidate Web sites over time, which offer an unmediated, holistic, and representative portrait of campaigns. The view from these data significantly differs from that of previous studies that rely on advertising and newspaper stories to study candidate behavior. Our efforts provide researchers with a foundation for moving toward a more complete understanding of congressional campaigns. CONGRESSIONAL CAMPAIGN RHETORICAL STRATEGYIn many ways, the literature on congressional campaigns is progressive and wide-ranging. Scholars devote considerable attention to distinct topics, such as go...

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 81%

Campaign Communications in U.S. Congressional Elections

Druckman¹,

2009

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“…Despite all these possible influences, no context is more important than what their opponents are doing. Therefore, political campaigns respond to the campaigns of their opponents, in fact in many ways they must respond in order to be successful (Sulkin 2005). An unanswered question or an unattended to issue can quickly become a problem for politicians given the speed of the modern news-cycle and parties recognize this threat (e.g.…”

Section: The Responsiveness Of Campaigns To Their Opponentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While the ideal may be campaigns that advertise a party's manifesto or that respond to the issues of highest prominence the reality lays somewhere in the middle. Clearly campaigns put forth the party's agenda, but they also respond to events, the public and the actions of other parties (Schmitt-Beck and Pfetsch 1994;Sulkin 2005). The abundance of information from the media, political parties, the public and other actors furthers the need to prioritize and the need to depend on heuristics in order to attend and process this information in a timely and efficient manner.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Responsive elections: The effect of public opinion on political campaigns

Bevan

Krewel

2015

Electoral Studies

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Abstract:Political campaigns exist so that electoral candidates and parties can pursue votes, but what explains their content? It is clear that a lot of thought (and a lot more money) go into election campaigns, but the issues political actors focus on and those that they avoid are not well understood. In this paper we consider the responsiveness of the 2009 German Federal election campaigns to public priorities expressed through the "most important problem" survey question. Through the use of time series models of daily media reports of campaigns and rolling cross-section survey data on the attitudes of individual voters we find evidence that the 2009 German Federal election campaigns were responsive to public priorities and the attention of opponent campaigns. However, the focus of the campaign on the party or an individual candidate led to more and less responsiveness respectively. These results suggest that political campaigns dynamically respond to public opinion and each other, but that the nature of the campaign can lead to drastic changes in the level of responsiveness exhibited.

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“…Na seção seguinte, situamos brevemente o contexto no qual foi convocada a Assembleia Nacional Constituinte, bem como descrevemos a forma de organização dos trabalhos. A seguir, após a apresentação dos dados utilizados e da metodologia 3 Há diferenças no interior desse conjunto de trabalhos, que são chamados também por diversos nomes: estudos de "correspondência" (Weissberg, 1978); "policy congruence" (Powell, 2000); "policy representation" (Miller et al, 1999); "policy responsiveness" (Sulkin, 2005), "ideological congruence" (quando a base para a comparação são as posições numa escala esquerda-direita), "opinion-policy research" (Holmberg, 2011) etc. A expressão "policy congruence" parece ser a mais comumente utilizada na literatura.…”

Section: Constituição (Relativo a Esses Mesmos Temas)unclassified

Representação política na Assembleia Nacional Constituinte (1987-88): congruência entre preferências dos cidadãos e políticas aprovadas na Constituição

Carreirão¹,

Melo²

2014

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Resumo: O trabalho analisa o grau de congruência entre as políticas aprovadas pela Assembleia Nacional Constituinte (ANC -1987(ANC - -1988) e as preferências dos cidadãos expressas em pesquisas de opinião realizadas no mesmo período em relação a 17 subtemas, os quais foram agrupados em quatro eixos temáticos, a saber: temas institucionais, trabalhistas, econômicos e financeiros, e morais. Os debates e as políticas aprovadas foram analisados através de consulta às bases de dados do Senado Federal e da Câmara dos Deputados. Os chamados estudos de "congruência" inserem-se no âmbito do tema da representação políti-ca, partindo do pressuposto de que, em uma democracia representativa, os representantes devem aprovar políticas que não se devam afastar das preferências da maioria do eleitorado. A análise mostra que, pelo menos no que se refere aos temas para os quais foi possível encontrar dados de pesquisas de opinião, houve um grau de congruência significativo entre as preferências majoritárias do eleitorado e as políticas aprovadas pela ANC, com exceção dos temas institucionais, em que a congruência foi menor.Palavras-chave: Representação política; congruência; Opinião pública; Assembleia Nacional Constituinte.Abstract: This paper examines the degree of congruence between the policies adopted by the National Constituent Assembly (NCA -1987(NCA - -1988) and citizens' preferences about 17 sub-themes expressed in surveys conducted in the same period. These sub-themes http://dx

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Issue Politics in Congress

Cited by 26 publications

References 95 publications

Campaign Communications in U.S. Congressional Elections

Campaign Communications in U.S. Congressional Elections

Responsive elections: The effect of public opinion on political campaigns

Representação política na Assembleia Nacional Constituinte (1987-88): congruência entre preferências dos cidadãos e políticas aprovadas na Constituição

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