The Impression of Influence: Legislator Communication, Representation, and Democratic Accountability - Softcover

Grimmer, Justin; Westwood, Sean J.; Messing, Solomon

Softcover

ISBN 10: 069116262X ISBN 13: 9780691162621

Verlag: Princeton University Press, 2014

Inhaltsangabe

Constituents often fail to hold their representatives accountable for federal spending decisions—even though those very choices have a pervasive influence on American life. Why does this happen? Breaking new ground in the study of representation, The Impression of Influence demonstrates how legislators skillfully inform constituents with strategic communication and how this facilitates or undermines accountability. Using a massive collection of Congressional texts and innovative experiments and methods, the book shows how legislators create an impression of influence through credit claiming messages.

Anticipating constituents' reactions, legislators claim credit for programs that elicit a positive response, making constituents believe their legislator is effectively representing their district. This spurs legislators to create and defend projects popular with their constituents. Yet legislators claim credit for much more—they announce projects long before they begin, deceptively imply they deserve credit for expenditures they had little role in securing, and boast about minuscule projects. Unfortunately, legislators get away with seeking credit broadly because constituents evaluate the actions that are reported, rather than the size of the expenditures.

The Impression of Influence raises critical questions about how citizens hold their political representatives accountable and when deception is allowable in a democracy.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Justin Grimmer is associate professor of political science at Stanford University. He is the author of Representational Style. Sean J. Westwood is a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton University. Solomon Messing is a research scientist with Facebook's Data Science Team.

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"This important book provides novel insights into the strategic interactions among legislators, citizens, and the bureaucracy that shape federal spending. Grimmer, Westwood, and Messing deploy new observational and experimental analyses to understand which legislators are most likely to seek government spending in their districts, how they advertise this information, and what effect it has on their electoral fortunes."--Gregory A. Huber, Yale University

"Drawing from a cognitive model of voter attention and learning, The Impression of Influence generates a system of credit claiming that far surpasses prior models. Providing a compelling view of what drives voter attention and congressional credit claiming, this book will interest political psychologists and congressional scholars for generations to come."--Mathew D. McCubbins, Duke University

"This book, which could not have been written just a few years ago, is a must-read for students of American politics and all who want to know where social science is headed. The authors use the latest text as data methods and modern online platforms to conduct experiments, including on the world's largest social network. While their techniques are cutting edge, the substantive questions they illuminate are as old as our republic."--Jasjeet S. Sekhon, University of California, Berkeley

"The Impression of Influence throws new light on the credit claiming behavior of members of the U.S. House. The topical book makes a strong case for the idea that politicians need to generate the impression that they are cooking up benefits for those back home. This is the most convincing and interesting work about the credit claiming front that has appeared in a long time."--David Mayhew, Yale University

"Politicians are often claiming credit for spending, even when their role in securing spending is limited or absent. This book shows that voters largely fail to discount those claims, are mostly insensitive to spending, and primarily respond to politicians' mere announcements for spending. The Impression of Influence makes a major contribution to research on voters' limitations in holding politicians accountable."--Gabriel Lenz, University of California, Berkeley

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The Impression of Influence

Legislator Communication, Representation, and Democratic Accountability

By Justin Grimmer, Sean J. Westwood, Solomon Messing

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2015 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-691-16262-1

Contents

List of Illustrations, ix, 
List of Tables, xi, 
Acknowledgments, xiii, 
1 Representation, Spending, and the Personal Vote, 1, 
2 Solving the Representative's Problem and Creating the Representative's Opportunity, 15, 
3 How Legislators Create an Impression of Influence, 32, 
4 Creating an Impression, Not Just Increasing Name Recognition, 64, 
5 Cultivating an Impression of Influence with Actions and Small Expenditures, 81, 
6 Credit, Deception, and Institutional Design, 121, 
7 Criticism and Credit: How Deficit Implications Undermine Credit Allocation, 148, 
8 Representation and the Impression of Influence, 174, 
9 Text as Data: Methods Appendix, 186, 
Bibliography, 189, 
Index, 203, 

CHAPTER 1

Representation, Spending, and the Personal Vote

THIS IS A BOOK ABOUT HOW POLITICAL REPRESENTATION OCCURS on government spending decisions—one of the most consequential powers of government. The Constitution empowers Congress to "pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general welfare of the United States." Federal spending has a pervasive influence—impacting nearly every aspect of American life. How Congress allocates money affects the quality of infrastructure in American cities, the availability of health care in rural towns, and the provision of affordable housing across the country. Spending helps guard against harm—helping local governments prepare for natural disasters, protect against crime and fire, and deter terror attacks. It also sustains a powerful military, a network of federal law enforcement officials, and the flow of commerce and citizens across international borders. Government spending buoys local economies and even supports universities with funding for research.

Political representation in Congress is, in large part, about how elected officials decide how to spend federal money. While a large literature analyzes how district expenditures affect support for congressional incumbents it remains unclear how constituents hold legislators accountable for expenditures—how constituents attribute spending to legislators, how constituents evaluate those expenditures, and how constituents reward or punish legislators for spending on projects. One reason for this lack of clarity is that constituents are unlikely to learn about the projects on their own. Constituents' inability to track spending is not an indictment of their democratic competence. Instead, it reflects the many activities representatives perform and the subtle ways that federal expenditures occur. Constituents lack the time, capacity, and incentives to carefully track what their representatives do in Congress to direct spending to the district. Even when spending reaches the district, it is difficult for constituents to attribute that spending to their representative. Projects in the district often do not have an obvious connection to the federal government. And even if constituents do recognize that a project in the district comes from the federal government, they may fail to link the project to their representatives.

Constituents' inattention to spending creates a problem for representatives. Legislators want to use spending to bolster their standing in the district, but inattentive constituents are unlikely to learn about expenditures on their own. Political scientists have long argued that legislators use federal expenditures to cultivate support with their constituents and build a personal vote—support based on neither partisan affiliation nor ideological agreement. For spending to have a direct effect on constituent support, constituents must at least know that the spending has occurred in the district. But legislators also want constituents to attribute the spending to the representative and to view the spending as beneficial to the district.

Representatives solve this problem with communication—turning the problem of constituent inattention into an opportunity to receive credit for much more than just spending as it occurs in the district. Legislators use credit claiming messages—statements intended to "generate a belief" that a representative is responsible for spending in the district—as part of a broad marketing campaign to ensure that constituents learn about spending projects in the district and attribute responsibility to their representatives. The goal is to create an impression of influence over expenditures—a reputation of being effective at delivering money to the district. To do this, members of Congress issue press releases announcing new projects, send newsletters to describe work done in Washington to secure expenditures, make appearances at groundbreaking ceremonies as projects begin, and cut ribbons when projects are finished.

We show that this marketing effort is effective. Using a large collection of political texts, a series of experiments, and extensive case studies, we demonstrate that legislators' credit claiming affects constituent credit allocation and leads to a personal vote. To demonstrate how legislators claim credit for spending we analyze a large new collection of House press releases. We show that legislators strategically vary their association with spending, depending on their incentives to cultivate a personal vote. Representatives who need the support of independents and opposing partisans to win elections engage in higher rates of credit claiming than legislators who can rely on the support of copartisans to win election. When claiming credit for spending, legislators lay claim to a broad set of activities and grants. Representatives do claim credit for expenditures as they occur in the district, but members of Congress also claim credit for expenditures they had only an indirect role in securing and expenditures that are unlikely to reach the district soon. And they tend to claim credit for relatively small projects in their district.

Constituents are responsive to legislators' credit claiming efforts. Using a series of experiments, we show that constituents evaluate the actions that legislators report performing and are responsive to who receives the funding. The result is that constituents reward legislators for work throughout the expenditure process—even if the expenditures have yet to be secured, will be delivered only to the district in the distant future, and even if constituents recognize the project has only a small chance of actually occurring. But constituents are largely unresponsive to the amount of money legislators claim credit for securing. Even large increases in the size of expenditures cause only slight increases in support for legislators.

The credit claiming, credit allocation process we characterize helps explain the institutions that disburse federal funds. We show legislators value the mere opportunity to announce expenditures—even if they had only an indirect role in securing the expenditure. Bureaucrats at competitive grant programs recognize this and create opportunities for legislators to announce expenditures. Legislators take advantage of the opportunities, using subtle language to imply that they are responsible for expenditures—even though they never literally claim credit for the project. Constituents allocate credit in response to the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Princeton University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2014
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 069116262X
• ISBN 13: 9780691162621
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 204
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Buchbär; info@buchbaer.de; ; Weberstr. 67; Osnabrück; 49084; Deutschland