How Politicians Discount the Opinions of Constituents with Whom They Disagree

Butler, Daniel M.; Dynes, Adam M.

doi:10.1111/ajps.12206

Cited by 80 publications

(61 citation statements)

References 50 publications

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“…State legislators systematically misperceive the opinions of their constituents (Broockman and Skovron 2014). Elected officials also frequently discount the attitudes of constituents who disagree with them (Butler and Dynes 2015) and this lack of convergence with public opinion extends to both high and low salience issues (Fowler and Hall 2016).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Dispositional Empathy Influences Political Ambition

Clifford

Kirkland

Simas

2019

The Journal of Politics

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Political representation is fundamentally about advancing the needs and interests of others. Empathy -the ability to share others' feelings and perspectives -ought to be a critical skill for effective representation. Yet, the conflict, negativity, and competition that are endemic to politics may prevent empathetic individuals from seeking office. Using an original national survey with an oversample of people who have run for office, we explore how citizens' dispositional empathy influences political ambition. We show that perspectivetaking increases ambition, while personal distress depresses ambition. By analyzing feelings towards several different aspects of running for and holding political office, we show the mechanisms through which empathy affects ambition. Finally, we demonstrate that experimentally manipulated perceptions of campaign context moderate the effects of empathy on ambition. Our results provide new insight into how psychological factors interact with political context to shape ambition and hold important implications for the quality of representation. Running Header: Dispositional Empathy and Political Ambition

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Dispositional Empathy Influences Political Ambition

Clifford

Kirkland

Simas

2019

The Journal of Politics

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“…Legislators may cater their roll call votes to a subconstituency such as their partisan supporters and donors (Bishin, 2000;Clinton, 2006). Representatives might have systematically different perceptions of constituent opinion (Broockman and Skovron, 2014;Miller and Stokes, 1963) or put differential weight on the opinions of different constituents (Butler and Dynes, 2015).…”

Section: What Explains Divergence?mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Elusive Quest for Convergence

Fowler

Hall

2016

QJPS

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Does American political representation work as predicted by theory? On average, political candidates diverge considerably in their ideological positioning, but do they diverge less on issues of particular salience to their local constituents? We combine data on congressional roll call votes, electoral outcomes, district demographics, and substantive information about bills to search for convergence in the places we would most expect to find it. Despite the predictions of prominent models, legislators diverge just as much even when their constituents have strong interests in a particular policy area. These results provide new insights into policymaking and political representation, and they help distinguish between different theoretical explanations for why candidate positions diverge.

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“…Some argue that constituency groups who do not receive policy representation from legislators may still receive some level of representation via actions taken by legislators outside of the policy realm (e.g., Cain, Ferejohn, and Fiorina ; Canon , Grose ). Others argue or show, through experimental audit studies, that political elites have biases toward minority constituents when engaging in nonpolicy representation (e.g., Broockman ; Butler ; Butler and Broockman ; Butler and Dynes ; Costa ; Perez ), but they do not link this responsiveness bias to legislators' policy preferences.…”

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confidence: 99%

Doubling Down: Inequality in Responsiveness and the Policy Preferences of Elected Officials

Mendez

Grose

2018

Legislative Studies Qtrly

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Is bias in responsiveness to constituents conditional on the policy preferences of elected officials? The scholarly conventional wisdom is that constituency groups who do not receive policy representation still obtain some level of responsiveness by legislators outside of the policy realm. In contrast, we present a theory of preference‐induced responsiveness bias where constituency responsiveness by legislators is associated with legislator policy preferences. Elected officials who favor laws that could disproportionately impact minority groups are also less likely to engage in nonpolicy responsiveness to minority groups. We conducted a field experiment in 28 US legislative chambers. Legislators were randomly assigned to receive messages from Latino and white constituents. If legislators supported voter identification laws, Latino constituents were less likely to receive constituency communications from their legislators. There are significant implications regarding fairness in the democratic process when elected officials fail to represent disadvantaged constituency groups in both policy and nonpolicy realms.

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How Politicians Discount the Opinions of Constituents with Whom They Disagree

Cited by 80 publications

References 50 publications

How Dispositional Empathy Influences Political Ambition

How Dispositional Empathy Influences Political Ambition

The Elusive Quest for Convergence

Doubling Down: Inequality in Responsiveness and the Policy Preferences of Elected Officials

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