{"title":"Partisanship, the Personal Vote, and Constituency Service","authors":"Jennifer Bussell","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780190945398.003.0008","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 8 tests observable implications of the book’s theory on constituency service’s supply, using the field experiment introduced in Chapter 3 to assess politicians’ motivations to respond to petitions. It shows that indicators of a personal vote—that the petitioner has voted for the politician in the past—can have a small positive effect on the quality of a politician’s response, if not the baseline response rate. This chapter also investigates whether information on local blocking affects politicians’ willingness to respond. It shows that, in states with a long history of local elections, politicians interpret information about a failure to receive assistance locally as an indicator of local partisan blocking and, combined with information on electoral history, an indication that the petitioner is a supporter or persuadable voter. Consistent with qualitative evidence from politician shadowing, this experimental evidence substantiates the argument that politicians use constituency service to reach potential supporters.","PeriodicalId":231566,"journal":{"name":"Clients and Constituents","volume":"20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2019-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Clients and Constituents","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780190945398.003.0008","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Chapter 8 tests observable implications of the book’s theory on constituency service’s supply, using the field experiment introduced in Chapter 3 to assess politicians’ motivations to respond to petitions. It shows that indicators of a personal vote—that the petitioner has voted for the politician in the past—can have a small positive effect on the quality of a politician’s response, if not the baseline response rate. This chapter also investigates whether information on local blocking affects politicians’ willingness to respond. It shows that, in states with a long history of local elections, politicians interpret information about a failure to receive assistance locally as an indicator of local partisan blocking and, combined with information on electoral history, an indication that the petitioner is a supporter or persuadable voter. Consistent with qualitative evidence from politician shadowing, this experimental evidence substantiates the argument that politicians use constituency service to reach potential supporters.