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Can Learning Constituency Opinion Affect How Legislators Vote? Results from a Field Experiment

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  • Butler, Daniel M.
  • Nickerson, David W.
Abstract
When legislators are uninformed about public opinion, does learning constituents' opinion affect how legislators vote? We conducted a fully randomized field experiment to answer this question. We surveyed 10,690 New Mexicans about the Governor's spending proposals for a special summer session held in the summer of 2008. District-specific survey results were then shared with a randomly selected half of the legislature. The legislators receiving their district-specific survey results were much more likely to vote in line with constituent opinion than those who did not. Our results suggest that legislators want to be more responsive to public opinion than they are in their natural state and can be if given solid information about constituent beliefs.

Suggested Citation

  • Butler, Daniel M. & Nickerson, David W., 2011. "Can Learning Constituency Opinion Affect How Legislators Vote? Results from a Field Experiment," Quarterly Journal of Political Science, now publishers, vol. 6(1), pages 55-83, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:now:jlqjps:100.00011019
    DOI: 10.1561/100.00011019
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    Cited by:

    1. Laura A. Reese & Xiaomeng Li, 2020. "Conceptions of Local Economic Development: Comparing Citizen and Local Official Attitudes," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 34(1), pages 3-20, February.
    2. Sandro Ambuehl & Sebastian Blesse & Philipp Doerrenberg & Christoph Feldhaus & Axel Ockenfels, 2023. "Politicians’ Social Welfare Criteria – An Experiment with German Legislators," ifo Working Paper Series 391, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich.
    3. McMurray, Joseph, 2017. "Voting as communicating: Mandates, multiple candidates, and the signaling voter's curse," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 199-223.
    4. Robert Dur & Arjan Non & Paul Prottung & Benedetta Ricci, 2023. "Who’s Afraid of Policy Experiments?," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 23-027/V, Tinbergen Institute.
    5. Kevin Arceneaux & Johanna Dunaway & Stuart Soroka, 2018. "Elites are people, too: The effects of threat sensitivity on policymakers’ spending priorities," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(4), pages 1-8, April.
    6. Matsusaka, John G., 2017. "When Do Legislators Follow Constituent Opinion? Evidence from Matched Roll Call and Referendum Votes," Working Papers 264, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State.
    7. Peez, Anton & Bethke, Felix S., 2023. "Does Public Opinion on Foreign Policy Affect Elite Preferences? Evidence from the 2022 US Sanctions against Russia," SocArXiv qzrj2, Center for Open Science.
    8. Claire L Adida & Adeline Lo & Melina R Platas, 2019. "Americans preferred Syrian refugees who are female, English-speaking, and Christian on the eve of Donald Trump’s election," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(10), pages 1-18, October.
    9. Nikolas Schöll & Aina Gallego & Gaël Le Mens, 2021. "Politician-Citizen Interactions and Dynamic Representation: Evidence from Twitter," Working Papers 1238, Barcelona School of Economics.
    10. Landgrave, Michelangelo Geovanny, 2023. "The Ethics of Field Experiments in Authoritarian Contexts: A Comment on Cantoni, Yang, Yuchtman and Zhang (2019)," OSF Preprints nvzt8, Center for Open Science.
    11. Flores-Macías, Gustavo A., 2018. "Building support for taxation in developing countries: Experimental evidence from Mexico," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 13-24.
    12. Karolin Soontjens & Julie Sevenans, 2022. "Electoral incentives make politicians respond to voter preferences: Evidence from a survey experiment with members of Parliament in Belgium," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 103(5), pages 1125-1139, September.
    13. Eric Schickler, 2020. "Causal inference and American political development: common challenges and opportunities," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 185(3), pages 501-511, December.
    14. Aina Gallego & Nikolas Schöll & Gaël Le Mens, 2021. "Politician-citizen interactions and dynamic representation: Evidence from Twitter," Economics Working Papers 1769, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.

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