Do Voters Affect Or Elect Policies? Evidence from the U. S. House

This file is part of IDEAS, which uses RePEc data

Do Voters Affect Or Elect Policies? Evidence from the U. S. House

Author Info

David S. Lee
Enrico Moretti
Matthew J. Butler

Additional information is available for the following registered author(s):

Enrico Moretti

Abstract

There are two fundamentally different views of the role of elections in policy formation. In one view, voters can affect candidates' policy choices: competition for votes induces politicians to move toward the center. In this view, elections have the effect of bringing about some degree of policy compromise. In the alternative view, voters merely elect policies: politicians cannot make credible promises to moderate their policies, and elections are merely a means to decide which one of two opposing policy views will be implemented. We assess which of these contrasting perspectives is more empirically relevant for the U. S. House. Focusing on elections decided by a narrow margin allows us to generate quasi-experimental estimates of the impact of a "randomized" change in electoral strength on subsequent representatives' roll-call voting records. We find that voters merely elect policies: the degree of electoral strength has no effect on a legislator's voting behavior. For example, a large exogenous increase in electoral strength for the Democratic party in a district does not result in shifting both parties' nominees to the left. Politicians' inability to credibly commit to a compromise appears to dominate any competition-induced convergence in policy. © 2004 MIT Press

Download Info
To download:

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. Information about this may be contained in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.

As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.

Publisher Info
Article provided by MIT Press in its journal The Quarterly Journal of Economics.

Volume (Year): 119 (2004)
Issue (Month): 3 (August)
Pages: 807-859
Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML (with abstract), plain text (with abstract), BibTeX, RIS (EndNote, RefMan, ProCite), ReDIF
Handle: RePEc:tpr:qjecon:v:119:y:2004:i:3:p:807-859

Contact details of provider:
Web page: http://mitpress.mit.edu/journals/

Order Information:
Web: http://mitpress.mit.edu/journal-home.tcl?issn=00335533

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Christopher F. Baum).

Related research
Keywords:

Other versions of this item:

Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)
This item has more than 25 citations. To prevent cluttering this page, these citations are listed on a separate page.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Did you know? You too can volunteer for RePEc, for example by encouraging others to use our services.

This page was last updated on 2009-11-16.

This information is provided to you by IDEAS at the Department of Economics, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Connecticut using RePEc data on a server sponsored by the Society for Economic Dynamics.