Constituent Communication Through Telephone Town Halls: A Field Experiment Involving Members of Congress

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lsq.12242
• Date: 01 November 2019
• Author: Michael A. Neblo,William Minozzi,Justin Freebourn,Claire Abernathy,Ryan Kennedy,Jonathan A. Solis,Kevin M. Esterling
• Published date: 01 November 2019

617

LEGISLATIVE STUDIES QUARTERLY, 44, 4, November 2019

DOI: 10.1111/lsq.12242

CLAI RE ABERNATH Y

Stockton University

KEVIN M. ESTERLING

JUSTIN FREEBOURN

University of California, Riversi de

RYAN KENNEDY

University of Houston

WILLIAM MINOZZI

MICHAEL A. NEBLO

The Ohio State University

JONATHAN A. SOLIS

College of William and Mary

Constituent Communication Through

Telephone Town Halls: A Field

Experiment Involving Members of

Congress

Telephone town halls are an increasingly prevalent method for members of

Congress (MCs) to communicate with constituents, even while garnering popular

criticism for failing to facilitate engagement and accountability. Yet scholars have

paid little attention to the events and their effects, and even less to how they might

be improved. To remedy this problem, we report on a field experiment in which

four MCs joined their constituents in telephone town halls. Overall, participation

in an event improved constituents’ evaluations of the format in general, and of

the MC in particular. Furthermore, we studied how these events might be im-

proved by evaluating a reform—a single-topic focus with predistributed briefing

materials—designed to enhance deliberative interaction. This reform enhanced

effects on opinions of the format without significantly altering effects on atti-

tudes toward the MC. Our results suggest that telephone town halls hold promise

for constituents, officeholders, and democratic practice.

© 2019 Washington University in St. L ouis

[Correct ion added on 23rd May 2019, after firs t online public ation: the order of the las t

three auth ors has been update d, and Jonathan A. Solis’s aff iliation has be en amended

ac cor di ng ly.]

618 Claire Abernathy et al.

The town hall has been a defining feature of American democracy

for centuries. In its ideal form, the term conjures Rockwellian images

of public officeholders standing before their constituents, listening

earnestly, and responding thoughtfully to questions and comments

in a substantive, reason-giving, deliberative exchange. The town hall

is perhaps the most direct way for constituents to provide input on

legislation and hold representatives accountable for their actions.

Members of the U.S. Congress have long held town halls in their

districts, and, whether or not members meet these ideals, the town

hall remains a cornerstone of constituent communication and the

cultivation of legislators’ home style (Fenno 1978).

Technology, however, is changing how members engage with

their constituents (Bimber 2003; Fountain 2001). In particular, mem-

bers of Congress (MCs) increasingly rely on telephone town halls.

A telephone town hall is hosted on a software platform enabling the

MC to dial out to a large volume of phone numbers and host an inter-

active conference call with constituents, potentially vastly more than

could attend an in-person event.1 In principle, therefore, telephone

town halls offer substantially broadened and accessible opportuni-

ties for communication, increasing contact between members and

constituents. And their use is growing. MCs participated in over 300

such events in the first six months of 2017 alone (Bethea 2017).

Despite their increasing prevalence, press coverage of telephone

town halls paints them as frustrating events that leave participants

with poor impressions of their utility for engaging with members

and holding them accountable, core elements of representation.2

For example, in an essay for the New Yorker, Charles Bethea writes

that in a typical telephone town hall, constituents “listen to their rep-

resentative recite talking points from a D.C. office in response to a

small number of accepted, pre-screened questions. Many of these are

softballs” (Bethea 2017). Others characterize the events as not merely

unhelpful, but actively harmful. The Indivisible Project describes

them as “sham” events where members manufacture perceptions

of listening while addressing easy questions from strong supporters.

Indivisible’s website even featured a video of former Labor Secretary

Robert Reich offering guidance on how to disrupt them.3

In contrast to the din of negative popular reports on tel-

ephone town halls, the scholarly literature is most notable for

its near silence on the subject.4 Despite their ubiquity, there is

surprisingly little political science research on town halls of any kind.5

In this article, we focus on how telephone town halls contrib-

ute to representation and, more specifically, ongoing democratic