Giving the People What They Want? Legislative Polarization and Public Approval of State Legislatures

• Published date: 01 December 2016
• DOI: 10.1177/0160323X17697150
• Date: 01 December 2016
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Giving the People What They

Want? Legislative Polarization

and Public Approval of

State Legislatures

Lilliard Richardson

1

and Jeffrey Milyo

2

Abstract

The relationship between approval of the state legislature and political polarization in the legislature

is investigated by matching responses from a large national survey to Shor and McCarty’s ideological

scores for state parties. In contrast to popular wisdom, citizens do not have a negative view of more

polarized legislatures or more extreme majority parties, all else constant. Instead, legislative

approval is filtered primarily through a partisan lens; partisans are more approving when their party

is in control and more extreme (and less approving when the opposing party is in control and more

extreme).

Keywords

legislative approval, political polarization, state legislatures

Political polarization has been blamed for a

variety of ills in American politics, from

increasing gridlock (Binder 2014) and incivility

(Hall Jamieson and Falk 2000) to declining

trust in government (Uslaner 2015) and voter

turnout (Rogowski 2014). Moreover, American

politicians and political parties have become

more ideologically extreme and polarized in

recent decades, both at the national level

(McCarty, Poole, and Rosenthal 2006) and in

the states (Shor and McCarty 2011). Indeed,

increasing polarization has been called

“undeniably the central and most problematic

feature of contemporary American politics”

(Mann and Ornstein 2012, 44).

Research on the causes of polarization in

American politics tends to focus on Congress

and the impact of closed primaries, partisan

redistricting, internal rules in the legislative

chamber, economic inequality, and the media

(Barber and McCarty 2013; Fiorina and

Abrams 2008; Prior 2013). This in turn has led

political scientists and pundits to consider

reforms, such as open primaries and indepen-

dent redistricting commissions, to stem the tide

of partisan polarization (e.g., Berman 2016;

Persily 2015). However, despite the elite con-

sensus that political polarization is a symptom

1

School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana Uni-

versity Purdue University Indianapolis, Indianapolis, IN,

USA

2

Department of Economics, University of Missouri,

Columbia, MO, USA

Corresponding Author:

Lilliard Richardson, School of Public and Environmental

Affairs, Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis,

BS 3025, Indianapolis, IN 46202, USA.

Email: lillrich@iupui.edu

State and Local GovernmentReview

2016, Vol. 48(4) 270-281

ªThe Author(s) 2017

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DOI: 10.1177/0160323X17697150

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