Political Ambition and Constituent Service: Does Ambition Influence How Local Officials Respond to Electoral and Non-Electoral Service Requests?

• Author: Adam M. Dynes,Hans J.G. Hassell,Matthew R. Miles
• DOI: 10.1177/1532673X211013479
• Date: 01 November 2021
• Published date: 01 November 2021
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X211013479

American Politics Research

2021, Vol. 49(6) 646 –654

© The Author(s) 2021

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DOI: 10.1177/1532673X211013479

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Article

“The politician as office seeker engages in political acts and

makes decisions appropriate to gaining office”

-Joseph Schlesinger (1966, 6)

Theories of political ambition, and specifically ambition to

seek higher political office (i.e., progressive ambition), argue

that policymakers’ ambitions should shape their behavior

(Schlesinger, 1966). Though past work examines how pro-

gressive ambition impacts officials’ behavior in the policy-

making sphere (e.g., Herrick & Moore, 1993; Hibbing, 1986;

Maestas, 2003), it has largely ignored a central part of the

policy process: the implementation of policies, which often

involves officials’ communicating directly with constituents

and end-users of these policies (e.g., Butler & Broockman,

2011; Grose et al., 2015)—especially at the local level where

elected officials act as street-level bureaucrats (Lipsky, 1980;

Hupe and Hill, 2007; Oliver et al., 2012, 90). Though not

previously examined, we might expect politicians to be more

interested and willing to engage with constituents in certain

policy areas of service provision because of the relationship

of those policy areas to elected officials’ political goals.

Policy provision through constituency services is essen-

tial to elected officials’ job. At the local level, elected offi-

cials are often tasked with formulating and implementing

policy and also answering constituent questions about that

implementation (Clingermayer & Feiock, 1994; Koop, 2016;

Oliver et al., 2012; Welch & Bledsoe, 1988).1 Moreover,

policy provision through constituency service affects

political careers (Fenno, 1978; Grose, 2011) and is crucial

to democratic representation (Clingermayer & Feiock, 1994;

Grose, 2011; Hall, 1996; Oliver et al., 2012; Welch &

Bledsoe, 1988).

In this paper, we study the relationship between political

ambition—both progressive ambition (the ambition to run

for higher office) and static ambition (the ambition to run for

re-election)—and local officials’ responsiveness to constitu-

ent policy service requests in different issue areas. Our work

relies on a unique set of data, combining a correspondence

study of elected public officials with survey data previously

collected from those same officials. While the number of

1013479APRXXX10.1177/1532673X211013479American Politics ResearchDynes et al.

research-article2021

1Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, USA

2Florida State University College of Arts and Sciences, Tallahassee, USA

3Brigham Young University-Idaho, Rexburg, ID, USA

Authorship is in alphabetical order, each author contributed equally to

this article.

Corresponding Author:

Hans J.G. Hassell, Florida State University College of Arts and Sciences,

600 W College Avenue, 531 Bellamy, Tallahassee, FL 32306-1058, USA.

Email: hans.hassell@fsu.edu

Political Ambition and Constituent

Service: Does Ambition Influence

How Local Officials Respond to Electoral

and Non-Electoral Service Requests?

Adam M. Dynes1, Hans J.G. Hassell2,

and Matthew R. Miles3

Abstract

Theoretically, political ambitions paired with elections generate more responsive elected officials. In this paper, we test

whether the progressive political ambitions of public officials affect whether and how they respond to their constituents by

conducting a experimental audit study where local public officials receive both an electorally related service request and a

generic service request. We combine their responses (or non-responses) with data from a survey of these public officials

conducted months prior about their political ambition in seeking higher office. On the whole, we find that politically ambitious

officials are not more responsive to electorally oriented service requests and that there are not systematic differences in the

content of the responses of ambitious and non-ambitious elected officials. In areas of constituency service, ambition does not

seem to affect representational behavior, regardless of whether the service requests are electorally related or not.

Keywords

representation, constituency service, political ambition