Selection and Incentives in the Electoral Security‐Constituency Communication Relationship

• Published date: 01 May 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lsq.12195
• Author: Zachary Peskowitz
• Date: 01 May 2018

ZACHARY PESKOWITZ

Emory University

Selection and Incentives in the

Electoral Security-Constituency

Communication Relationship

The relative importance of selection and incentives is essential for understanding

how elections structure politicians’ behavior. I investigate the relative magnitudes of

these two effects in the context of US House members’ constituency communication.

Consistent with previous research, I find that there is a negative cross-sectional relation-

ship between electoral security and the intensity of constituency communication. The

negative relationship holds in a panel-data setting where only within-legislator variation

in electoral security is used to identify the effect of electoral security on legislator behav-

ior. Due to the likely presence of myopic voters, the impact of electoral security

increases as the election approaches. Point estimates suggest that the total effect is

almost entirely driven by incentives, and I am able to reject the hypothesis that the

incentive effect is zero at conventional levels of statistical significance.

Do elections affect politician behavior by selecting politicians who

are desirable types or by providing incentives for politicians to behave in

a way that will be rewarded by the electorate (Fearon 1999)? This is a

central theoretical question in political economy, and understanding the

relative importance of selection and incentives is substantively important

for evaluating the short- and long-run consequences of electoral reforms

that would make elections more competitive. Reforms such as changes

in redistricting procedures, revisions to campaign f‌inance law, and the

imposition of term limits affect off‌iceholder behavior through both the

incentive and selection channels. If the selection effect dominates,

observers of an electoral reform might be disappointed to f‌ind no imme-

diate effect of an electoral reform. However, over a longer period of

time, as off‌iceholders are replaced due to retirement and election defeat,

we would expect that the electoral reform would begin to affect politician

behavior through the selection mechanism. I investigate the relative

importance of selection and incentives in the context of legislators’

re-election-oriented communications toward constituents.

LEGISLATIVE STUDIES QUARTERLY, 43, 2, May 2018 275

DOI: 10.1111/lsq.12195

V

C2017 Washington University in St. Louis

I study how the electoral environment affects the intensity of

this constituency communication by examining how House mem-

bers’ expenditures on mass mailings and communication respond to

changes in their electoral security. The volume of constituency com-

munication is important because it has the potential to affect

citizens’ evaluations of House members (Cover and Brumberg 1982;

Parker and Goodman 2009). As one prominent example, Grimmer,

Messing, and Westwood (2012) use a f‌ield experiment to show that

repeated credit-claiming messages improve citizens’ feeling-

thermometer ratings of congressional incumbents. By emphasizing

the stature and inf‌luence of House membership and increasing their

valence (Hassell and Monson 2016), incumbents can gain an elec-

toral advantage over nonincumbent challengers. Moreover, the use

of franked mail may give legislators more electoral slack to pursue

nonelection-oriented activities in the legislature.

There is an extensive literature in political science examining how

the electoral environment affects constituency service activities, but

most of these studies make cross-sectional, as opposed to within-

legislator, comparisons of behavior. Ashworth and Bueno de Mesquita

(2006) develop a game-theoretic model of the provision of electorally

motivated constituency service predicting that higher levels of electoral

security will lead to lower levels of constituency service.

1

Dropp and

Peskowitz (2012) study the empirical relationship between responses to

f‌ictitious constituent requests and the electoral security of state legisla-

tors in Texas and f‌ind evidence for the negative relationship predicted by

Ashworth and Bueno de Mesquita (2006). Because their analysis takes

place during a single state legislative term, they cannot determine

whether within-legislator or across-legislator variation in electoral secu-

rity is driving the observed relationship. Extending their research design

to a panel setting is possible, but it raises additional ethical concerns

about occupying the time legislators and legislative staff devote to these

requests (McClendon 2012). Instead of measuring legislators’ responses

to f‌ictitious constituent requests over multiple election cycles, I rely on

archival data from House disbursement reports to measure the intensity

of constituent communication. Under the franking privilege, House

members are allowed to spend a portion of their Member Representa-

tional Allowance for mass mailings and communication activities, and

these expenditures are disclosed to the public through the quarterly

Statement of Disbursements of the House. I use variation in House mem-

bers’ electoral security across the 2010 and 2012 election cycles to study

how House members’ constituency communication changes with their

electoral security.

276 Zachary Peskowitz