Home Style and Legislative Effectiveness in the US Congress

• In Event: Legislative Effectiveness and Policy Outcomes

Abstract

The role of legislators in a representative democracy has long been a subject of public and scholarly debate. American legislators are elected by and responsive to constituent populations in specific geographic districts. However, members of Congress spend much of their time and resources cultivating broad, national profiles. In addition, strengthening national polarization has arguably made lawmakers less responsive to their individual districts. We construct a new dataset of congressional town halls (2000-2018) to evaluate the tradeoff between each representative’s obligation to represent their district and the competing motivation to pass national legislation. Our analysis allows us to assess whether effective lawmakers prove equally dedicated to cultivating their home style or if caps placed on congressional resources imposes a zero-sum tradeoff between federal policymaking and local representation.

Authors

• Andrew Clarke, Lafayette College

• Daniel Markovits, Lafayette College