Nationalizing the Constituent Representative Link and Polarizing Politics

• In Event: Constituents and Representation

Abstract

America faces parties polarized within government and the electorate, with few means to bridge or tie together the opposing parties. Building on Krasa and Polborn’s (2018) asymmetric nationalization theory, we argue that it is the absence of counter local cross pressures to establish constituent representative links independent of parties that prime the electorate and elected officials to toe the party line. We posit that it is through redistricting in such a manner that representatives cannot identify their geographic constituencies that they increasingly rely on party brand and ideology in place of a local home style to win reelection. We test the asymmetric nationalization theory on the electorate and elected members of the U.S. House from 2000 to 2016. We measure the latent dimension of local pressure as the percentage of a district’s population that can be correctly assigned to a district knowing only ZIP codes, to explain convergence of presidential and congressional democratic vote share, and polarization of House members via DW-NOMINATE and CF scores. We find evidence that as it becomes more difficult to identify constituents due to the splitting of ZIP codes between districts, the greater the convergence between congressional and presidential vote share, and the more ideologically extreme the members of congress. These results suggest that the inability to mediate and counter nationalized party politics with local issues contributes to political polarization.

Authors

• Tyler Steelman, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

• John Alexander Curiel, Ohio Northern University