The Party Or the Purse? Unequal Representation in the US Senate JEFFREY R
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American Political Science Review (2019) 113, 4, 917–940 doi:10.1017/S0003055419000315 © American Political Science Association 2019 The Party or the Purse? Unequal Representation in the US Senate JEFFREY R. LAX Columbia University JUSTIN H. PHILLIPS Columbia University ADAM ZELIZER The University of Chicago ecent work on US policymaking argues that responsiveness to public opinion is distorted by money, in that the preferences of the rich matter much more than those of lower-income Americans. A second distortion—partisan biases in responsiveness—has been less well studied and is often R fl fl fi ignored or downplayed in the literature on af uent in uence. We are the rst to evaluate, in tandem, these https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055419000315 . two potential distortions in representation. We do so using 49 Senate roll-call votes from 2001 to 2015. We find that affluent influence is overstated and itself contingent on partisanship—party trumps the purse when senators have to take sides. The poor get what they want more often from Democrats. The rich get what they want more often from Republicans, but only if Republican constituents side with the rich. Thus, partisanship induces, shapes, and constrains affluent influence. INTRODUCTION For example, Enns (2015a, 2015b) notes that low- and middle-income individuals receive a great deal of co- he new stylized fact of American politics is that incidental representation even when politicians respond the wealthy dominate American democracy. A primarily to the affluent, because preferences tend to https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms T growing body of political science research con- differ little by income group. Branham, Soroka, and cludes that government policy is far more responsive to fi fl fl Wlezien(2017) ndthattheideologicalimpactofaf uent the preferences of the af uent than to those of either the influence is attenuated because well-to-do constituents middle class or poor (Bartels 2008; Ellis 2012, 2017; have a mix of both liberal and conservative preferences. Gilens 2005, 2012; Gilens and Page 2014; Hayes 2013; This important research skeptical of affluent influence Rigby and Wright 2011; Tausanovitch 2016). Gilens, for “ has perhaps received less attention (scholarly or other- example, concludes that the preferences of the vast wise) than the work of Bartels or Gilens, and there re- majority of Americans appear to have essentially no main unresolved debates regarding the nature, impact on which policies the government does or doesn’t fl ” pervasiveness, and substance of such in uence (see adopt (2012, 1). Such class-based distortion violates generally Erikson 2015). norms of equal voice and, worse still, raises the spectre of Independent of these debates, there is also a growing a vicious cycle in which low-income individuals are concern that elected officials care “too much” about the locked outof power,in whicheconomic inequalitybegets opinions of their copartisans or electoral base, creating political inequality which begets still more economic a partisan distortion in representation (Clinton 2006; inequality. This is the warning of the “economic elite , subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at ” Kastellec et al. 2015; Shapiro et al. 1990; Warshaw domination model (Gilens and Page 2014). 2012). This bias can arise from a variety of factors, most Claims of class-based inequality in responsiveness fi prominently the need to win primary elections (Clausen have not gone unchallenged. Some studies nd evi- 1973; Fenno 1978; Gerber and Morton 1998). Such dence against the basic result (e.g., Bhatti and Erikson a bias can pull policy away from the relatively moderate 2011; Soroka and Wlezien 2008; Ura and Ellis 2008; preferences of the median voter, toward the more Wlezien and Soroka 2011). Others argue that the 22 Jan 2020 at 21:57:33 ideologically extreme preferences of partisans. As with implications of unequal responsiveness are overstated. the economic distortion, a partisan distortion in rep- , on resentation violates norms of equal voice and can also become reinforced and entrenched (in this case through Jeffrey R. Lax , Professor, Department of Political Science, Co- the manipulation of electoral rules, gerrymandering, lumbia University, [email protected]. and the like). This partisan distortion is also increasingly Justin H. Phillips , Professor, Department of Political Science, invoked as conventional wisdom, but rigorous empirical Columbia University, [email protected]. investigations of partisan biases in representation re- Adam Zelizer , Assistant Professor, Harris School of Public fl fl Policy, The University of Chicago, [email protected]. main (at least relative to studies of af uent in uence) This project was funded in part by grant from the Russell Sage both uncommon and somewhat limited in scope. Columbia University - Law Library “ fi . Foundation (G-6789, Who Listens to Whom? Assessing Inequalities As work in this vein continues, scholars are nding in Representation”). We thank Andrew Guess and Michael Malecki evidence of other partisan distortions. One is that for previous work with us on uncertainty in opinion estimation. We parties might not behave symmetrically with respect to thank participants at Columbia University, Wake Forest University, constituent opinion. Some research suggests that and the American and Midwest Political Science Association Con- ferences for helpful feedback and discussion. We thank the anony- Democratic and Republican lawmakers do not put the mous reviewers for their careful reading, advice, and patience. same weight on opinion (Clinton 2006; Krimmel, Lax, Replication files are available at the American Political Science Re- and Phillips 2016). Another is these lawmakers may view Dataverse: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/MCWFCS. discount opinion to vote the “party line” and thereby Received: April 24, 2018; revised: December 4, 2018; accepted: May 3, further their party’s legislative agenda (Hussey and https://www.cambridge.org/core 2019. First published online: July 12, 2019. Zaller 2011), which itself may not reflect public opinion 917 Downloaded from Jeffrey R. Lax, Justin H. Phillips, and Adam Zelizer (Achen and Bartels 2016). As with economic dis- from Iraq). We use and extend multilevel regression tortions, there remain significant unresolved debates and poststratification (MRP) to create the necessary regarding the scope and strength of partisan distortions. estimates of public opinion for partisan and class sub- Perhaps surprisingly, research on class-based and groups and incorporate uncertainty around our opinion partisan distortions in representation has proceeded on estimates. two, largely separate, tracks. We argue, however, that Our baseline “taking sides” analyses reproduce the existing debates cannot be resolved without simulta- foundational findings of the economic and partisan neously considering both types of distortions. A failure distortion literatures, but using different and more to do so risks over- or underestimating the prevalence of recent evidence. We find that the affluent are more each and obscures interactions between them. For ex- likely than the poor to get what they want, especially ample, copartisan pull might constrain affluent in- when each group desires a different policy (not that this https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055419000315 fl fi . uence or vice versa. Alternatively, partisanship might is common). And, we nd that lawmakers more fre- be the vehicle through which affluent influence oper- quently vote in a manner that is consistent with the ates. What might appear to be over-responsiveness to preferences of their home-state copartisans than with the preferences of the rich could simply be coincidental, their median constituent. We also uncover, consistent if copartisan opinion and the rich opinion tend to agree. with Krimmel, Lax, and Phillips (2016), broad evi- Moreover, potential distortions in representation may dence of asymmetric responsiveness, with Democratic manifest differently in the behavior of Democratic and senators far more responsive to opinion in general than Republican lawmakers. their Republican colleagues. However, when we We juxtapose and integrate economic and partisan consider partisan and elite opinion in tandem, our biases in the study of representation, thereby assessing results depart from the conventional wisdom, espe- whether these forces are indeed coincidental, comple- cially in regards to affluent influence. Our results show https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms mentary, constraining, or conflicting. Our efforts si- that affluent influence is largely a story of partisan multaneously serve as both the first study of economic politics. It both works through and is limited by distortions to foreground partisan opinion and the first partisanship.1 study of partisan distortions to foreground affluent Republican senators are, on average, more re- opinion. sponsive to the rich than the poor, but Democratic Our analysis is the most revealing when potential senators are largely more responsive to the poor than influences on lawmakers conflict, and elected repre- rich, particularly when there is class conflict. Thus, it is sentatives have to take sides. What happens when party Republican senators, not Democrats, who are primarily and purse pull in opposite directions, when a law- responsible for the overall pattern of affluent influence. maker’s copartisan constituents and rich constituents This does not, however, mean that Democrats are en- want different things? What happens when copartisans