The Importance of Breaking Even: How Local and Aggregate Returns Make Politically Feasible Policies

IF 4.6 1区 社会学 Q1 POLITICAL SCIENCE British Journal of Political Science Pub Date : 2023-10-20 DOI:10.1017/s0007123423000522
Alan S. Gerber, Gregory A. Huber, Patrick D. Tucker, John J. Cho
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Abstract

Abstract Policies that promote the common good may be politically infeasible if legislators representing ‘losing’ constituencies are punished for failing to promote their district's welfare. We investigate how varying the local and aggregate returns to a policy affects voter support for their incumbent. In our first study, we find that an incumbent who favours a welfare-enhancing policy enjoys a discontinuous jump in support when their district moves from losing to at least breaking even, while the additional incremental political returns for the district doing better than breaking even are modest. This feature of voter response, which we replicate, has significant implications for legislative politics generally and, in particular, how to construct politically feasible social welfare-enhancing policies. In a second study, we investigate the robustness of this finding in a competitive environment in which a challenger can call attention to a legislator's absolute and relative performance in delivering resources to their district.
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收支平衡的重要性:地方和总收益如何使政策在政治上可行
如果代表“失败”选区的立法者因未能促进其选区的福利而受到惩罚,那么促进共同利益的政策可能在政治上是不可行的。我们调查了一项政策的地方和总回报的变化如何影响选民对其现任者的支持。在我们的第一项研究中,我们发现,当选区从亏损转为至少收支平衡时,支持提高福利政策的现任者的支持率会出现不连续的跃升,而优于收支平衡的选区的额外增量政治回报是适度的。我们复制的选民反应的这一特征对立法政治具有重要意义,特别是如何构建政治上可行的社会福利增强政策。在第二项研究中,我们调查了这一发现在竞争环境中的稳健性,在竞争环境中,挑战者可以提请注意立法者在向其地区提供资源方面的绝对和相对表现。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
8.70
自引率
4.00%
发文量
64
期刊介绍: The British Journal of Political Science is a broadly based journal aiming to cover developments across a wide range of countries and specialisms. Contributions are drawn from all fields of political science (including political theory, political behaviour, public policy and international relations), and articles from scholars in related disciplines (sociology, social psychology, economics and philosophy) appear frequently. With a reputation established over nearly 40 years of publication, the British Journal of Political Science is widely recognised as one of the premier journals in its field.
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