The Promise and Peril of Constituent Interactions: The Determinants of Town Hall Participation Among Members of Congress

Abstract

Even before its founding, town hall meetings have been woven into the fabric of American politics as a quintessential tool in a representative democracy. We might expect legislators would host these events with routine frequency; however, our research shows this conventional wisdom is inaccurate. While town halls may strengthen the legislator‐constituent relationship, they also carry risk, especially in our polarized political climate. We argue the decision to engage with constituents in this way is a two‐step process: first, legislators decide whether to participate in town halls or not; second, they determine the frequency (and modality) of these interactions. We consider several factors to explain the variation of town hall participation among members of Congress, including partisanship and gender, as well as several electoral and district‐level factors. By combining a unique data set of nearly 11,000 congressional town hall meetings from 2017 to 2022 (115th–117th Congresses) with biographical and political information about legislators and their districts, we uncover compelling evidence to suggest legislators make strategic calculations of whether to participate in town hall meetings and how to do so. In the end, our work adds to the growing literature on the modern electoral connection.