Dynamic Democracy

Public Opinion, Elections, and Policymaking in the American States

Devin Caughey, Christopher Warshaw (Autoren)

Buch | Softcover

256 Seiten

2022
University of Chicago Press (Verlag)
978-0-226-82222-8 (ISBN)

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A new perspective on policy responsiveness in American government.

Scholars of American politics have long been skeptical of ordinary citizens’ capacity to influence, let alone control, their governments. Drawing on over eight decades of state-level evidence on public opinion, elections, and policymaking, Devin Caughey and Christopher Warshaw pose a powerful challenge to this pessimistic view. Their research reveals that although American democracy cannot be taken for granted, state policymaking is far more responsive to citizens’ demands than skeptics claim.

Although governments respond sluggishly in the short term, over the long term, electoral incentives induce state parties and politicians—and ultimately policymaking—to adapt to voters’ preferences. The authors take an empirical and theoretical approach that allows them to assess democracy as a dynamic process. Their evidence across states and over time gives them new leverage to assess relevant outcomes and trends, including the evolution of mass partisanship, mass ideology, and the relationship between partisanship and ideology since the mid-twentieth century; the nationalization of state-level politics; the mechanisms through which voters hold incumbents accountable; the performance of moderate candidates relative to extreme candidates; and the quality of state-level democracy today relative to state-level democracy in other periods.

Devin Caughey is associate professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of The Unsolid South. Christopher Warshaw is associate professor of political science at George Washington University.

1. Introduction
   1.1 Plan of the Book
2 Measurement: Public Opinion and State Policy
   2.1 The Challenge of Measurement
   2.2 Data and Measures
      2.2.1 Policy and Survey Data
      2.2.2 Measures of State Policy and Mass Preferences
   2.3 Summary
   2.A Technical Appendix on Measurement Models
      2.A.1 Issue-Specific Opinion
      2.A.2 Ideological Summarization
      2.A.3 Commonalities among the Ideological Models
3 Preferences: Partisanship and Ideology in State Publics
   3.1 Partisan and Ideological Trends in the States
      3.1.1 Partisanship
      3.1.2 Ideology
      3.1.3 Evolution and Stability
   3.2 The Alignment of Ideology and Partisanship
   3.3 The Ideological Nationalization of Partisanship
   3.4 Summary
4 Policies: The Outputs of State Government
   4.1 Trends in State Policy Ideology
   4.2 Policy, Preferences, and Party
5 Parties: The Policy Effects of Party Control
   5.1 Theoretical Framework
   5.2 Policy Effects of Party Control
   5.3 Regression Discontinuity Estimates
   5.4 Dynamic Panel Estimates
   5.5 How Much Does Party Control Matter?
   5.6 Summary
6 Elections: Selection, Incentives, and Feedback
   6.1 Selection and Incentives
   6.2 National Tides and Partisanship
   6.3 Partisan Selection
   6.4 Candidate Positioning and Electoral Success
   6.5 Collective Accountability and Negative Feedback
      6.5.1 Electoral Feedback
   6.6 Summary
7 Responsiveness: The Public’s Influence on State Policies
   7.1 Operationalizing Responsiveness
   7.2 Position Responsiveness
   7.3 Policy Responsiveness
      7.3.1 Heterogeneity: Era and Region
      7.3.2 Mechanisms: Turnover versus Adaptation
      7.3.3 Cumulative Responsiveness
   7.4 Summary
8 Proximity: The Match between Preferences and Policies
   8.1 Data on Policy-Specific Representation
   8.2 Policy Bias
   8.3 Policy Proximity
      8.3.1 The Dynamics of Policy Proximity
   8.4 Summary
9 Deficits: Gaps in American Democracy
   9.1 The Jim Crow South
      9.1.1 Racial Disparities in Representation
   9.2 Legislative Malapportionment
   9.3 Partisan Gerrymandering
   9.4 Summary
10 Reforms: Improving American Democracy
   10.1 Background on Institutional Reforms
      10.1.1 Citizen Governance
      10.1.2 Voting
      10.1.3 Money in Politics
      10.1.4 Labor Unions
   10.2 The Effects of Institutional Reforms
   10.3 Summary
11 Conclusion
   11.1 Normative Implications
   11.2 Prospects for Reform
   11.3 Whither State Politics?
   11.4 Implications for Future Research
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Erscheinungsdatum	07.11.2022
Reihe/Serie	Chicago Studies in American Politics
Zusatzinfo	91 line drawings, 7 tables
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	313 g
Themenwelt	Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung ► Staat / Verwaltung
ISBN-10	0-226-82222-2 / 0226822222
ISBN-13	978-0-226-82222-8 / 9780226822228
Zustand	Neuware