Search

Open governance requirements are designed to improve accountability, which implies that transparent governments are more trustworthy stewards of their publicly invested power. However, transparency may also reduce institutional effectiveness and inhibit political compromise, diminishing the capacity to manage resources responsibly. We assess empirical support for these competing perspectives in the context of American state legislatures, many of which have become exempt from state sunshine laws in recent decades. We leverage variation in the timing of these legislative exemptions to identify the effect of removing transparency in a crucial governing institution on investors' risk perceptions of states' general obligation bonds. Our analysis of these data during the period 1995–2010 suggests that removing legislative transparency reduces state credit risk. We conclude that while openness in government may be normatively desirable, shielding legislative proceedings from public view may actually be better for states' debt repayment capacity, improving their overall fiscal health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data on the content of debate associated with votes in the UK House of Commons from 1992–2015, this article examines how government party MPs employ language in legislative speech when they vote against the party line. We find a robust statistical association between dissent on votes and the use of first‐person pronouns, simpler language, and giving longer speeches. Using a random forest algorithm for classification, we find that these language covariates are predictive of rebellion. The use of simpler, first‐person language has implications for political representation and offers new insight into how MPs use votes to distinguish themselves from their party, perhaps reflecting attempts to connect with constituents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past two decades, there has been a marked increase in partisan social polarization, leaving scholars in search of solutions to partisan conflict. The psychology of intergroup relations identifies empathy as one of the key mechanisms that reduces intergroup conflict, and some have suggested that a lack of empathy has contributed to partisan polarization. Yet, empathy may not always live up to this promise. We argue that, in practice, the experience of empathy is biased toward one's ingroup and can actually exacerbate political polarization. First, using a large, national sample, we demonstrate that higher levels of dispositional empathic concern are associated with higher levels of affective polarization. Second, using an experimental design, we show that individuals high in empathic concern show greater partisan bias in evaluating contentious political events. Taken together, our results suggest that, contrary to popular views, higher levels of dispositional empathy actually facilitate partisan polarization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The coordinated behavior of members of a state delegation to the U.S. Senate can provide constituents in a state greater representation in Congress. Despite this potentially improved level of representation through coordination, popular and scholarly accounts of the U.S. Senate often feature senators from the same state at odds with one another on a variety of policy issues. In this research, we investigate competing expectations regarding the frequency (across topics) of collaborations between members of a state delegation to the Senate. We then test our expectations using patterns in bill cosponsorship in the 103rd–110th U.S. Senates. We find that senators from the same state work together often on the development of legislation, and that this coordinated activity is consistent across a variety of bill topics across many sessions of congressional activity. Notably, same-state status is an even stronger predictor of support via cosponsorship than is same-party status, raising possible avenues of breaking through partisan gridlock. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We argue that citizens’ trust attitudes are inversely related to party polarization because polarization tends to encourage political conflict, which most people dislike. We further posit that partisans trust attitudes are driven by the ideological extremity of the opposing and their own parties for similar reasons. Using roll-call-based estimates of state legislative party polarization and public opinion data collected in 2008, we show strong evidence in favor of our theory: higher levels of party polarization within legislative chambers depresses citizens’ trust in their legislatures. Among partisans, we also find that trust attitudes respond to the ideological extremity of the opposing party but not to a citizen’s own party’s extremity. We further find that as citizens’ interest in politics increases, they react more strongly to polarization when forming their trust attitudes. Finally, partisans become less responsive to the ideological extremity of the opposing party as they become more politically interested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The U.S. House and Senate were designed to have an adversarial relationship. Yet, House members and senators often collaborate on the introduction of “companion” bills. We develop a theory of these cross-chamber collaborations, which asserts that companion bill introductions are driven by legislators’ desire to increase the probability of bill passage and the relational difficulties in developing companion bill partnerships. To test the expectations emerging from our theory, we develop a novel data set of every companion bill introduction in the 111th and 112th U.S. Congress. Then, using social networking techniques, we develop an empirical model of partner selection in companion bill introduction. Our results are supportive of our expectations, and suggest that companion bills are more likely to survive chamber deliberation and are typically introduced by senior members with secure electoral margins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]