The Electoral Encounter : Legislative Responsiveness to Challenger Campaign Issues in the U.S. House
This paper builds on the research of Tracy Sulkin who first introduced the concept of legislative uptake. When incumbents "take up" their previous challengers themes, they effectively incorporate the priority issues of a non-winning coalition of voters. If uptake behavior is prevalent in the modern Congress it augments the responsiveness of legislators to minority interests. Here, I reexamine the legacy of electoral challengers using new measurement strategies. I take a small sample of House incumbents over several Congresses to determine whether incumbents' attention to challenger issues increases in the legislative session immediately following their reelection. Campaign data is generated using the CQ Special Election Editions and legislative data comes directly from the Library of Congress. An interrupted time-series design with pre-test and post-test measures of issue-attention are used with the campaign challenger as the "treatment”. More vulnerable members should engage in higher levels of uptake according to Sulkin since the "taking up" of challenger issues is motivated by electoral insecurity. Contrary to this intuitive logic, I find that exposure to campaign challengers does not significantly affect the legislative attention of incumbents after they return to Washington
Year of publication: |
2012
|
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Authors: | Klepetar, Dillon |
Publisher: |
[S.l.] : SSRN |
Subject: | USA | United States | Politikfinanzierung | Political finance | Wahlverhalten | Voting behaviour | Wahl | Election |
Saved in:
freely available
Extent: | 1 Online-Ressource (26 p) |
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Type of publication: | Book / Working Paper |
Language: | English |
Notes: | Nach Informationen von SSRN wurde die ursprüngliche Fassung des Dokuments August 17, 2012 erstellt |
Other identifiers: | 10.2139/ssrn.2132193 [DOI] |
Source: | ECONIS - Online Catalogue of the ZBW |
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014166509
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