Working Paper: NBER ID: w9315
Authors: David S. Lee; Enrico Moretti; Matthew J. Butler
Abstract: Traditional models of politician behavior predict complete or partial policy convergence, whereby electoral competition compels partisan politicians to choose positions more moderate than their most-preferred policies. Alternatively, if politicians cannot overcome the inability to make binding pre-commitments to policies, the expected result is complete policy divergence. By exploiting a regression discontinuity (RD) design inherent in the Congressional electoral system, this paper empirically tests the strong predictions of the complete divergence hypothesis against the alternative of partial convergence within the context of Representatives' roll call voting behavior in the U.S. House (1946-1994). The RD design implies that which party wins a district seat is quasi-randomly assigned among elections that turn out to be 'close'. We use this variation to examine if Representatives' roll call voting patterns do not respond to large exogenous changes in the probability of winning the election, the strong prediction of complete policy divergence. The evidence is more consistent with full divergence and less consistent with partial convergence, suggestive that the difficulty of establishing credible commitments to policies is an important real-world phenomenon.
Keywords: No keywords provided
JEL Codes: H0; K0
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Electoral competition (D72) | Policy moderation among opposing politicians (D72) |
| Exogenous shifts in the probability of a party winning an election (D79) | Voting behavior of representatives (D72) |
| Voting records of barely elected Democrats and Republicans are similar to those of their colleagues who won by larger margins (D72) | Voting behavior of representatives (D72) |
| Voting records of barely elected representatives reflect actual voting behavior of those who would have been elected had the election outcome been different (D72) | Voting behavior of representatives (D72) |
| Strong prediction of complete policy divergence is not rejected (D79) | Policy divergence between the parties (D72) |