https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4860-6699
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ABSTRACT
What motivates legislators to respond to citizen-initiated contacts about policy positions in party-centred systems with limited re-election incentives? We argue legislators are more responsive to individual citizens when they are being contacted about high-profile, salient policy issues, and when they have the relevant experience and staff resources to attend to individual requests. Using a field experiment where we email Mexican senators about their policy positions before casting eight different floor votes across nine months, we find substantial support for our argument. The article challenges the notion of re-election-based responsiveness by arguing that issue-visibility, access to individual resources, and personal political experience explain variation in communicative responsiveness in party-centred legislatures. Such findings hold critical implications for theories of democratic representation, suggesting the incentive to establish significant communicative relations with constituents does not only stem from incentives to cultivate a personal vote.
Acknowledgments
We want to express our gratitude to research assistant Oscar Medina, whose help was most valuable in the development of this experiment. We also wish to thank Prof. Edwin Atilano for his methodological advice.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Öhberg and Naurin, “Party-constrained.”
2 Broockman, “Black Politicians;” Butler and Broockman, “Do Politicians;” Cain, Ferejohn and Fiorina, “The Constituency Service.”
3 Habel and Birch, “A Field Experiment;” Cain Ferejohn and Fiorina, “The Constituency Service;” Gaines, “The Impersonal Vote?”
4 McClendon, “Race and Responsiveness”
5 McClendon, “Race and Responsiveness;” Broockman, “Black Politicians;” Habel and Birch, “A Field Experiment.”
6 Öhberg and Naurin, “Party-constrained;” Grose, Malhotra and Parks Van Houweling, “Explaining Explanations;” Vacarri, “You’ve Got (No) Mail.”
7 Vacarri, “You’ve Got (No) Mail;” Grose, Malhotra and Parks Van Houweling, “Explaining Explanations.”
8 Broockman, “Black Politicians;” Butler and Broockman, “Do Politicians;” Habel and Birch, “A Field Experiment.”
9 Esaiasson, Gilljam, and Persson, “Responsiveness Beyond,” 742.
10 Pitkin, The Concept of Representation; Jacobs & Shapiro, Politicians don’t Pander.
11 Esaiasson Gilljam and Persson, “Responsiveness Beyond.”
12 Broockman, “Black Politicians;” Butler and Broockman, “Do Politicians;” Harden, “Multidimensional Responsiveness;” Grose, Malhotra and Parks Van Houweling, “Explaining Explanations;” McClendon, “Race and Responsiveness;” Lloren, “Does Direct Democracy;” Habel & Birch, “A Field Experiment.”
13 Soares de Faria, The Open Parliament.
14 Esaiasson & Wleizen, “Advances in the Study.”
15 Lloren, “Does Direct Democracy;” Öhberg & Naurin, “Party-constrained,” Giger, Lanz and De Vries, “The Motivational Basis;” Borghetto, Santana-Pereira and Freire, “Parliamentary Questions.”
16 Cayton, “Consistency versus Responsiveness.”
17 Ansolabehere and Jones, “Constituents’ Responses.”
18 Vande de Voorde and de Vet, “Is All Politics.”
19 Harden, “Multidimensional Responsiveness.”
20 Carey, “Parties, Incentives.” Taylor, “Formal versus Informal.”
21 Kerevel, “A ‘Snakes and Ladders’ Theory;” Samuels, Ambition, Federalism.
22 Jones et al., “Amateur Legislators;” Kerevel, “(Sub)national Principals;” Raymond and Bárcena, “Constituency Preferences;” Taylor, “Formal versus Informal.”
23 François and Navarro, “Voters’ Knowledge.”
24 Raymond and Bárcena, “Constituency Preferences.”
25 Broockman, “Black Politicians;” Harden, “Multidimensional Responsiveness;” Öhberg & Naurin, “Party-constrained.”
26 Lehoucq, et. al., “Political Institutions.”
27 Béjar, Los partidos.
28 Instituto Belisario Domínguez, “Encuesta Nacional.”
29 Motolinia, “Electoral Accountability.” After concluding this study, we sent follow-up emails in November 2020 to sitting senators to ask them about their plans to seek reelection in 2024. Five Senators responded, and they all said more or less the same thing: it is too soon to decide whether or not they will be seeking reelection.
30 Three senators were excluded from the analysis: one who was the boss of a congressional staff informant contacted prior to the study, a senator absent from nearly all the voting sessions because they were abroad on an official assignment, and an independent legislator.
31 McClendon, “Race and Responsiveness.”
32 Epstein and Segal, “Measuring Issue Salience,” 67.
33 Calvo and Sagarzazu, “Presidential Agenda Authority;” Mayhew, Divided We Govern.
34 The Board of Ethical Review for Academic Research at the lead authoŕs university determined this research was exempt from review.
35 Morales, “A Conceptual.”
36 Lloren, “Does Direct Democracy;” McClendon, “Race and Responsiveness.”
37 Esaiasson and Wlezien, “Advances in the Study,” 702.
38 Öhberg & Naurin, “Party-constrained.”
39 Lloren, “Does Direct Democracy.”
40 McClendon, “Race and Responsiveness.”
41 We measure legislative experience this way for two reasons. First, when examining how years of experience in each of the three possible legislative offices influenced responsiveness, we found experience as a federal or state deputy had similar positive effects on responsiveness. However, senate experience consistently had negative effects and we therefore wished to model these types of experiences separately. Second, almost all senators with prior senate experience only had one prior six-year term in the Senate. Only one senator served less than one prior term. Thus, we measure senate experience as a dichotomous variable rather than in years.
42 We use the alternate (suplente) variable as the exclusion restriction variable in the Heckman Probit models presented further in this article. While we expect alternates to be less likely to respond to an email, we have no reason to suspect much variation in the quality of the response if they do respond. A senate staffer contacted for this study suggested that "alternates are usually middle-range partisan bureaucrats, which makes them safe options to maintain a seat for the party in case the principal [senator] competes for a local election or is called to occupy a government position. As good party bureaucrats that know their position is temporary, they are rarely interested in voters" [interview conducted and translated by author, January 8, 2019].
43 Heckman, “Sample Selection;” Leung and Yu, “On the Choice;” Van de Ven and Van Praag, “The Demand.”
44 In Heckman Probit models, the statistical significance of variables in the outcome equation reflect the unconditional effect of the variable on the outcome across the entire sample. However, the effect we are interested in is the conditional effect of the variable, given a response to the email. Therefore, to determine the substantive effect of the variables in the outcome equation, we must engage in post-estimation to determine the conditional probability of observing the outcome given a change in the independent variable. We cannot rely on the signs or statistical significance of the independent variables in the outcome equation to determine the direction or significance of an effect. See Briggs, “Causal Inference;” and Kerevel, Matthews and Seki, “Mixed-member.”
45 Vacarri, “You’ve Got (No) Mail.”
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Sergio A. Bárcena Juárez
Sergio A. Bárcena Juárez is an Associate Research Professor in the Department of Humanities and Education, Tec de Monterrey. His research interests include the study of legislative and electoral behaviour.
Yann P. Kerevel
Yann P. Kerevel is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Louisiana State University. His research interests include the study of democratic representation, electoral rules and legislative behaviour.