Do politicians shape public opinion?

British Journal of Political Science

Volumn 43, Issue 2, 2013, Pages 451-478

  Matsubayashi, Tetsuya ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84875170720     PISSN: 00071234     EISSN: 14692112     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0007123412000373     Document Type: Review

References (104)

1. Warren E. Miller and Donald E. Stokes, 'Constituency Influence in Congress', American Political Science Review, 57 (1963), 45-56;
2. Elizabeth R. Gerber and Jeffrey B Lewis, 'Beyond the Median: Voter Preferences, District Heterogeneity, and Political Representation', Journal of Political Economy, 106 (2004), 1364-83;
3. G. Bingham Powell, 'Political Representation in Comparative Politics', Annual Review of Political Science, 7 (2004), 273-96;
4. James A. Stimson, Michael B. MacKuen and Robert S. Erikson, 'Dynamic Representation', American Political Science Review, 89 (1995), 543-65.
5. Elizabeth R. Gerber and John E. Jackson, 'Endogeneous Preferences and the Study of Institutions', American Political Science Review, 87 (1993), 639-56;
6. Lawrence R. Jacobs and Robert Y. Shapiro, Politicians Don't Pander: Political Manipulation and the Loss of Democratic Responsiveness (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000);
7. Hugh Ward, 'Preference Shaping and Party Competition: Some Empirical and Theoretical Arguments', in Judith Bara and Albert Weale, eds, Democratic Politics and Party Competition (New York: Routledge, 2006), pp. 245-70.
8. R. Douglas Arnold, The Logic of Congressional Action (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1990);
9. Richard F. Fenno, Home Style: House Members in Their Districts (Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown, 1978);
10. David R. Mayhew, Congress: The Electoral Connection (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1974).
11. Jacobs and Shapiro, Politicians Don't Pander.
12. Patrick Dunleavy and Hugh Ward, 'Exogenous Voter Preferences and Parties with State Power: Some Internal Problems of Economic Theories of Party Competition', British Journal of Political Science, 11 (2011), 351-80.
13. Ward, 'Preference Shaping and Party Competition'.
14. Jacobs and Shapiro, Politicians Don't Pander.
15. Dennis Chong and James N. Druckman, 'Framing Theory', Annual Review of Political Science, 10 (2007), 103-26;
16. Thomas E. Nelson and Zoe M. Oxley, 'Issue Framing Effects on Belief Importance and Opinion Issue Framing Effects on Belief Importance and Opinion', Journal of Politics, 61 (2011), 1040-67.
17. James N. Druckman, Lawrence R. Jacobs and Eric Ostermeier, 'Candidate Strategies to Prime Issues and Image', Journal of Politics, 66 (2011), 1180-202;
18. William G. Jacoby, 'Issue Framing and Public Opinion on Government Spending', American Journal of Political Science, 44 (2000), 750-67.
19. Dunleavy and Ward, 'Exogenous Voter Preferences and Parties with State Power'.
20. Ward, 'Preference Shaping and Party Competition', p. 248.
21. James N. Druckman and Kjersten R. Nelson, 'Framing and Deliberation: How Citizens' Conversations Limit Elite Influence', American Journal of Political Science, 47 (2003), 729-45;
22. Patricia A. Hurley and Kim Quaile Hill, 'Beyond the Demand-Input Model: A Theory of Representational Linkages', Journal of Politics, 65 (2003), 304-26;
23. Gerber and Jackson, 'Endogeneous Preferences and the Study of Institutions'; Saundra K. Schneider and William G. Jacoby, 'Elite Discourse and American Public Opinion: The Case of Welfare Spending', Political Research Quarterly, 58 (2005), 367-79;
24. John Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion (New York: University of Cambridge Press, 1992);
25. B. Dan Wood, The Myth of Presidential Responsiveness (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
26. Exceptions include Matthew Gabel and Kenneth Scheve, 'Estimating the Effect of Elite Communications on Public Opinion Using Instrumental Variables', American Journal of Political Science, 51 (2007), 1013-28;
27. Shigeo Hirano and James M. Snyder, Jr, 'Using Multimember District Elections to Estimate the Sources of the Incumbency Advantage', American Journal of Political Science, 53 (2009), 292-306;
28. Gregory A. Huber and Kevin Arceneaux, 'Identifying the Persuasive Effects of Presidential Advertising', American Journal of Political Science, 51 (2007), 961-81.
29. Gabel and Scheve, 'Estimating the Effect of Elite Communications on Public Opinion Using Instrumental Variables'.
30. Jinyong Hahn, Petra Todd and Wilbert der Klaauw, 'Identification and Estimation of Treatment Effects with a Regression-Discontinuity Design', Econometrica, 69 (2001), 201-9;
31. David S. Lee and Thomas Lemieux, 'Regression Discontinuity Designs in Economics', Journal of Economic Literature, 48 (2010), 281-355.
32. Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion; Gabel and Scheve, 'Estimating the Effect of Elite Communications on Public Opinion Using Instrumental Variables'.
33. Bruce Cain, John Ferejohn and Morris Fiorina, The Personal Vote: Constituency Service and Electoral Independence (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987);
34. Steven D. Levitt and James M. Snyder; 'Political Parties and the Distribution of Federal Outlays', American Journal of Political Science, 39 (1995), 958-80;
35. Robert M. Stein and Kenneth N. Bickers, Perpetuating the Pork Barrel: Policy Subsystems and American Democracy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
36. Daniel Lipinski, Congressional Communication: Content and Consequences (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004).
37. Lipinski, Congressional Communication.
38. Fenno, Home Style: House Members in Their Districts; Jacobs and Shapiro, Politicians Don't Pander.
39. John Gerring, Party Ideologies in America, 1828-1996 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998);
40. Keith T. Poole and Howard Rosenthal, Ideology and Congress (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 2007).
41. Greg D. Adams, 'Abortion: Evidence for Issue Evolution', American Journal of Political Science, 41 (1997), 718-37;
42. Edward G. Carmines and James Stimson, Issue Evolution (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989);
43. Geoffrey Layman, The Great Divide: Religious and Cultural Conflict in American Party Politics-Power, Conflict, and Democracy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001);
44. Geoffrey C. Layman and Thomas M Carsey, 'Party Polarization and "Conflict Extension" in the American Electorate', American Journal of Political Science, 46 (2002), 786-802;
45. James A. Stimson, Tides of Consent: How Public Opinion Shapes American Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
46. Cain, Ferejohn and Fiorina, The Personal Vote; Fenno, Home Style; Gary C Jacobson, The Politics of Congressional Elections, 4th edn (New York: Longman, 1997); Lipinski, Congressional Communication.
47. For example, Arnold reports that local newspapers regularly publish articles on incumbent representatives in reasonably prominent places. Newspaper articles frequently cover representatives' position taking, roll-call voting and their activities related to constituency interests. R Douglas Arnold, Congress, the Press, and Political Accountability (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004);
48. Jacobson and Cain, Ferejohn and Fiorina report that more than the half of citizens read about their representatives in newspapers. Coverage by local television news is less extensive, yet it also offers information about local representatives. See Brian F. Schaffner, 'Local News Coverage and the Incumbency Advantage in the U.S. House', Legislative Studies Quarterly, 31 (2006), 491-511;
49. Danielle Vinson, Local Media Coverage of Congress and its Members: Through Local Eyes (Cresskill, N.J.: Hampton Press, 2003).
50. Arnold, Congress, the Press, and Political Accountability; Vinson, Local Media Coverage of Congress and its Members: Through Local Eyes; Timothy E. Cook, Making Laws and Making News: Media Strategies in the U.S. House of Representatives (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1989);
51. Michael Robinson, 'Three Faces of Congressional Media', in Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein, eds, The New Congress (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1981);
52. Schaffner, 'Local News Coverage and the Incumbency Advantage in the U.S. House'; Vinson, Local Media Coverage of Congress and Its Members. This is partly because representatives and their staff members provide necessary information for local mass media.
53. Schaffner, 'Local News Coverage and the Incumbency Advantage in the U.S. House'.
54. William T. Bianco, Trust: Representatives and Constituents-Michigan Studies in Political Analysis (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994);
55. Edward G. Carmines and James H. Kuklinski, 'Incentives, Opportunities, and the Logic of Public Opinion in American Political Representation', in John A. Ferejohn and James H. Kuklinski, eds, Information and Democratic Processes (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990), pp. 240-68;
56. Fenno, Home Style; Arthur Lupia and Mathew D. McCubbins, The Democratic Dilemma (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
57. Carmines and Kuklinski, 'Incentives, Opportunities, and the Logic of Public Opinion in American Political Representation'; Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion; Michael Tomz and Paul M. Sniderman, 'Brand Names and the Organizations of Mass Belief Systems' (paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, 2005).
58. Dennis Chong and James N. Druckman, 'A Theory of Framing and Opinion Formation in Competitive Elite Environments', Journal of Communication, 57 (2007), 99-118;
59. Druckman and Nelson, 'Framing and De-liberation';
60. Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion.
61. Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion; Lupia and McCubbins, The Democratic Dilemma.
62. Specifically, the data include no measure of people's political predispositions measured prior to the exposure to new information delivered by representatives. All attitudinal measures are subject to change in response to the representatives' messages.
63. The ANES data are available from the ICPSR data archive. The House election data were generously provided by Gary Jacobson.
64. David Broockman, 'Do Congressional Candidates Have Reverse Coattails? Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity Design', Political Analysis, 17 (2009), 418-34.
65. Christian R. Grose and Antoine Yoshinaka, 'The Electoral Consequences of Party Switching by Incumbent Members of Congress, 1947-2000', Legislative Studies Quarterly, 28 (2003), 55-75.
66. When incumbent representatives do not run for re-election, respondents were asked about a new candidate. We assume that incumbent representatives can lead people to be positive about a new candidate who belongs to the same party.
67. The percentages of respondents with high and low education are 39 per cent and 61 per cent, respectively.
68. For a discussion of why education is not the best measure of exposure, see John Zaller, 'The Myth of Massive Media Impact Revived: New Support for a Discredited Idea', Political Persuasion and Attitude Change (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), pp. 17-78.
69. David S. Lee, 'Randomized Experiments from Non-Random Selection in U.S. House Elections', Journal of Econometrics, 142 (2008), 675-97;
70. David S. Lee, Enrico Moretti and Matthew J. Butler, 'Do Voters Affect or Elect Policies? Evidence from the U.S. House', Quarterly Journal of Economics, 119 (2004), 807-59.
71. Lee, 'Randomized Experiments from Non-Random Selection in U.S. House Elections'; Broockman, 'Do Congressional Candidates Have Reverse Coattails?'.
72. Lee, 'Randomized Experiments from Non-Random Selection in U.S. House Elections', p. 684.
73. Broockman, 'Do Congressional Candidates Have Reverse Coattails?' p. 6.
74. Lee and Lemieux, 'Regression Discontinuity Designs in Economics'.
75. In addition, the model described below controls differences across election years by including the year-fixed effect.
76. This procedure for graphical presentation is recommended by Lee and Lemieux.
77. Guido Imbens and Karthik Kalyanaraman, 'Optimal Bandwidth Choice for the Regression Discontinuity Estimator', NBER Working Paper, No. 14726 (2009).
78. The results reported in the following section are similar even if state-fixed effects are included in this model.
79. Lee and Lemieux, 'Regression Discontinuity Designs in Economics'.
80. Imbens and Kalyanaraman for more details of their algorithm. We use the edge kernel for calculating the optimal bandwidth. The R codes for the algorithm were made available by Devin Caughey.
81. Lee and Lemieux, 'Regression Discontinuity Designs in Economics'.
82. Davin M. Caughey and Jasjeet S. Sekhon, 'Regression-Discontinuity Designs and Popular Elections: Implications of Pro-Incumbent Bias in Close U.S. House Races', Political Analysis, 19 (2011), 385-408;
83. Justin Grimmer et al., 'Are Close Elections Random?' (Working Paper, Stanford University, 2011).
84. Note that there is a possibility that these results capture the effect of time, not education, because of the high correlation between the two.
85. Michael B. MacKuen, Robert S. Erikson and James A. Stimson, 'Macropartisanship', American Political Science Review, 83 (1989), 1125-42;
86. Robert S. Erikson, Michael B. MacKuen and James S. Stimson, The Macro Polity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
87. The graphical analysis presents similar results, which are available upon request.
88. As noted previously, the media usage variable is available only after 1982. The evidence for the conditioning impact of media consumption in Table 1 might not be generalizable to the prior time period between 1956 and 1980.
89. The results are similar if the analysis focuses on respondents with high political awareness.
90. Imbens and Kalyanaraman, 'Optimal Bandwidth Choice for the Regression Discontinuity Estimator'.
91. Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper & Row, 1957), p. 140.
92. John E. Jackson, 'Electoral Competition with Endogenous Voter Preferences', in Ken Kollman, John Miller and Scott Pag, eds, Computational Models in Political Economy (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2003), pp. 109-42;
93. Ward, 'Preference Shaping and Party Competition'.
94. Hurley and Hill, 'Beyond the Demand-Input Model'.
95. Druckman and Nelson, 'Framing and Deliberation';
96. Jonathan McDonald Ladd and Gabriel S Lenz, 'Exploiting a Rare Communication Shift to Document the Persuasive Power of the News Media', American Journal of Political Science, 53 (2011), 394-410;
97. Wood, The Myth of Presidential Responsiveness.
98. Yet we expect that the partisan bias is reinforced in favour of the incumbent's personal evaluation. It is reasonable to assume that the evaluation of incumbent candidates is affected by their activities but unaffected by other political figures. If representatives keep promoting their reputations, the bias is constantly reinforced in favour of them. This stabilization mechanism is found in the high rate of incumbent re-election.
99. Chong and Druckman, 'Framing Public Opinion in Competitive Democracies';
100. Chong and Druckman, 'A Theory of Framing and Opinion Formation in Competitive Elite Environments'; James N. Druckman, 'Political Preference Formation: Competition, Deliberation, and the (Ir)Relevance of Framing Effects', American Political Science Review, 98 (2004), 671-86;
101. Paul M. Sniderman and Sean M. Theriault, 'The Structure of Political Argument and the Logic of Issue Framing', in Willem Saris and Paul M. Sniderman, eds, Studies in Public Opinion (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004), pp. 133-65;
102. Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion.
103. Arnold, Congress, the Press, and Political Accountability.
104. Yet the recent development of news media on the internet may allow legislators and parties to communicate with their supporters more directly and frequently.