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Explaining Explanations: How Legislators Explain their Policy Positions and How Citizens React
Author(s) -
Grose Christian R.,
Malhotra Neil,
Parks Van Houweling Robert
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
american journal of political science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 6.347
H-Index - 170
eISSN - 1540-5907
pISSN - 0092-5853
DOI - 10.1111/ajps.12164
Subject(s) - test (biology) , field (mathematics) , roll call , order (exchange) , political science , positive economics , social psychology , psychology , economics , politics , law , voting , paleontology , mathematics , finance , pure mathematics , biology
Legislators claim that how they explain their votes matters as much as or more than the roll calls themselves. However, few studies have systematically examined legislators’ explanations and citizen attitudes in response to these explanations. We theorize that legislators strategically tailor explanations to constituents in order to compensate for policy choices that are incongruent with constituent preferences, and to reinforce policy choices that are congruent. We conduct a within‐subjects field experiment using U.S. senators as subjects to test this hypothesis. We then conduct a between‐subjects survey experiment of ordinary people to see how they react to the explanatory strategies used by senators in the field experiment. We find that most senators tailor their explanations to their audiences, and that these tailored explanations are effective at currying support—especially among people who disagree with the legislators’ roll‐call positions.