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What Happens When House Members “Run with Congress”? The Electoral Consequences of Institutional Loyalty
Author(s) -
LIPINSKI DANIEL,
BIANCO WILLIAM T.,
WORK RYAN
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
legislative studies quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.728
H-Index - 54
eISSN - 1939-9162
pISSN - 0362-9805
DOI - 10.3162/036298003x200944
Subject(s) - loyalty , voting , politics , government (linguistics) , relevance (law) , political science , voting behavior , political economy , public administration , public relations , advertising , business , law , economics , philosophy , linguistics
This article characterizes the electoral consequences of messages of institutional loyalty and disloyalty sent by incumbent House members to their constituents. We show that, for the contemporary House, there is variation in these messages—not all incumbents in the contemporary House “run for Congress by running against Congress.” Moreover, we show that these messages can, under the right conditions, have significant electoral consequences, even after controlling for party affiliation and district political factors. In addition to demonstrating the electoral relevance of legislators' presentations, our results show an incumbent‐level link between constituents' trust in government and their voting behavior—a link created by interaction between constituents' perceptions, legislators' party affiliations, and the messages that legislators send to their constituents.