American Politics & Public Policy Workshop: Celia Paris, Yale

Celia Paris
Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science, Yale University

"Of Bickering and Bipartisanship: Citizen Reactions to Poitical Disagreement Among Elected Officials"

Abstract: How citizens evaluate representatives is a fundamental question in political science. In standard accounts of representation, citizens judge two types of objects: policies and representatives. However, since representatives are linked to policies through the process of deliberating, negotiating, and legislating, this process represents a third type of object citizens may judge. In the context of an increasingly polarized legislature and political climate, certain process features may be particularly salient, such as the tone of debate and the presence or absence of bipartisan support for a proposal. I use a new nationally representative survey experiment to examine the weight citizens assign to policy and process considerations in evaluating elected officials. I experimentally manipulate four features of a news story on a Congressional debate: whether the bill passes or fails, whether the debate is civil or uncivil, whether support for the bill is partisan or bipartisan, and the partisan affiliation of the first co-sponsor of the bill.  I find that citizens use markedly different criteria depending on whether they are assessing an individual representative or Congress as a whole, leading to perverse incentives for partisan conflict.  I then link citizens’ reactions to disagreement to important political outcomes, including political trust, candidate preferences, and the actions of elected officials.