Dynamic Democracy: Public Opinion, Elections, and Policymaking in the American States

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Devin Caughey Christopher Warshaw

Dynamic Democracy

Public Opinion, Elections, and Policymaking in the American States

Devin Caughey, Christopher Warshaw

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English

University of Chicago Press
27 January 2023

Elections & referenda; Regional government policies; Public opinion & polls

Series: Chicago Studies in American Politics

A new perspective on policy responsiveness in American government.

Scholars of American politics have long been skeptical of ordinary citizens’ capacity to influence, let alone control, their governments. Drawing on over eight decades of state-level evidence on public opinion, elections, and policymaking, Devin Caughey and Christopher Warshaw pose a powerful challenge to this pessimistic view. Their research reveals that although American democracy cannot be taken for granted, state policymaking is far more responsive to citizens’ demands than skeptics claim.

Although governments respond sluggishly in the short term, over the long term, electoral incentives induce state parties and politicians—and ultimately policymaking—to adapt to voters’ preferences The authors take an empirical and theoretical approach that allows them to assess democracy as a dynamic process. Their evidence across states and over time gives them new leverage to assess relevant outcomes and trends, including the evolution of mass partisanship, mass ideology, and the relationship between partisanship and ideology since the mid-twentieth century; the nationalization of state-level politics; the mechanisms through which voters hold incumbents accountable; the performance of moderate candidates relative to extreme candidates; and the quality of state-level democracy today relative to state-level democracy in other periods.

By: Devin Caughey, Christopher Warshaw
Imprint: University of Chicago Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 18mm
Weight: 227g
ISBN: 9780226822204
ISBN 10: 0226822206
Series: Chicago Studies in American Politics
Pages: 248
Publication Date: 27 January 2023
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

1. Introduction 1.1 Plan of the Book 2 Measurement: Public Opinion and State Policy 2.1 The Challenge of Measurement 2.2 Data and Measures 2.2.1 Policy and Survey Data 2.2.2 Measures of State Policy and Mass Preferences 2.3 Summary 2.A Technical Appendix on Measurement Models 2.A.1 Issue-Specific Opinion 2.A.2 Ideological Summarization 2.A.3 Commonalities among the Ideological Models 3 Preferences: Partisanship and Ideology in State Publics 3.1 Partisan and Ideological Trends in the States 3.1.1 Partisanship 3.1.2 Ideology 3.1.3 Evolution and Stability 3.2 The Alignment of Ideology and Partisanship 3.3 The Ideological Nationalization of Partisanship 3.4 Summary 4 Policies: The Outputs of State Government 4.1 Trends in State Policy Ideology 4.2 Policy, Preferences, and Party 5 Parties: The Policy Effects of Party Control 5.1 Theoretical Framework 5.2 Policy Effects of Party Control 5.3 Regression Discontinuity Estimates 5.4 Dynamic Panel Estimates 5.5 How Much Does Party Control Matter? 5.6 Summary 6 Elections: Selection, Incentives, and Feedback 6.1 Selection and Incentives 6.2 National Tides and Partisanship 6.3 Partisan Selection 6.4 Candidate Positioning and Electoral Success 6.5 Collective Accountability and Negative Feedback 6.5.1 Electoral Feedback 6.6 Summary 7 Responsiveness: The Public’s Influence on State Policies 7.1 Operationalizing Responsiveness 7.2 Position Responsiveness 7.3 Policy Responsiveness 7.3.1 Heterogeneity: Era and Region 7.3.2 Mechanisms: Turnover versus Adaptation 7.3.3 Cumulative Responsiveness 7.4 Summary 8 Proximity: The Match between Preferences and Policies 8.1 Data on Policy-Specific Representation 8.2 Policy Bias 8.3 Policy Proximity 8.3.1 The Dynamics of Policy Proximity 8.4 Summary 9 Deficits: Gaps in American Democracy 9.1 The Jim Crow South 9.1.1 Racial Disparities in Representation 9.2 Legislative Malapportionment 9.3 Partisan Gerrymandering 9.4 Summary 10 Reforms: Improving American Democracy 10.1 Background on Institutional Reforms 10.1.1 Citizen Governance 10.1.2 Voting 10.1.3 Money in Politics 10.1.4 Labor Unions 10.2 The Effects of Institutional Reforms 10.3 Summary 11 Conclusion 11.1 Normative Implications 11.2 Prospects for Reform 11.3 Whither State Politics? 11.4 Implications for Future Research Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index

Devin Caughey is associate professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of The Unsolid South. Christopher Warshaw is associate professor of political science at George Washington University.

Reviews for Dynamic Democracy: Public Opinion, Elections, and Policymaking in the American States

Dynamic Democracy is a tour de force. It puts forth the most ambitious assessment in a generation of the health of democracy in the American states. Built on an unprecedented wealth of data and using a sweeping and sophisticated empirical approach, Dynamic Democracy examines how institutions, especially political parties and elections, mediate the complex interplay between state governments and the public. It provides an optimistic yet clear-eyed appraisal: state policies reflect remarkable responsiveness to public opinion over the long term, though important gaps remain. -- Elisabeth R. Gerber, University of Michigan Caughey and Warshaw have revolutionized the study of public opinion and state politics, and Dynamic Democracy is their magnum opus. The book carefully and rigorously traces the trends in and relationships between opinion and policy in the states-the institutional level that in recent decades has moved from the periphery to the center of American politics. Using cutting-edge statistical tools, Caughey and Warshaw uncover new evidence that over the long term, state governments do indeed respond to the attitudes of their constituents. Dynamic Democracy is a must-read for scholars of state politics and public opinion, or anyone interested in systematic quantitative analysis of American politics. -- Jacob M. Grumbach, University of Washington Justice Brandeis advanced the idea of states as laboratories in 1932. But only with this landmark book have political scientists made good on the promise of elucidating democracy via the states. Harnessing new methods, Caughey and Warshaw provide a decisive portrait of the dynamics of policymaking and public opinion. Eventually, state policies come to align with public opinion, a hallmark of democratic governance. But statehouse democracy has faced potent threats: from Jim Crow exclusion, malapportionment, and gerrymandering. Comprehensive and transformative. -- Daniel J. Hopkins, University of Pennsylvania Dynamic Democracy is a marvelous analysis of how public opinion can translate into policy in the American states. For this task, Caughey and Warshaw collect massive amounts of data on the ideological directions of state electorates, state-level politicians, and state policies. They put it together to tell a causal story with easy-to-understand statistical analyses. Best of all is their use of the time dimension, showing how the process of democratic representation works better than you might think but often moves slowly. -- Robert S. Erikson, Columbia University