Day 7 - Legislative Recruitment for Office
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Transcript of Day 7 - Legislative Recruitment for Office
Day 7 – Legislative Recruitment
July 8, 2013
In the News Congress Lets Student Loan Rates Double
http://video.msnbc.msn.com/up/52406830#52406830
Gerrymandering “Not Gerrymandering, but Districting: More
Evidence on How Democrats Won the Popular Vote but Lost the Congress http://themonkeycage.org/2012/11/15/not-gerrym
andering-but-districting-more-evidence-on-how-democrats-won-the-popular-vote-but-lost-the-congress/
“Unintentional Gerrymandering” Political Geography and the U.S. House Vote Democrats are inefficiently concentrated in large
cities and small industrial agglomerations. http://themonkeycage.org/2012/11/10/political-ge
ography-and-2012-u-s-house-vote/
http://elections.nytimes.com/2012/results/house/big-board
Where Have We Been? Constitutional Foundations & Design of
Congress Constitution Federalist 51
The Two Congresses and the Representative-Constituent Linkage Two Congresses: Miller and Stokes (1963)
Institutionalization of Congress Elections and the Rules of the Game
Districting Process
Where Are We Going? Who enters? Who wins? Who votes for them? What effect do elections have on governance?
Readings DOL (58-67) Maestas et al. (2006) “When to Risk It?
Institutions, Ambitions, and the Decision to Run for the U.S. House” American Political Science Review 100(2): 195-208.
Constitution
District Features
Nominating Procedures
and Primaries
General Election
Barriers to entering Constitution
What does the Constitution require of Congressional candidates?
District features What must candidates consider about their
districts? Nominating procedures and primaries
How can this process change who decides to run? General election prospects
Maestas et al. (2006) Why are the authors concerned about analyzing
the decision model through a two-stage process? What method do they use to determine the
ambition of state legislators? Why might members of a professional legislature
be more likely to run for Congress? Conversely, why might they be more likely to stay in their current office?
Finally, what do they find? What factors make legislators more or less ambitious? What factors make ambitious legislators more or less likely to run?
PA National Congressional Districts
Source: http://www.redistricting.state.pa.us/Maps/House.cfm
Pennsylvania State House Map
Source: http://aws.redistricting.state.pa.us/Redistricting/Resources/GISData/Districts/Legislative/House/2011-Revised-Final/PDF/2011-Revised-Final-Plan-Map-House.pdf
Pennsylvania State Senate Map
Source: http://aws.redistricting.state.pa.us/Redistricting/Resources/GISData/Districts/Legislative/Senate/2011-Revised-Final/PDF/2011-Revised-Final-Plan-Map-Senate.pdf
Running for Higher Office – Previous Assumptions Expected utility of winning a higher office - E(Uh)
E(Uh) = phBh – Ch
Expected utility of retaining the current, lower office -E(Ul) E(Ul) = plBl – Cl
Under this assumption, an ambitious politician will attempt to move to higher office when: E(Uh) = phBh – Ch > E(Ul) = plBl – Cl
What is problematic about this assumption?
Running for Higher Office – A Two-Stage Decision Process Maestas and colleagues argue that there is a
stable disposition, or function, that each legislator holds. Stage 1 Progressive Ambition = f(E(UA)
= pgenBmarg – Cmarg + M)
Where pgen is the long-run probability of winning office
Bmarg is the expected gain from the target office
Cmarg is the expected costs from running for the target office
M = personal motivations outside of the cost-benefit analysis
Those who enter Stage 2 have already crossed a threshold level of ambition.
Stage 2 Pr(Run | Progressive Ambition > 0 = f(Pt, pgen,Ct,)
f(E(UA)
= pgenBmarg – Cmarg + M)pgen Bmarg Cmarg M
Estimation of winning the party nomination.
Assessment of prestige and effectiveness in U.S. House career.
Family-cost index Desire to make social or business contacts
Estimation of chances of winning the general election.
Assessment relative to current position in state government.
Campaign-cost index
Perception of district partisan balance.
Signals from party.
Results
What is this model predicting?
Moving to the Second Stage f(E(UA) = pgenBmarg – Cmarg + M)
If f(E(UA)) > 0, then they are scored as ‘1’ (i.e. ambitious)
If f(E(UA)) ≤ 0, then then they are scored as ‘0’ (i.e. not ambitious)
Interviews
N = 597
F(E(UA))1
0
N = 263
N = 334
Discussion How do the authors connect their findings to
political responsiveness? What are the implications for their findings? What can they not determine from this study? How might this study be extended?