Three Essays on Information and Accountability in American Politics Pubblico
Hanley, Michael (Summer 2022)
Abstract
Accountability is central to understanding the distribution, use, and abuse of power in American politics. Information is required to administer accountability. This disser- tation examines the relationship between information and accountability in three separate contexts in American politics: (1) In a survey experiment, I demonstrate that, on aver- age, American voters respond to policy-based information, assuaging a legitimate concern that they behave like tribal partisans. Yet paradoxically, party ID performs just as well as having complete information about candidate policy preferences. (2) Through a formal model of credit claiming in an election, I prove that it is incentive-compatible to chal- lenge exaggerated claims less than one might intuitively expect. Further, I show that while media accountability and voter accountability do limit the incentives for exaggerated claim- ing, increased media accountability diminishes the impact of voter accountability. (3) In the realm of bureaucratic accountability, I develop a machine-learning-based measure of responsiveness, leveraging the information-sharing that occurs during the appropriations process. This measure is validated by comparing it to another measure of accountability, limitation riders. Its usefulness for future research is then explored by using it to arrive at novel results related to agency politicization and responsiveness to Congress.
Overall, this dissertation provides three separate contributions to our understanding of information and accountability, and suggests several broader implications: (1) More information does not equate to more accountability, and (2) the coarseness of information might correspond to the ideal coarseness of the accountability judgement. These suggested implications provide fruitful avenues for further research.
Table of Contents
1 Introduction ........................... 1
1.1 Accountability Defined............................ 3 1.2 Information Defined.............................. 4 1.3 Papers in Summary .............................. 4 1.3.1 Paper 1: Beyond Party ID? Information Environments and Voter Decisionmaking ........................... 5 1.3.2 Paper 2: Electoral Accountability and Exaggerated Credit Claiming ........................... 6 1.3.3 Paper 3: Measuring Bureaucratic Responsiveness Using Text from the Appropriations Process...................... 7 1.4 Implications.................................. 82 Beyond Party ID? Information Environments and Voter Decisionmaking ........................... 10
2.1 Literature on Information and Voter Decision-making . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 2.1.1 Policy, Partisanship, and Political Behavior . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 2.1.2 Information and Heuristics...................... 14 2.1.3 Methodological Approaches to Assessing Voter Choice . . . . . . . 15 2.2 Theoretical Predictions ............................ 17 2.2.1 “Heuristic Voters" Versus “Identity Voters" . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 2.2.2 Partisan Information and Accountability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 2.3 Empirical Strategy .............................. 23 2.3.1 Description of Subjects........................ 23 2.3.2 Details of the Experiment and Treatment Assignment . . . . . . . . 25 2.3.3 Estimation of Treatment Effects ................... 30 2.4 Results..................................... 32 2.4.1 Hypothesis 1 - Voting Along Policy ................. 33 2.4.2 Hypothesis 2. - Voting. Along Party ID................ 34 2.4.3 Hypothesis 3 - Satisfaction...................... 35 2.4.4 Hypothesis 4 - Turnout........................ 36 2.4.5 Hypothesis 5 - Vote Along Policy as Information Increases . . . . . 38 2.4.6 Hypothesis 6 - Heuristic Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 2.4.7 Placebo Analysis........................... 39 2.5 Discussion & Conclusion........................... 423 Electoral Accountability and Exaggerated Credit Claiming ........................... 45
3.1 LiteratureReview............................... 48 3.1.1 Credit Claiming and Constituent Credit Allocation . . . . . . . . . 48 3.1.2 Challengers’ Roles in Elections ................... 50 3.2 Theory..................................... 51 3.2.1 SoftTheory.............................. 51 3.2.2 TheModel .............................. 52 3.2.3 Equilibria............................... 55 3.3 Semi-Separating Equilibrium Analysis.................... 60 3.3.1 Effects of p on Equilibrium Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 3.3.2 Probabilities of Different Types of Elections. . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 3.4 Broader Implications: Accountability and Equilibrium Outcomes . . . . . . 64 3.5 Discussion & Conclusion........................... 684 Measuring Bureaucratic Responsiveness Using Text from the Appropriations Process ........................... 70
4.1 The Concept of Responsiveness ....................... 73 4.2 Previous Studies of Responsiveness and Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 4.3 Our Measure of Responsiveness ....................... 79 4.3.1 Bureaucratic Responsiveness and the Appropriations Process . . . . 81 4.3.2 Coding the Content of Appropriations Reports . . . . . . . . . . . 83 4.3.3 Summary Statistics.......................... 87 4.3.4 Content Validity: Limitation Riders ................. 90 4.3.5 Strengths and Weaknesses of the Measure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 4.4 Putting the Measure to Use: Politicization, Interbranch Conflict, and Bureaucratic Responsiveness .......................... 97 4.5 Discussion and Conclusion..........................1045 Conclusion ........................... 107
5.1 Summary of Major Findings .........................107
5.2 Paths for Future Research...........................108
Appendix A Beyond Party ID? Information Environments and Voter Decision- making ........................... 111
A.1 Addressing Data Missingness.........................111
A.2 BalanceTest..................................114
A.3 Analysis Using Logit .............................116
A.4 Regression Tables for Figures.........................118
Appendix B Electoral Accountability and Exaggerated Credit Claiming ........................... 124
B.1 Proof of Proposition 1.............................124
B.1.1 (i) Proof of Semi-Separating Equilibrium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
B.1.2 (ii) Proof of Equilibrium Conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .127
B.1.3 (iii) Robustness to Pr[Challenge Success | Hi Type =/= 0] . . . . . . 128
B.1.4 (iv) Robustness to Pr[Challenge Success | Claim] =/= Pr[Challenge Success|Promise] ..........................130
B.2 Proof of Proposition 2.............................133
B.2.1 (i) Relationship between x∗ and p ..................133
B.2.2 (ii) Relationship between y∗ and p..................133
Appendix C Measuring Bureaucratic Responsiveness Using Text from the Appropriations Process ........................... 135
C.1 Data Collection Protocols...........................135
C.2 Logistic Regression Weights for Ensemble. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .142
C.3 Additional Examples of Ensemble Scoring. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .143
Bibliography 145
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