Explaining Explanations: How Legislators Explain their Policy Positions and How Citizens React

• Published in: American journal of political science Vol. 59; no. 3; pp. 724 - 743
• Main Authors: Grose, Christian R., Malhotra, Neil, Parks Van Houweling, Robert
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.07.2015; Wiley Subscription Services, Inc
• Subjects: American politics; Attitudes; Audience; Audiences; citizen behavior; Citizens; Congress; Congressional voting; Constituents; Experiments; field experiment; Field experiments; Immigration policy; Legislation; Legislators; legislatures; Members of the upper chamber; Nativism; Political attitudes; Political behavior; Political parties; Political science; Political systems; Preferences; representation; Roll Call; Roll call votes; Senate; Senators; survey experiment; Tailoring; U.S.A; Voting; Voting Behavior
• ISSN: 0092-5853; 1540-5907
• DOI: 10.1111/ajps.12164

Legislators claim that how they explain their votes matters as much as or more than the roll calls themselves. However, few studies have systematically examined legislators' explanations and citizen attitudes in response to these explanations. We theorize that legislators strategically tailor explanations to constituents in order to compensate for policy choices that are incongruent with constituent preferences, and to reinforce policy choices that are congruent. We conduct a within-subjects field experiment using U.S. senators as subjects to test this hypothesis. We then conduct a between-subjects survey experiment of ordinary people to see how they react to the explanatory strategies used by senators in the field experiment. We find that most senators tailor their explanations to their audiences, and that these tailored explanations are effective at currying support—especially among people who disagree with the legislators' roll-call positions.