Democratic Competition and Homestyles in the U.S. House

• In Event: Accountability, Representation, and Responsiveness in the Congress

Abstract

The Political Science literature on the sources of congressional representational styles or “homestyles” is generally divided. This paper contributes to the debate on homestyles and more broadly democratic representation through an examination of U.S. representatives' use of office perquisites. By analyzing House records on the counts, (rather than dollar amounts), of member use of the frank from six Congresses (112th-117th) along with information on the elections that produced these Congresses, I confirm recent findings that members in more competitive districts make greater use of their franking privilege. Furthermore, I find that this relationship is moderated by the number of terms a member has served and that first-term members exhibit an even higher rate of response to democratic competition. The direction of this effect is causally identified through the use of a difference in differences (DiD) model estimated on member behavior before and after redistricting cycles at the quarterly level. Additionally I consider how members allocate staff between communication roles and legislative roles conditional on the state of democratic competition in their district, a departure from previous scholarship’s focus on in-district vs DC allocations. These results suggest that theories of congressional behavior relying on an assumption of uniform distribution of electoral anxiety may be in need of revision; some members single-mindedly seek reelection but not all. Lastly, my findings imply that campaign behavior and legislative behavior may be zero-sum which has profound impacts for normative theories on the benefits of democratic competition on political representation.

Author

• Tyler William Clarke, Binghamton University