The Effects of Affect on Legislative Effectiveness

• In Event: Parties and Polarization across the United States

Abstract

How does the affective polarization of policymakers affect their effectiveness in office? In recent years, affective polarization has become one of the most important concepts in the study of electoral and legislative behavior. Most studies of affective polarization focus on the causes and consequences of affective polarization among the mass public (e.g. Iyengar and Krupenkin, 2018; Iyengar et al., 2019; Druckman et al., 2021; Kingzette et al., 2021; Mason, 2015, 2018; Reiljan et al., 2023). Surprisingly, though perhaps understandable due to challenges of data collection, the determinants and effects of affective polarization among political elites has received less
study.

There is good reason to believe that, just as affective polarization affects the social, economic, and even romantic behavior of the mass public (Iyengar et al., 2019), it may also affect elite behavior. In this paper, I focus on the consequences of affective polarization (at the individual legislator level) for legislative effectiveness. I theorize that, just as members of the mass public who exhibit higher levels of affective polarization are less inclined to compromise with (Michelitch, 2015; McConnell et al., 2018) or form friendly relationships with members of the opposite party (Huber and Malhotra, 2017; Chopik and Motyl, 2016), affective polarization will also be associated with lower levels of legislative productivity because legislators are less likely to negotiate and form productive working relationships with the opposing party.

To this end, I introduce a new method for estimating elite affective polarization through the analysis of textual data. Applying the method to both U.S. state and federal legislatures, I validate the measure by demonstrating that it exhibits strong correlations with existing measures of ideology and successfully withstands face validity checks. Then, I examine the consequences of affective polarization for legislative productivity. As expected, I find that legislators characterized by higher levels of affective polarization are less productive compared to their less polarized counterparts; they tend to pass fewer bills, engage in lower levels of bill co-sponsorship, and the bills they do pass are often of lesser significance. These findings shed light on the intricate dynamics between affective polarization and the democratic process, emphasize the importance of understanding the effects of affective polarization at the elite level, and provide a new measure of an important concept that can be applied to other elites in the United States and abroad.

Author

• Michael Burnham, Penn State