Preferences Over Representatives*

We present a theory of preferences over representatives who will vote on one’s behalf. Our theory accepts as given that legislators are generally incapable of unilaterally implementing their platforms. Rather, they vote on things. Based on this, the theory predicts that, when choosing between candidates who will vote over a legislative agenda that is even partially beyond the candidates’ control, voters’ preferences over candidates’ platforms will generally become asymmetric even if their preferences over policy outcomes are symmetric. We show that these induced preferences can prefer either polarization or moderation in the resulting legislature, depending on the legislative agenda. Taking the electoral process as given, we show that elite polarization can occur without parties, without elections, without primaries, without gerrymandering, and without mass polarization. Work in progress. Comments very welcome. *We thank Tom Clark and Scott DeMarchi for very helpful conversations about this project. All errors are our own. †Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago. Email: [email protected]. ‡Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago. Email: [email protected]. 1 Most ideological (or spatial) theories of how people vote presume that voters reduce candidates to an ideological position.1 This is a convenient and productive simplification, but it is a simplification: few, if any, political offices in a democracy allow the officeholder to unilaterally impose his or her will by fiat. Rather, the official must work through an institutionalized process in order to have some effect on public policy.2 In this article, we focus on one aspect of such processes: the opportunities to make or influence policy changes is often exogenous. From legislators to executives to judges, most officials with decision-making authority spend most of their time making decisions about issues that were chosen by someone else. For example, in legislatures, the question of which bills will be voted on is itself a collective decision. Accordingly, the issues that any given legislator ends up voting on will be at least partially, if not totally, outside of the legislator’s control.3 At the end of the day, such a legislator can implement his or her “platform” only through voting on bills that are not necessarily representative of the policies that he or she would implement if given unilateral authority. Both internal procedures and external events, such as disasters, force legislators to vote on options other than their most-preferred policies.4 We explore the implications of this reality in this article. The key finding is that incorporating this exogeneity into a voter’s strategic calculation about which candidates to vote for generally induces asymmetric preferences. Specifically, the voter’s expectations about what decisions (e.g., votes) a member will confront affect how the voter views ideological positions distinct from his or her own. We show that, in many cases, these expectations create a general preference for more extreme candidates, where “extremity” is relative to the agenda: if the voter tends to be (say) to the right of the alternatives brought up, then a more extreme candidate is one whose platform is even more likely to be to the right of the alternatives brought up on the agenda. We demonstrate that this tendency can be reversed when the agenda is focused 1As well as, possibly, a “valence” term (Groseclose (2001), Schofield (2004), Carter and Patty (2015)). We ignore this possibility in this article and focus instead on an alternative view of how legislators’ ideological platforms affect voters. 2The institutionally imposed divergence between goals and actions is treated very generally in Penn, Patty and Gailmard (2011) and Gailmard, Patty and Penn (2008). 3Obviously, the same logic applies to executives and judges, particularly those on collegial courts. 4We mention and set to the side for future work the fact that electoral incentives within a legislature could have similar effects, to the degree that some individuals seek to stake out positions on issues through dilatory tactics or other forms of obstruction (Patty16). 2 or targeted and the voter is generally predisposed to favor the bills proposed on the agenda. Such voters will prefer moderate candidates: candidates whose platforms are more likely to “fall between” the alternatives brought up on the agenda. Finally, our theory illustrates that asymmetric, or partisan, gatekeeping procedures (e.g., Crombez, Groseclose and Krehbiel (2006), Patty (2007)) can induce strong asymmetries between the preferences of voters whose preferences are on opposite sides of the political spectrum. We note at the outset that we are not offering a theory of electoral competition: that is, we are not attempting to explain how candidates choose the platforms they offer to voters.5 Rather we note at the outset that, as a high profile example, there is very little evidence in favor of policy convergence in Congressional or presidential elections in the United States. With that introduction in hand, we now present our theory.