3 - Can Citizens Assess Policies Based on Programs’ Costs and Benefits? The Role of Yardsticks and Contextual Information in Democratic Accountability

Summary

In Chapter 3, Eric M. Patashnik, Patrick Tucker, and Alan S. Gerber employ evidence from two original survey experiments to explore voter responses to representatives’ actions. In the first set of experiments, voters learn that their representative has claimed credit for bringing the district a grant. But how do voters evaluate the lawmaker’s performance? Do they rely on the absolute size of the grant, or on its size relative to other grants when allocating rewards and punishment to a representative? The authors find that individuals are responsive to information about the relative, but not absolute, size of grants, and are more inclined to punish legislators for delivering below-average grants than reward them for securing above-average ones. The second set of experiments manipulates information about different kinds of benefits, and shows respondents react more strongly to information about specific policies than abstract ones. Together, the results indicate that citizens’ ability to hold representatives accountable depends on citizens’ ability to put policy actions into a concrete context they find meaningful.