Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Prologue
- 1 Sunshine in the Statehouse
- Part I Transparency and State Legislatures
- Part II Transparency and The Mass Public
- 6 Public Demand
- 7 Attitudinal Consequences
- 8 The Electoral Connection
- 9 Does Democracy Require Transparency?
- References
- Index
8 - The Electoral Connection
from Part II - Transparency and The Mass Public
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 August 2022
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Prologue
- 1 Sunshine in the Statehouse
- Part I Transparency and State Legislatures
- Part II Transparency and The Mass Public
- 6 Public Demand
- 7 Attitudinal Consequences
- 8 The Electoral Connection
- 9 Does Democracy Require Transparency?
- References
- Index
Summary
In principle, voting is the mechanism by which citizen preferences translate into representatives’ action. If our theoretical expectations hold anywhere, we expect that it would be in a politically consequential setting such as elections. We address this possibility in Chapter 8 by analyzing a wealth of data on candidates and voting in state legislative elections as well as interest groups’ campaign donation and lobbying activity. We find that transparency laws do not improve the electoral chances of challengers. When a state opens its meetings, the pool of candidates does not change and incumbents’ vote share is barely affected. In contrast, the picture does change significantly for interest groups. We find that, in open meetings states, these groups’ donations to incumbents increase by substantial amounts while their contributions to challengers remain basically the same. Additionally, the size of the organized interest community is notably larger when a state holds open meetings. In short, an unintended consequence of transparency is that it facilitates interest groups’ capacity to seek access through elections and lobby state governments to achieve their policy goals.
Keywords
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Illusion of AccountabilityTransparency and Representation in American Legislatures, pp. 218 - 243Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022