Author here. Not sure why this is showing up today but happy to answer questions!
FWIW, we have data from 2014 across many more issues and the basic story is the same. Haven't finished writing that up.
FWIW, we have data from 2014 across many more issues and the basic story is the same. Haven't finished writing that up.
As an aside, as someone who has started one company in the space of citizen engagement and been in product exec roles at two others, I wonder whether or not rep engagement with constituents is a problem that can be solved with technology or if it is cultural in nature and requires more individual leadership to right the ship. I have met with a large number of reps from city, state and federal levels in order to build an understanding of the strategic problems that are top of mind for them. I have found (generally) that much more effort is paid in "dealing" with inbound messages and heading off harsh judgement in the court of public opinion than procuring good data.
TL;DR tech is important but far from a panacea and something reps don't really think about.
A1: The world would be better if politicians paid more attention to public opinion or knew more about it. I don't think this is so clear. Citizens support many policies not in their interest, don't know everything that experts do, etc. Most democracies reflect a tradeoff between popular control on the one hand and expert judgment / elite control on the other. I don't think either extreme is the best, and don't know where we are on that continuum relative to the ideal. But for what it's worth, my sense is that citizens actually understand this to some extent and ofter defer to legislators' judgments: http://stanford.edu/~dbroock/papers/broockman_butler_legisla...
A2: In order to increase citizen engagement, we should focus on lowering the cost of acquiring information about politics, the cost of participation, or the cost of providing information to representatives. I think this misses the real challenge: increasing people's motivation to participate and the benefits to participation. It's never been easier to participate in myriad ways -- the cost is epsilon. But if people see the benefits as zero, which many seem to, they still won't engage. I don't think the cost side of the equation is where the action is.
So even if the populace is apathetic, at least they can't be taken advantaged of.
1) Politicians don't care about constituent's current opinions, but about their future response to actions the politican might undertake. For example, recent articles indicate widespread support in the U.S. for gun control, but a politician might anticipate: If I support a gun control measure then the NRA will run ads in my district; that will change many opinions [1], spread other negative stories about me, and galvanize my opponents both in public discussion and when getting voters to the polls.
2) The large differences between different subgroups explain the difference: All constituents, all voters, primary voters, and the few who vote in state legislative elections. (I challenge HN readers to name your state representatives without looking them up.)
If these issues are covered in the paper, I apologize; I read what I could now and searched the paper for related terms, but won't have time to finish reading until much later.
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[1] I don't know that ads have this effect. My impression is that most people's opinions are weakly held and that they follow the herd on most issues (whichever herd they feel they belong to).
On (1), the mental model I have is more like an understanding of who the super-intense supporters are. 90% of people might say they support background checks for gun purchases, but it's the 10% who support it who are voting on the basis of that issue, in part due to organizations like the NRA. I think our findings are consistent with that, in the sense that politicians seem to believe they don't need to learn what public opinion is in order to get re-elected; they can focus on other forms of information-gathering.
On (2), I suspect there is something there, but it's hard to make sense of Democrats from that angle, as Democratic primary voters, for example, are more liberal than the average person, yet Democratic politicians don't seem to see their districts as more liberal than they are. My guess is the key group is something more like "the people who choose to write in and go to meetings."
Thanks for your insights, and for taking the time to answer!
Is your research group working on anything in this vein?
Interesting. Is government, by which I assume you mean elected officials, really aging?
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/20...