Replication data for: Explaining Explanations: How Legislators Explain their Policy Positions and How Citizens React (doi:10.7910/DVN/26714)

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Part 1: Document Description
Part 2: Study Description
Part 3: Data Files Description
Part 4: Variable Description
Part 5: Other Study-Related Materials
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Replication data for: Explaining Explanations: How Legislators Explain their Policy Positions and How Citizens React

doi:10.7910/DVN/26714

Harvard Dataverse

2014-07-28

2

Grose, Christian; Malhotra, Neil; Van Houweling, Rob, 2014, "Replication data for: Explaining Explanations: How Legislators Explain their Policy Positions and How Citizens React", https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/26714, Harvard Dataverse, V2, UNF:5:EqkeM4sE8zI1uqIP3RD7gg== [fileUNF]

Replication data for: Explaining Explanations: How Legislators Explain their Policy Positions and How Citizens React

doi:10.7910/DVN/26714

Grose, Christian (University of Southern California)

Malhotra, Neil (Stanford University)

Van Houweling, Rob (University of California, Berkeley)

Grose, Christian

Harvard Dataverse

Christian Grose

Grose, Christian

2014-07-14

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/26714

Social Sciences, Congress, Mechanical Turk, Surveys, Voting, Field experiments, Political participation, Immigration policy, Senate, Representation

Legislators claim that how they explain their votes matters as much as or more than the roll calls themselves. However, few studies have systematically examined legislators' explanations and citizen attitudes in response to these explanations. We theorize that legislators strategically tailor explanations to constituents in order to compensate for policy choices that are incongruent with constituent preferences, and to reinforce policy choices that are congruent. We conduct a within-subjects field experiment using U.S. senators as subjects to test this hypothesis. We then conduct a between-subjects survey experiment of ordinary people to see how they react to the explanatory strategies used by senators in the field experiment. We find that most senators tailor their explanations to th eir audiences, and that these tailored explanations are effective at currying support -- especially among people who disagree with the legislators' roll-call positions.

United States

Study 1: Subjects are U.S. senators; Study 2: Subjects are ordinary Americans.

Study 1: Field experimental data; Study 2: Survey experimental data.

Version Date: 2014-07-14Version Text: 1

<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0">CC0 1.0</a>

Grose, Christian R., Neil Malhotra, and Robert Parks Van Houweling. 2015. “Explaining Explanations: How Legislators Explain Their Policy Positions and How Citizens React.” <i>American Journal of Political Science</i> 59 (3): 724-743.

10.1111/ajps.12164

Grose, Christian R., Neil Malhotra, and Robert Parks Van Houweling. 2015. “Explaining Explanations: How Legislators Explain Their Policy Positions and How Citizens React.” <i>American Journal of Political Science</i> 59 (3): 724-743.

• Number of cases: 97

• No. of variables per record: 49

• Type of File: text/tab-separated-values

UNF:5:EqkeM4sE8zI1uqIP3RD7gg==

Experiment 1 dataset

• state
• senator
• party
• years
• firstterm
• kerry04
• medianincome
• college
• foreignborn
• respond_anti - Responded to Anti-letter
• companti_anti - Mentioned Anti-action to Anti-letter
• comppro_anti - Mentioned Pro-action to Anti-letter
• respond_pro - Responded to Pro-letter
• companti_pro - Mentioned Anti-action to Pro-letter
• comppro_pro - Mentioned Pro-action to Pro-letter
• respond_agree
• respond_disagree
• cloture2_agree
• cloture2_disagree
• pro_balance
• anti_balance
• cloture2006
• cloture2006_agree
• cloture2006_disagree
• mention_cloturevote_agreeoc - mention_cloturevote_agreeOC
• mention_cloturevote_disagreeoc - mention_cloturevote_disagreeOC
• nextelection
• electioncycle
• retired_left
• population
• cloture2_agree_noresponse0
• cloture2_disagree_noresponse0
• noresponsetoboth
• zresp_two
• zresp_pro
• zresp_anti
• zresp_one
• zresp_zero
• number_responded
• cycle_08
• cycle_10
• cycle_12
• medianincome_x
• population_x
• retired_left2
• companti_pro_noresponse0
• companti_anti_noresponse0
• comppro_pro_noresponse0
• comppro_anti_noresponse0

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Label:

Study 2 Replication.zip

Text:

Experiment 2 data, readme, and other files.

application/zip

Label:

study1replication071414final.do

Text:

Commands to replicate tables in text and appendices related to Experiment 1 (Stata .do file).

text/x-stata-syntax; charset=US-ASCII

Label:

study2replication.do

Text:

Commands to replicate tables in text and appendices related to Experiment 2 (Stata .do file).

text/x-stata-syntax; charset=US-ASCII