Campaign Promises, Democratic Governance, and Environmental Policy in the U.S. Congress1
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The Policy Studies Journal, Vol. 41, No. 2, 2013
Campaign Promises, Democratic Governance, and
Environmental Policy in the U.S. Congress1
Evan J. Ringquist, Milena I. Neshkova, and Joseph Aamidor
One important criterion for assessing the quality of democratic governance is the extent to which the
policy process effectively translates citizen preferences into collective choices. Several scholars have
observed a discrepancy between citizen preferences for strong environmental protection and weak
policies adopted in the United States, indicating that the United States may fall short on this criterion.
We examine one possible mechanism contributing to this discrepancy—legislator defection from cam-
paign promises. Our data indicate that legislators in the U.S. Congress routinely defect from their
campaign promises in environmental protection, undermining the link between citizen preferences and
policy choice. We also find that legislators are much more likely to defect from pro-environmental
campaign promises, which moves government policy toward less stringent environmental programs.
Finally, the propensity of legislators to defect from their campaign promises is systematic, with
defection affected by partisanship, constituency influence, the influence of the majority party, and the
likely consequences of defection for policy choice. These findings contribute empirical evidence relevant
to the “mandate theory” perspective on how citizen preferences are translated into collective choices
through the policy process. These findings may also complement research in comparative politics
concluding that legislatures selected through single member districts adopt less stringent environmen-
tal policies than do legislatures chosen via proportional representation in that the mechanism for this
effect may go through legislator defection from campaign promises.
KEY WORDS: democratic representation, campaign promises, roll-call votes, environmental policy,
Project Vote Smart, NPAT
Introduction
At the beginning of the modern environmental era, the United States was broadly
looked to as a leader for the strength and scope of its environmental protection
policies. More recently, observers have pointed out that environmental policies in the
United States lag behind those in other advanced industrial democracies (Switzer,
2001; Vig & Faure, 2004). If citizen support for environmental protection is system-
atically lower in the United States, then less aggressive policies would be an indicator
of effective democratic governance. But by most measures, citizen support for envi-
ronmental protection is no different in the United States than in these other nations.
For example, an average of 61.8 percent of citizens in 10 Western European nations
365
0190-292X © 2013 Policy Studies Organization
Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc., 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ.366 Policy Studies Journal, 41:2
and Japan responded that they would be willing to pay higher prices in return for
stronger environmental protection regulations. In the United States during the same
period, this figure is 65 percent. Similarly, an average of 64.7 percent of citizens in 10
Western European nations and Japan responded that they would support greater
efforts at environmental protection even at the expense of economic growth. In the
United States during the same time period, this figure is 58 percent (Dunlap, Gallup,
& Gallup, 1999). An average of 96.8 percent of citizens in 17 Western European
nations and Japan supported government efforts to protect the environment. In the
United States during this same period, the figure is 96 percent (Mertig & Dunlap,
2001). Finally, an average of 8.4 percent of citizens in 17 Western European nations
and Japan belonged to an environmental interest group. In the United States during
this same period, the figure was 15.9 percent (Dalton, 2005). These observations
suggest two research questions:
1. Why does the policy process in the United States produce weaker environmental
policies than citizens might prefer?
2. Why does the policy process in the United States produce weaker environmental
policies than in other industrial democracies?
In this manuscript we address the first question by examining one possible
source of slippage between citizen preferences and public policy—the extent to
which elected officials defect from their campaign promises. We investigate this
mechanism by examining the correspondence between the environmental campaign
promises and the policy choices made by members of the U.S. House of Represen-
tatives and U.S. Senate between 1992 and 2004. Specifically, we measure the extent of
defection from campaign promises, and we predict the propensity of legislators to defect
from their campaign promises. Our results indicate that legislators in the United
States routinely defect from their campaign promises, undermining the link between
citizen preferences and government policy choices, and posing difficulties for
mandate theory as an explanation for how these preferences are translated into
policy choices within democratic systems. In addition, we find that legislators are
significantly more likely to defect from pro-environmental campaign promises,
which has the effect of moving environmental policy toward less stringent programs.
Our findings may also have implications for the second question, as more frequent
defection from campaign promises in single-member district (SMD) legislative
systems like the United States may help account for the observation that the United
States and other SMD systems adopt weaker environmental policies than do nations
with legislatures chosen via proportional representation (PR).
The remainder of the manuscript proceeds as follows. First, we examine the role
of campaign promises in effective democratic governance. Second, we discuss our
methods of measuring campaign promises and for linking campaign promises to
legislator policy choice. Third, we look at the frequency with which members of the
U.S. Congress defect from their campaign promises in environmental policy. Fourth,
we describe the models used to predict the propensity of legislators to defect from
campaign promises in environmental protection. Finally, we explore the implicationsRingquist/Neshkova/Aamidor: Promises, Governance, and Policy in U.S. Congress 367
of our results for the observation that legislatures selected through SMDs adopt less
stringent environmental policies than do legislatures chosen via PR.
Campaign Promises, Representation, and Environmental Policy
Campaign Promises and Effective Democratic Representation
The most common theory of democratic representation, often labeled mandate
theory, sees popular preferences being translated into public policy through a major-
ity of voters choosing representatives whose policies they prefer.2 Sullivan and
O’Connor (1972) offer four conditions that must be met if elections are to facilitate
public influence over policymaking via mandate theory:
1. Opposing candidates for office must offer voters differing issue positions.
2. Voters must perceive the issue positions of candidates.
3. Voters must cast their ballots on the basis of these perceived issue positions.
4. Winning candidates must vote in accordance with their preelection issue
positions.
The requirements of mandate theory as employed by Sullivan and O’Connor
(1972), McDonald, Mendes, and Budge (2004), and others are virtually identical to
Mansbridge’s notion of “promisory representation” where candidates seek to attract
voters by making promises regarding future policy choices, and voters evaluate
candidates based upon these promises (Mansbridge, 2003). In promisory represen-
tation, “voters’ power works forward to hold representatives to the promises they
made at election time” (Disch, 2011, p. 101). For both mandate theory and promisory
representation, then, legislator fidelity to campaign promises is a necessary condition
for effective democratic governance.
While there is widespread popular and scholarly skepticism regarding each of
the four elements of mandate theory, the empirical evidence suggests that conditions
1–3 may be commonly met in practice, at least in the United States. First, the Demo-
cratic and Republican parties offer meaningfully different issue positions to voters
both generally (Ansolabehere, Snyder, & Stewart, 2001a; Erikson & Wright, 2001;
Kahn & Kenney, 2001) and regarding environmental policy in particular (Shipan &
Lowry, 2001). Second, despite the perception that voters in Congressional elections
are poorly informed, several studies indicate that many voters, much of the time,
correctly perceive the issue positions of candidates (Aldrich, Sullivan, & Borgida,
1989; Ansolabehere & Jones, 2010; Buttice & Stone, 2012; Kahn & Kenney, 2001;
Lodge, Steenbergen, & Brau, 1995; Wright & Berkman, 1986). Third, much of this
research also concludes that voters’ choices in elections are influenced by and/or
reflect these perceived differences in candidate issue positions (Ansolabehere &
Jones, 2010; Lodge et al., 1995; Toms & Van Houweling, 2008; Wright & Berkman,
1986). To quote Phillip Edward Jones, “the buck that stops with members of368 Policy Studies Journal, 41:2
Congress is for the positions that they take, not for the policy outcomes that they
preside over” (Jones, 2011, p. 764).
This evidence regarding the applicability of conditions 1–3 does not mean that
the debate over these conditions is settled. This evidence does suggest, however, that
citizens are more competent than previously believed, and therefore more capable of
expressing coherent preferences and holding their representatives accountable for
actions that are incompatible with these preferences (Disch, 2011). By contrast, we
know very little about condition 4. One piece of early research demonstrated that
members of the House of Representatives in the 90th Congress voted congruently
with preferences expressed prior to their election (Sullivan & O’Connor, 1972). More
recently, Ansolabehere, Snyder, and Stewart (2001b) found a high level of congru-
ence between candidate policy positions and roll call votes in the 103rd through
105th Congress across several issue areas. By examining this question in the aggre-
gate, however, neither of these studies evaluated the extent to which representatives
defected from specific campaign promises. Ringquist and Dasse (2004) provide what
may be the only systematic investigation of whether candidates for Congress keep
specific campaign promises after they are elected. While these authors found that
legislators voted consistent with their campaign promises in a majority of instances,
this study is quite limited in that it examined a single chamber (the U.S. House of
Representatives) for a single Congress (the 105th). More evidence is needed as to
whether condition 4 of mandate theory holds in practice.
Campaign Promises, Environmental Politics, and Environmental Policy
The link between fidelity to campaign promises and effective democratic repre-
sentation applies to all policy areas. We argue here that the characteristics of envi-
ronmental politics make defection from campaign promises especially likely in
environmental policy, and that these defections should move legislative choice
toward less stringent environmental policies.
In the United States, environmental protection is a salient public issue but a
much less salient electoral issue for the majority of citizens. That is, large majorities
support greater governmental efforts to protect and improve environmental quality,
but few voters cast their votes on the basis of environmental issues (see Dunlap, 1995;
Rosenbaum, 2010). Moreover, opponents of environmental regulation generally have
more resources, and carry more clout in Congress, than do supporters of environ-
mental protection (Kamieniecki, 2006; Kraft, 2006). In this situation, candidates face
strong incentives to make pro-environmental campaign promises consistent with
public opinion. After the election, however, lobbyists and other powerbrokers
employ their resources to encourage members of Congress to vote the anti-
environmental position on legislation. Because few voters cast their ballots on the
basis of the environmental policy choices of legislators, there are few electoral
repercussions for this behavior. Such a situation is ripe for defection.
The argument in the preceding paragraph has two observable implications: first,
that defection from campaign promises should be more common in environmentalRingquist/Neshkova/Aamidor: Promises, Governance, and Policy in U.S. Congress 369
protection than in other policy areas; and second, that legislators should be more
likely to defect from pro-environmental campaign promises than from anti-
environmental campaign promises. This second implication might even be consid-
ered rational, as pro-environmental promises are consistent with general citizen
preferences while defection from these promises is consistent with the preferences of
the most powerful stakeholders in the legislative environment. A predominance of
defection from pro-environmental campaign promises will produce more anti-
environmental votes on legislation, thereby moving policy choices toward less strin-
gent environmental policies. Because we only examine environmental policy, we
cannot test the first implication. We can test the second.
Connecting Campaign Promises to Policy Choices
In order to measure the frequency of defection from campaign promises, we
need a measure of candidate campaign promises and a method for connecting these
promises to specific policy decisions made by legislators.
Measuring Campaign Promises
No source of information regarding campaign promises is without problems.
Relying upon campaign literature, advertising, or stories in newspapers presents
serious logistical difficulties if one wants to obtain data for all major party candidates
(though see Hill, 2001, and Sulkin, 2005). These sources pose two additional prob-
lems for systematic assessments of the extent to which candidates keep their cam-
paign promises: (i) candidates may not express issue positions in the same policy
areas, and (ii) the information these sources provide regarding candidate policy
positions is often vague and typically avoids controversial issues (Klotz, 1997; West,
1993). Faced with these problems, previous scholars have gathered information on
the preelection policy preferences of candidates through surveys (Barrett & Cook,
1991; Sullivan & O’Connor, 1972; Wright & Berkman, 1986). While these surveys
overcome the problems noted previously, they cannot properly be considered cam-
paign promises because the policy positions expressed in the surveys were never
made public, and therefore were unavailable to voters.
We obtain data on candidate campaign promises from the National Political
Awareness Test (NPAT). In each election since 1992, Project Vote Smart, a nonprofit,
nonpartisan organization, has surveyed American legislative candidates about their
positions on specific issues. The NPAT provides candidates with lists of policy
alternatives, and asks the candidates to identify which of these options they support.
We take our data for campaign promises from the sections of the 1992–2002 NPATs
dealing with environmental protection.3 We coded each candidate’s response to each
of the 57 environmental policy questions asked during this period, attaching a score
of 0 to “anti-environmental” responses (e.g., opposition to strengthening the Clean
Water Act) and a score of 1 to “pro-environmental” responses (e.g., supportive of
strengthening the Clean Water Act).4370 Policy Studies Journal, 41:2
We contend that this measure of the expression of candidates’ intentions is
superior to those used in the past. Critically, Project Vote Smart intends for NPAT
responses to be interpreted as campaign promises, and advertises them as such (G.
C. Wright, personal communication, January 15, 2006). Compared with the survey
results used in previous research, NPAT responses are eminently public. News
programs on all major networks, each of the major weekly newsmagazines, and
dozens of the most prominent daily newspapers in the United States have featured
articles on the candidate information contained in the NPAT. The NPAT website
receives more than 16 million hits each day, and Project Vote Smart staff responds to
hundreds of thousands of additional inquiries each year via telephone (Project Vote
Smart, 2007). In some ways, information regarding candidate policy intentions from
the NPAT may be of higher quality than similar information from the candidates’
campaigns, as the NPAT forces all candidates to take clear positions on specific policy
issues. A final indicator of the value of the NPAT is the frequency with which
scholars are relying upon this survey to measure candidate issue positions
(Ansolabehere et al., 2001a, 2001b; Erikson & Wright, 2001; Ringquist & Dasse, 2004;
Shor, Berry, & McCarty, 2010; Shor & McCarty, 2011).5
Matching Campaign Promises to Legislator Policy Choices
We measure legislators’ policy choices using roll call votes on environmental
legislation. Roll calls do not represent all actions Senators and Representatives can
take to affect public policy (Hall, 1996; Sulkin, 2005). Moreover, as legislation often
contains elements relating to widely different policy areas, it is sometimes difficult
to use individual roll call votes to gauge the specific policy consequences of actions
taken by members of Congress. Most important legislative policy decisions,
however, are recorded using roll call votes, and roll calls are the most commonly
used measure of Congressional behavior in academic research. We take steps to
assure that our roll calls represent specific policy decisions by excluding appropria-
tions bills and omnibus bills. In addition, a large percentage of our roll calls are not
on bills per se, but on specific amendments to these bills.
We employed three tactics for identifying roll call votes related to specific NPAT
questions. First, we examined the brief reported summaries of all roll call votes taken
in the House and Senate in the 103rd–108th Congresses. When these summaries
indicated that a bill or amendment might be related to one of the NPAT questions, we
obtained a detailed bill summary to confirm this possibility. Second, recognizing that
the first approach might miss some relevant legislation, we crafted three keyword
phrases for each of the 57 NPAT questions, used these keywords in searches of all
bills and amendments introduced in the House and Senate in the 103rd–108th
Congresses, and examined closely the summaries and legislative histories of all bills
and amendments identified this way. Third, we compared all of the key roll call votes
identified by the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) in the 103rd–108th Con-
gresses with the 57 NPAT questions. Any relevant key votes that were not identified
using the first two search protocols were added to the data set. Using these tactics, we
identified 87 roll call votes in the House and 62 roll call votes in the Senate directlyRingquist/Neshkova/Aamidor: Promises, Governance, and Policy in U.S. Congress 371
related to questions from the environmental policy sections of the NPAT. We coded
legislators’ votes on each roll call, assigning a value of 0 to anti-environmental votes
and a value of 1 to pro-environmental votes.
In many cases, matching roll call votes to NPAT responses was quite easy. For
example, the 2002 NPAT asked candidates whether they supported the increased use
of alternative fuel technology. One matched roll call vote is 108.2.321 on House
amendment 624 to increase spending on renewable energy programs by $30 million.
In other cases, matches were more difficult. For example, the 1996 NPAT asked
candidates for Congress whether they supported requiring the federal government
to reimburse citizens when environmental regulations limit the use of private prop-
erty. One matched roll call vote is 105.2.197 on Senate bill 2271, which simplified
access to the federal courts for injured parties whose rights and privileges have been
deprived by final actions of federal agencies. While the title and brief description of
the bill are not obviously related to the NPAT question, a detailed examination of the
bill’s contents shows that the sole rationale for the bill was to make it easier for
citizens to sue federal agencies for reimbursement when environmental regulations
reduced the value or otherwise limited the use of their property. Clearly, then, a vote
in favor of Senate bill 2271 is consistent with an NPAT response favoring govern-
mental compensation for regulatory takings in environmental protection.
How Often Do Legislators Defect from Campaign Promises?
We use the NPAT responses and matched roll call votes described previously to
construct a dichotomous variable coded 1 whenever a member of Congress defects
from their campaign promise (i.e., when their roll call vote is inconsistent with their
NPAT response) and 0 otherwise. Aggregating this variable across all legislators and
bills, we find that from 1993 through 2004, members of the House of Representatives
defected from their campaign promises 31 percent of the time, while Senators
defected 41 percent of the time (see Table 1).6
These single figures for each chamber mask significant heterogeneity in defec-
tion. First, defection is much more likely from pro-environmental campaign prom-
ises than from anti-environmental campaign promises. In the House of
Representatives, anti-environmental campaign promises were kept nearly 78 percent
of the time (defection rates were 22.1 percent), while pro-environmental campaign
promises were kept only 60.4 percent of the time (defection rates were 39.6 percent).
Stated differently, while our data set is split almost evenly between pro-
environmental (52.7 percent) and anti-environmental (47.3 percent) campaign prom-
ises, 66.6 percent of the defections in our data set were from pro-environmental
campaign promises. These figures are roughly similar in the U.S. Senate, though
overall defection rates were higher. By a 2:1 margin, then, defections moved legis-
lator policy choice in a more anti-environmental direction.
Second, the propensity to defect varies across issue areas. We calculate defection
rates for seven issue areas in environmental policy, and Table 1 shows that the
probability of defection varies substantially across these issue areas. While patterns
of defection across issues differ for the House and Senate, defection rates are gener-372 Policy Studies Journal, 41:2
Table 1. Proportion of the Time Members of Congress Defect from Campaign Promises on
Environmental Policy Roll Call Votes, 103rd–108th Congress
House Defection Rate Senate Defection Rate
Overall defection rate 0.31 0.41
By valence of campaign promise
Pro-environmental promise 0.40 0.44
Anti-environmental promise 0.22 0.34
By Congress
103rd 0.34 0.33
104th 0.28 0.27
105th 0.34 0.34
106th 0.34 0.52
107th 0.47 0.45
108th 0.21 0.41
By issue type
Pollution control 0.25 0.37
Natural resources 0.27 0.34
Property rights 0.28 0.23
Regulatory reform 0.34 0.17
Climate change 0.30 0.42
Energy 0.42 0.45
Endangered species 0.48 0.49
By party
Democrat 0.34 0.30
Republican 0.29 0.47
ally higher for legislation addressing energy policy and endangered species protec-
tion, while defection rates are generally lower for legislation seeking to establish or
redefine property rights or reform environmental regulation.
Third, the propensity to defect varies over time. We see that in the House the
defection rate was significantly higher during the 107th Congress, while in the Senate
defection peaked during the 106th Congress. In neither chamber do we see any trend
in defection rates over time, and we note that the higher overall defection rate in the
Senate is not a consistent phenomenon, but an artifact of the 106th and 108th Con-
gresses. We consider two possible explanations for these differences across Con-
gresses; though given the small sample size (6 Congresses), our results should be
seen as speculative rather than definitive. First, research on parliamentary systems
has found lower congruence between citizen preferences and policy choices in
coalition governments than in majority governments (Blais & Bodet, 2006; Golder &
Stramski, 2010). A similar phenomenon may operate in the United States, with
higher defection rates during periods of divided party control over the legislature.
During our time frame, legislative control was divided only during the 107th Con-
gress, but this Congress saw the highest levels of defection in the House and the
second highest in the Senate. Second, defection rates may vary as a function of the
different mix of issues addressed by each Congress. To assess this explanation, for
each Congress we calculated the proportion of roll call votes cast in issue areas
identified in Table 1 where defection rates exceeded .40, and correlated this with the
defection rate. This correlation is a robust .46, indicating that the defection rates are
highest in Congresses with large proportions of bills addressing energy policy,Ringquist/Neshkova/Aamidor: Promises, Governance, and Policy in U.S. Congress 373
climate change, and endangered species. This suggests that defection rates differ
across Congresses not because individual propensities to defect differ over time, but
because the relative frequency of roll call votes in high defection issue areas does.
Predicting Defection from Campaign Promises
The Dependent Variable
The dependent variable in the prediction models is a dichotomous indicator of
whether a particular legislator defected from her campaign promise (coded 1). This
is the same variable used to construct Table 1. Not all members of Congress
responded to the NPAT, however, and for these members we are missing informa-
tion regarding defection (i.e., the dependent variable is partially unobserved). We
might expect that the decision to respond to the NPAT is correlated with the decision
to defect from the NPAT response—e.g., legislators intending to break a campaign
promise may be unwilling to advertise the campaign promise in the first place. In
this situation, NPAT responses and defection are jointly determined, and the partial
observability of NPAT responses is compounded by their endogeneity. The tradi-
tional approach for dealing with partially observed, binary endogenous variables was
developed by Heckman (1979; see also Puhani, 2000). Our original models of defec-
tion employed one equation predicting the propensity of a winning candidate to
respond to the NPAT and a second equation predicting the propensity to defect (i.e.,
we employed bivariate probit models with selection). Diagnostics from these models
showed that NPAT responses and defection are independent after controlling for the
other variables in the defection model (see the Wald tests in Table 2). Therefore, we
report the results from simple probit models in Table 2.
A Baseline Model for Defection from Campaign Promises
As we have seen, there is little research investigating whether elected officials
make policy choices consistent with their preelection pronouncements. Conse-
quently, there is no established body of scholarship identifying the most important
factors explaining legislator defection from campaign promises. One place to begin
this investigation is by considering factors that lead to representation distortion and
bias more generally. For example, McDonald et al. (2004) find that distortion and bias
are larger in legislatures selected through SMDs than through PR. This important
discovery gives us little leverage, however, as all members of the U.S. Congress are
chosen through SMDs. More useful is the research by Kim, Powell, and Fording
(2010, p. 1) demonstrating that “party system polarization seems to be the predomi-
nate factor shaping distortion of governments’ relationship with the median voter.”
While Kim et al. were discussing the gap between citizen preferences and legislative
policy positions, we might also expect that partisan polarization creates distortion
between citizen preferences and legislative policy choices. Specifically, partisanship374 Policy Studies Journal, 41:2
Table 2. Probit Coefficients for Defection from Environmental Campaign Promises,
103rd–108th Congress
Independent Variables House House Senate Senate
Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model 2
Base model
Pro-environmental promise -0.673*** -0.392*** -1.063*** -0.938***
(0.039) (0.110) (0.159) (0.205)
Republican party -1.184*** -0.743*** -0.941*** -0.929***
(0.040) (0.159) (0.159) (0.171)
Pro-environmental promise × 2.044*** 1.523*** 1.924*** 1.821***
Republican party (0.051) (0.142) (0.183) (0.268)
Factors enhancing representation
Distance from constituents 0.449*** 0.239*
(0.058) (0.129)
Contributions anti-promise -0.598** 0.277
(0.238) (0.175)
Time since campaign promise — 0.026
— (0.023)
Factors compromising representation
Contributions pro-promise 0.094 0.111
(0.174) (0.105)
Terms in office -0.0002 -0.007
(0.0004) (0.020)
Control variables
Closeness of vote -0.002*** -0.005*
(0.0002) (0.002)
Majority party member -0.064 -0.122
(0.131) (0.108)
Majority party member × 0.001*** -0.001
Closeness of vote (0.0003) (0.003)
Party deviation 0.066 -0.045
(0.192) (0.449)
LCV key vote -0.011 -0.026
(0.030) (0.079)
Environmental extremism -0.006*** 0.005
(0.001) (0.004)
Constant 0.105** -0.213* 0.331** -0.008
(0.034) (0.109) (0.142) (0.256)
Psuedo-R2 0.12 0.15 0.10 0.12
Wald test for independence 2.15 0.85 0.77 0.81
N 14,143 14,131 1,321 1,321
Note: Numbers in parentheses are clustered standard errors.
*p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001, one-tailed tests.
LCV, League of Conservation Voters.
may affect the propensity to defect from campaign promises, thereby contributing
to distortion between the policy preferences of voters and the policy choices of
legislatures.
Party polarization has increased in the United States during the past generation.
This polarization is especially noteworthy in the previously bipartisan area of envi-
ronmental policy, with Democrats and Republicans staking out increasingly pro- and
anti-environmental policy positions, respectively (Nelson, 2002; Shipan & Lowry,
2001). The story linking defection and party polarization is not simple and straight-Ringquist/Neshkova/Aamidor: Promises, Governance, and Policy in U.S. Congress 375
forward. We do not expect that members of one party will be more likely to defect
from their campaign promises. Rather, increased partisanship means that members of
each party will be more likely to defect from a particular type of campaign promise. Specifi-
cally, Republicans will be more likely to defect from pro-environmental campaign
promises, while Democrats will be more likely to defect from anti-environmental
campaign promises. Defection then serves to exacerbate preexisting partisan tenden-
cies in environmental policy, pushing policy choices toward extreme positions. This
contributes to short-term distortions between citizen preferences and policy choices
of the sort that Kim et al. (2010) find with respect to legislative policy positions.
While we do not have an expectation regarding the independent effect of
political party on the probability of defection, this is not true for the content of
the campaign promises. Previously we offered an argument as to why U.S. legis-
lators should be more likely to defect from pro-environmental campaign promises,
and Table 1 presents evidence consistent with this argument. In our prediction
model, we expect greater levels of defection from pro-environmental campaign
promises.
Our baseline model predicts defection from campaign promises using partisan-
ship and the content of the campaign promise. To test the baseline model, we use a
dichotomous variable identifying Republican Representatives and Senators (coded
1), a dichotomous variable identifying pro-environmental campaign promises
(coded 1), and an interaction term that is the product of these two variables. The
results are presented in columns 1 and 3 of Table 2, and these results strongly
support the intuition behind the baseline model. The positive coefficients on the
interaction terms indicate that Republicans are more likely to defect from pro-
environmental campaign promises, while the negative coefficients on the Republican
Party variable indicate that these same decision makers are significantly less likely to
defect from anti-environmental campaign promises. By contrast, Democrats are sig-
nificantly less likely to defect from pro-environmental campaign promises (an effect
captured by the pro-environmental promise coefficients) and significantly more
likely to defect from anti-environmental campaign promises (an effect captured by
the constant term).
The conditional effect of partisanship on the probability of defection is repre-
sented graphically in Figure 1a (for the House) and 1b (for the Senate). Figure 1a
shows that for Republican members of the House of Representatives, the probabil-
ity of defection rises from 14 percent for anti-environmental promises to 62 percent
for pro-environmental campaign promises. For Democratic representatives, the
comparable figures are 54 percent and 28 percent. Taken together, all members of
the House of Representatives are more likely to defect from pro-environmental
campaign promises (40 percent) than they are from anti-environmental campaign
promises (22 percent). We observe a similar pattern in Figure 1b for the Senate,
where Republicans are more likely to defect from pro-environmental campaign
promises (60 percent to 27 percent) and Democrats are less likely to defect from
pro-environmental campaign promises (23 percent to 63 percent). Overall, Senators
are more likely to defect from pro-environmental campaign promises (44 percent to
34 percent).376 Policy Studies Journal, 41:2
a
0.7
0.6
Probability of DefecƟon
0.5
0.4 Democrats
Republicans
0.3
Overall DefecƟon
0.2
0.1
0
AnƟ-Environmental Promise Pro-Environmental Promise
b
0.7
0.6
Probability of DefecƟon
0.5
0.4 Democrats
Republicans
0.3
Overall DefecƟon
0.2
0.1
0
AnƟ-Environmental Promise Pro-Environmental Promise
Figure 1. (a) U.S. House and (b) Senate Defections from Campaign Promises by Political Party and
Valence of Promise.
A More Complete Model for Defection from Campaign Promises
Partisanship and content are not the only factors contributing to the propensity
to defect from campaign promises. In an effort to specify this process more com-
pletely, we add to the base model factors that might enhance representation, factors
that might compromise representation, and a set of control variables.
Factors Potentially Enhancing Effective Representation. Legislator defection from cam-
paign promises need not always threaten popular sovereignty. We include three
variables that may improve representation by influencing the propensity of defection
from campaign promises. First, the policy choices of legislators are often responsiveRingquist/Neshkova/Aamidor: Promises, Governance, and Policy in U.S. Congress 377
to the wishes of constituencies (Erikson & Wright, 2001; Fenno, 1978; Miller & Stokes,
1963). Therefore, we expect that legislators will be more likely to defect if their policy
preferences are at odds with those of their constituents. Accurately measuring this
concept, which we term electoral distance, is somewhat complicated. We measure
constituency preferences using the most recent Republican candidate share of the
two-party vote for president in each legislative district (designated PRep), and
measure electoral distance using the difference between constituency preferences
(i.e., PRep) and the Republican legislative candidate’s share of the two-party vote in
the most recent election (designated CRep). The effect of a legislator’s distance from
her constituency, however, is conditional upon the direction of the distance and the
type of campaign promise that is made. Consider two examples: Legislator A is a
Republican who gives a pro-environmental NPAT response and wins 51 percent of
the vote in a district where the Republican presidential candidate received only 41
percent of the vote; legislator B is a Democrat who gives a pro-environmental NPAT
response and wins 53 percent of the vote in a district where the Republican presi-
dential candidate received 51 percent of the vote. Looking only at election returns,
legislator A is both more vulnerable (i.e., has a smaller winning margin) and is
further away from her constituency (i.e., a larger distance between her vote share and
the vote share of her party’s Presidential candidate) than is legislator B. We hypoth-
esize, however, that legislator A will receive less pressure to defect because her
pro-environmental campaign promise is more consistent with her constituency’s
preferences (where a majority voted for the Democratic presidential candidate) than
is legislator B’s pro-environmental response (where a majority voted for the Repub-
lican presidential candidate). To accurately capture this dynamic, our measure of
electoral distance is PRep–CRep for candidates that give pro-environmental NPAT
responses, and CRep–PRep for candidates that give anti-environmental NPAT
responses. In either case, higher values are associated with increased pressure to
defect.
Second, in U.S. elections, campaign contributions are a vital mechanism for
stakeholders to communicate their preferences to candidates. If campaign contri-
butions encourage legislators to remain faithful to their campaign promises, these
contributions serve to enhance democratic representation. We only have data for
campaign contributions from opponents of environmental regulation, so this
representation-enhancing function of contributions can only be observed for anti-
environmental campaign promises. Therefore, this independent variable takes on a
value of 0 for anti-environmental campaign contributions going to candidates
making pro-environmental campaign promises, and takes on the value of cam-
paign contributions received for candidates making anti-environmental campaign
promises. A negative coefficient estimate for this variable indicates that campaign
promises encourage members of Congress to remain faithful to anti-environmental
campaign promises.
Third, legislative candidates are asked to respond to the NPAT during each
election. For members of the House, this means that there is no more than a two-year
lag between their articulation of policy preferences and their policy choices, and this
lag is identical for all Representatives. Given the rotating election cycle in the Senate,378 Policy Studies Journal, 41:2
however, Senators may have made their relevant campaign promises anywhere from
one to six years prior to the roll call vote. Objective conditions may have changed
between the time the campaign promise was made and the time the roll call vote was
taken, or significant policy learning may have occurred during this period. Either of
these circumstances may render the original campaign promise less wise. Therefore,
we expect that in the Senate the probability of defection will increase with the time
elapsed since the campaign promise was made. We operationalize this expectation
with a variable measuring the number of years between the NPAT response and the
roll call vote.
Factors Potentially Compromising Effective Representation. We include two variables
that may degrade effective representation by influencing the propensity to defect
from campaign promises. First, while campaign contributions may improve the
quality of representation by encouraging legislator fidelity to campaign promises,
they may also compromise effective representation if they encourage legislators to
defect from campaign promises. Indeed, this latter effect is more commonly stated.
To test for this effect, we include a variable that takes on a value of 0 for legislators
making anti-environmental campaign promises, and takes on the value of campaign
contributions received from anti-environmental interests by candidates making pro-
environmental campaign promises. This variable is the complement to the campaign
contribution variable described earlier. The key difference is that by construction, we
expect that this variable will have a positive relationship with the propensity to
defect from pro-environmental campaign promises.
Second, one of the most forcefully articulated arguments for term limits is that
long-time legislators “go their own way” and lose touch with their constituency.
Parker (1992) formalizes this argument by claiming that over time, legislators seek to
maximize their policymaking discretion. This argument indicates that long-term
legislators may be more likely to defect from their campaign promises. We operation-
alize this expectation using the number of years each legislator has served in office.
Control Variables. We include six control variables in our full model predicting defec-
tion from campaign promises in environmental policy. First, we expect that legisla-
tors will be less likely to defect from their campaign promises when these defections
might significantly affect legislative outcomes. That is, that the closeness of the roll
call vote will have a negative effect on defection, all other things equal. We measure
the closeness of the roll call vote by subtracting the number of votes on the winning
side from the number of votes on the losing side of all roll calls, giving us a variable
where larger values represent closer votes.
Second, in virtually all legislatures majority parties have more resources at
their disposal to entice reluctant legislators to abandon their personal position on
an issue in favor of the official party position (e.g., Cox & McCubbins, 1993). There-
fore, our second control variable takes on a value of 1 for members of the majority
party.
Third, the resources of the majority party are not without limit, and thus it would
be irrational for the majority leadership to encourage defection on all roll call votes.Ringquist/Neshkova/Aamidor: Promises, Governance, and Policy in U.S. Congress 379
Rather, we expect that the leadership will target their resources to pressure for
defections on roll call votes where defections will have the greatest policy conse-
quences: exceptionally close votes. Consequently, our third control variable interacts
majority party membership with the continuous variable measuring the closeness of
the roll call vote. We expect that this interaction term will generate a positive
coefficient, indicating that members of the majority party are more likely to defect
from their campaign promises on close votes.
Fourth, we expect that if legislators defect from their campaign promises, they
will defect toward the position of their political party, and these defections will be
more likely among party deviants (i.e., legislators making campaign promises at
odds with the modal position of party members). We measure the position devia-
tion of legislators in the following way. First, we calculate the proportion of legis-
lators from each party who offer the modal (i.e., majority) response on each NPAT
question, and subtract this proportion from 1. The remainder, dubbed the party
position index, ranges from 0 to .5, with values closer to zero indicating greater
party unity on this issue. Next, we identify legislators whose NPAT responses
differ from the modal party response. We subtract the party position index from
the individual candidate’s position, with the absolute remainder representing indi-
vidual position deviations (this score will range from 0 to 1, with larger numbers
indicating greater deviation). An example helps illustrate this strategy. Assume that
90 percent of Republican legislators support limiting the designation of critical
habitat under the Endangered Species Act. The party position index here would
equal .10. Republican legislators who do not support this restriction are coded as
1 (the pro-environmental position), and the resulting individual position deviation
would be .90. All legislators with positions identical to the majority position of
their party receive deviation scores of 0.
Fifth, each year the LCV identifies a small number of key roll call votes on issues
of critical importance to the environmental policy community. We expect that legis-
lators will be less likely to defect from their campaign promises on issues of greatest
salience to members of the environmental policy subsystem (i.e., on LCV key votes).
We operationalize this expectation using a dichotomous variable coded 1 for LCV
key votes.
Finally, our model of defection would be incomplete without considering the
intensity with which legislators hold their policy preferences. We measure the
intensity of preference regarding environmental policy using a folded index of
LCV scores. Legislators with LCV scores at the chamber mean receive values of
zero on this measure of “environmental extremism,” while legislators with very
high or very low LCV scores receive values near the maximum. Presumably, can-
didates holding extreme positions will be less likely to defect from campaign
promises in this area.
Results and Discussion
Columns 2 and 4 in Table 2 show the results from the full models of defection in
the House and Senate, respectively. We note first that the effects of partisanship and380 Policy Studies Journal, 41:2
the content of the campaign promise from columns 1 and 3 remain strong and
statistically significant, if somewhat attenuated, in the fully specified models of
defection. Second, each of the statistically significant coefficients in columns 2 and 4
is consistent with a priori expectations.
Specifically, the probability of defection increases with the distance between a
candidate’s preelection policy position and the preferences of her constituency.
When defecting from campaign promises, both Representatives and Senators defect
toward general constituent policy references. In addition, as campaign contributions
from sources hostile to environmental regulation increase, the probability that a
legislator will defect from an anti-environmental campaign promise goes down.
More precisely, a $100,000 increase in campaign contributions from these groups is
associated with a 2 percent reduction in the probability of defecting from an anti-
environmental campaign promise. The mean contribution from these groups is only
$27,814, which suggests that for the typical legislator, campaign contributions have
a negligible effect on the probability of defection. The maximum value of this vari-
able is over three million dollars, however, with several legislators receiving more
than one million dollars in contributions from these groups. For these legislators, our
model suggests that campaign contributions are associated with a meaningful reduc-
tion in the probability of defecting from anti-environmental campaign promises.
Each of the coefficients discussed in this paragraph serve to enhance the quality of
representation by moving legislative policy decisions closer to constituent prefer-
ences and/or reducing the probability of defection.
Three of the control variables also display statistically significant coefficients in
the expected direction. First, both Representatives and Senators are less likely to
defect from campaign promises on close votes. Defection is less common when it
is more consequential. The effect of the closeness of the vote is attenuated for
members of the majority party in the House of Representatives, as illustrated by
the negative parameter estimate on the interaction term. This result is consistent
with a story that the majority party marshals its limited resources to encourage
defection among members only when it is likely to change the outcome of a roll
call vote. Still, the influence of majority party status is not enough to reverse the
effect of vote closeness on defection, as the parameter on the interaction term is
only one half the size of the vote closeness parameter. Members of the majority
party are still less likely to defect as roll call votes get close; they are just more
likely to defect under these circumstances than are members of the minority party,
although the effect is not large. On tie votes, the probability of defection is .23 for
members of the majority party and .21 for members of the minority. Finally, rep-
resentatives holding intense preferences are less likely to defect from their cam-
paign promises. Holding all other variables at their mean values, a member of the
House of Representatives with a mean LCV score has a .29 probability of defection,
while an identical representative with the most extreme LCV score (0 or 100) has
a probability of defection equal to .24.
Some of the parameters showing no effect on the probability of defection are also
of interest. For example, campaign contributions from opponents of environmental
regulation do not increase the probability of defection from pro-environmental cam-Ringquist/Neshkova/Aamidor: Promises, Governance, and Policy in U.S. Congress 381
paign promises, and long-term members of Congress are no more likely to defect
from campaign promises. Observers of American politics may find these results
comforting. On the other hand, fidelity to campaign promises is no more likely on
especially important pieces of environmental legislation.
Campaign Promises, SMDs, and Environmental Policy
Social scientists have long recognized that the policy choices of democracies
differ from those of autocracies in areas as varied as trade (Mansfield, Milner, &
Rosendorf, 2000), currency exchange rates (Freeman, Hays, & Stix, 2000), and the use
of force (Maoz & Russett, 1993). Congleton (1992) brought this perspective to the
study of environmental policy, concluding that democracies adopt more stringent
domestic environmental policies than do autocracies (see also Bättig & Bernauer,
2009; Neumayer, 2002; Roberts, Parks, & Vasquez, 2004). The effect of democracy on
public policy is not constant, however, and the design of democratic institutions has
a meaningful effect on the policy choices of governments (e.g., Congleton &
Swedenborg, 2006; Lijphart, 1999). Of particular relevance for us is the observation
that legislatures selected through SMDs adopt less stringent environmental policies
than do legislatures selected through PR. For example, when examining the electoral
rules governing national legislatures in 86 democracies, Fredriksson and Millimet
(2004) conclude that SMD legislatures adopt lower fuel taxes, participate in fewer
international environmental agreements, and invest less in environmental governing
capacity. Lijphart (1999) and Poloni-Staudinger (2008) also note that majoritarian
systems characterized in part by SMD legislatures adopt weaker environmental
policies, and Fredriksson and Wollscheid (2007) go so far as to conclude that the
positive relationship between democracy and the stringency of domestic environ-
mental policy is driven almost exclusively by Parliamentary democracies with PR
legislatures.
The observation that SMD systems like the United States adopt weaker envi-
ronmental policies begs the question of why this might be so. Persson and
Tabellini (1999) offer one explanation. Political parties in SMD systems can succeed
by appealing to the preferences of a subset of their constituency. At the extreme,
one party can fully populate the legislature by representing the interests of barely
50 percent of voters. By contrast, party success in PR systems is maximized by
appealing to as broad a constituency as possible (see also Milesi-Ferretti, Perotti, &
Rostagno, 2002).7 One implication from this work is that legislators in SMD
systems will emphasize policies providing local public goods and appealing to
particularistic interests, while PR systems provide greater incentives for legislators
to pay attention to aggregate social welfare and global public goods (see also Cox
& McCubbins, 2001). As environmental policy typically generates concentrated
local costs and diffuse national benefits, legislators in SMD systems have a weaker
incentive to advocate for and adopt stringent environmental policies (Fredriksson
& Wollscheid, 2007).
We believe that legislator defection from campaign promises may offer a
second, complementary explanation for why SMD systems adopt weaker environ-382 Policy Studies Journal, 41:2
mental policies. Two conditions must be satisfied if defection from campaign
promises is to play this complementary role. First, defection from campaign prom-
ises must move policy decisions toward weaker environmental policies. The analy-
sis here provides a rationale for why defection should be more common for
pro-environmental campaign promises, and provides evidence that defection is
more common for pro-environmental campaign promises. For the United States, at
least, this first condition appears to be satisfied.
Second, defection must be more common in SMD systems than in PR systems.
Offering a plausible rationale for why defection is more common in SMD systems is
not difficult. In PR systems, the notion of campaign promises made by individual
candidates is something of a non sequitur, as legislators in PR systems tend to be
selected from party lists. Moreover, the strong party discipline traditionally exercised
in PR systems means that defection from party policy positions is unusual. Coupled
with strong party discipline, the corporatist character of many PR systems means that
legislators face less pressure from interest groups seeking to influence their policy
choices. By contrast, SMD systems typically have candidate-centered campaigns,
weaker party discipline, and pluralist interest representation. Each of these charac-
teristics increases the probability that legislators in SMD systems will make and defect
from campaign promises, compared with their counterparts in PR systems. While
there is little empirical evidence regarding the extent to which legislators defect from
their campaign promises, the evidence we do have suggests that defection is indeed
more likely in SMD systems. For example, studying the U.S. House of Representatives
in the 105th Congress, Ringquist and Dasse (2004) find that legislators defected from
their campaign promises 27 percent of the time.8 Moreover, Table 2 shows that
defection from environmental campaign promises in the United States ranges from 31
percent in the House to 41 percent in the Senate. By contrast, a comparable analysis of
the Swiss legislature—where a large majority of representatives are chosen via
PR—found defection rates of only 15 percent (Schwarz, Schädel, & Ladner, 2010).
More convincingly, a recent summary of the small empirical literature on this question
concludes that compared with presidential systems like that in the United States,
“parliamentary regimes like the Westminster systems of Britain and Canada posi-
tively influence the likelihood that political parties keep their promises once elected”
(Pétry & Collette, 2009, p. 78). Therefore, the second condition may be satisfied as well.
We do not want to overstate the case—the results in Table 2 do not provide
evidence that defection from campaign promises accounts for why SMD systems
adopt weaker environmental policies. We are simply pointing out that if the
high levels of defection from pro-environmental campaign promises in the United
States also characterize other SMD systems, this might help account for this
phenomenon.
Concluding Remarks
We began this manuscript with two goals: measuring the extent to which can-
didates for the U.S. Congress defect from their campaign promises in environmen-
tal policy, and investigating whether these defections are systematic. Regarding theRingquist/Neshkova/Aamidor: Promises, Governance, and Policy in U.S. Congress 383
first goal, when given the opportunity to fulfill their campaign promises in envi-
ronmental protection, members of the House of Representatives defect from these
promises 31 percent of the time. The figure for Senators is 41 percent. While leg-
islators in both chambers exhibit fidelity to preelection policy preferences in a clear
majority of cases, defection is a common characteristic of legislative behavior in the
United States. Regarding the second goal, defection from campaign promises is
a systematic phenomenon. The propensity for defection is dominated by parti-
sanship and the content of the campaign promise. Overall, defection from
pro-environmental campaign promises is twice as common as defection from
anti-environmental campaign promises, and Republicans are more likely to defect
from pro-environmental campaign promises while Democrats are more likely to
defect from anti-environmental pronouncements. In addition, legislators defect
toward the general ideological position of their constituents, and are marginally
less likely to defect when they hold extreme policy positions or when the conse-
quences of defection for policy choice are greatest.
Our results have implications for the quality of democratic governance in envi-
ronmental policy. First and most directly, defection from campaign promises clearly
undercuts effective democratic representation and poses a challenge to the applica-
bility of mandate theory as a mechanism for linking citizen preferences to environ-
mental policy choices in the United States. Defection from campaign promises also
shapes the direction of environmental policy. Because legislators in the United States
are significantly more likely to defect from pro-environmental campaign promises,
defection has the effect of moving government policy toward weaker environmental
programs. Thus, defection from campaign promises may help account for the obser-
vation that the United States adopts weaker environmental protection policies than
its citizens might prefer. Second, defection from campaign promises may be one
mechanism behind the observation that SMD systems adopt less stringent and less
comprehensive environmental policies. The ultimate contribution of defection to
observed differences in environmental policy between SMD and PR democracies
hinges on the extent to which defection rates in the United States are representative
of legislative defection in other SMD systems.9 We leave the answer to this question
to future research.
Notes
1. This research was funded by NSF grant SES-0453561.
2. This perspective closely parallels what Mansbridge (2003) calls “promissory” representation in which
candidates seek to attract voters by making promises regarding future policy choices, and voters
evaluate candidates based upon those promises.
3. The 1992 NPAT asked candidates to take positions on three environmental policy proposals. All other
NPATs asked far more environmental policy questions (9 questions in 1994, 12 questions in 1996, 12
questions in 1998, 11 questions in 2000, and 10 questions in 2002).
4. In 2008 the NPAT was renamed the “Political Courage Test.”
5. Despite this evidence, some readers may still prefer to interpret NPAT responses as “public statements
of policy preferences coupled with a promise of action,” rather than as campaign promises per se. This
interpretation has no effect on the analysis or conclusions in the article.You can also read
