Recommended Readings
Readers of "Ignoring the Middle: Legislative Disconnect with SC Public Opinion" will find more background information and research in the below recommended readings.
Public Polling
- Gallup. Where Do Americans Stand on Abortion? This article was updated on June 17, 2024, with Gallup's latest data pertaining to Americans' views on abortion.
“Most Americans continue to believe abortion should be legal in at least some situations. The majority also disagree with the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which returned discretion over the legality of abortion to the states. At the same time, majorities think second- and third-trimester abortions should generally not be legal.”
- American Library Association (March, 2022). Voters Oppose Book Bans in Libraries
- Ipsos (October, 2023). Most Americans say they are less likely to support a candidate who stands for curriculum restrictions or book bans in 2024.
Articles and Books
- American Political Science Association Task Force Report (July, 2023). More than Red and Blue: Political Parties and American Democracy
“Political parties in the United States operate in a social, political, and legal environment that leaves them vulnerable to capture by antidemocratic influences and frequently incentivizes irresponsible political behavior. Scholarship on these topics offers practitioners guidance for the challenges that will need to be met to successfully reform… The causes of parties’ current behavior are multifaceted. There is likely no single change that will address all of them, but there are paths forward.” “Ultimately, parties’ behavior is driven by the incentives they face, so the surrounding institutional landscape may need to change as well. Electoral system reforms such as ranked choice voting or proportional representation can alter the incentives parties face and provide new opportunities to break gridlock and combat anti-democratic forces. Following the lead of states that have begun experimenting with a range of reforms could help create a less permissive environment for irresponsible behavior and democratic backsliding.”
- Bafumi, J. and Herron, M.C. (2010) Leapfrog Representation and Extremism: A Study of American Voters and Their Members in Congress. American Political Science Review 104 (3) :519-42.
The authors consider the relationship between the preferences of American voters and the preferences of the U.S. legislators who represent them. Using an Internet-based, national opinion survey in conjunction with legislator voting records from the 109th and 110th Congresses (2005-2009), they show that members of Congress are more extreme than their constituents, i.e., that there is a lack of congruence between American voters and members of Congress.
“We show that micro-level representation in the United States is weak because, in the contemporary
Congress, House members and senators are excessively extreme. This pattern holds across the two
Congresses that we study, the 109th and 110th, as well as crosssectionally across states. We focus
attention on what we call leapfrog representation, the phenomenon that occurs when one extremist in the House or Senate is replaced by another extremist. Because, it appears, most members of Congress are politically extreme compared to voters, median voters in congressional districts and states are leapfrogged when, say, a Democratic legislator is replaced by a Republican.”
- Butler, D. M., and Dynes, A. M. (2016). How Politicians Discount the Opinions of Constituents with Whom They Disagree. American Journal of Political Science, 60(4), 975–989.
“We argue that politicians systematically discount the opinions of constituents with whom they disagree and that this ‘disagreement discounting’ is a contributing factor to ideological incongruence. A pair of survey experiments where state and local politicians are the subjects of interest show that public officials rationalize this behavior by assuming that constituents with opposing views are less informed about the issue. This finding applies both to well-established issues that divide the parties as well as to nonpartisan ones. Further, it cannot be explained by politicians' desires to favor the opinions of either copartisans or likely voters. A third survey experiment using a sample of voters shows that the bias is exacerbated by an activity central to representative governance—taking and explaining one's policy positions. This suggests
that the job of being a representative exacerbates this bias.”
- Grumbach, Jacob (2022). Laboratories Against Democracy: How National Parties Transformed State Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Reviewers agree that Jacob M. Grumbach provides a “commanding criticism of how our federalist
structure has opened the door to partisan abuse.” That the consolidation and polarization of the
Republican and Democratic parties has created gridlock and forced a collision with institutions at the subnational level. A reviewer points out that Grumbach documents that the “collision between national polarized parties and federalism has had three consequences.” First, it has led to a lot of policy activity on the state level. Lobbyists, interest groups and other major organizations have shifted their resources to the states to overcome federal gridlock, seeking out state policy venues supportive of their partisan goals.
Second, the collision has undermined the idea of states as ‘laboratories of democracy,’ resulting in party-driven copying of legislation as opposed to success-driven. Finally, the collision has resulted in threats to public input and accountability, with national parties and groups using states’ control over electoral apparatus and rules to anti-democratic ends. A noted reviewer pulls a key quote from Grumbach: “state government might be less ‘laboratories of democracy’ and more laboratories against democracy...innovating new ways to restrict the franchise, gerrymander districts, exploit campaign finance loopholes, and circumvent civil rights in criminal justice.”
- Rogers, Steven (2023). Accountability in State Legislatures: A troubling portrait of democracy in US state legislatures. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
“State legislatures hold tremendous authority over key facets of our lives, ranging from healthcare to
marriage to immigration policy. In theory, elections create incentives for state legislators to produce good policies. But do they? Drawing on wide-ranging quantitative and qualitative evidence, Steven Rogers offers the most comprehensive assessment of this question to date, testing different potential mechanisms of accountability. His findings are sobering: almost ninety percent of American voters do not know who their state legislator is; over one-third of incumbent legislators run unchallenged in both primary and general elections; and election outcomes have little relationship with legislators’ own behavior. Rogers’s analysis of state legislatures highlights the costs of our highly nationalized politics, challenging theories of democratic accountability and providing a troubling picture of democracy in the states.”
