Replication Data for: When do politicians pursue more policy information?

When do politicians seek out expert information on policy? In this paper we explore whether elected officials seek out more information about an issue when they are farther offside the average opinion in their district on that issue. We designed and implemented a field experiment among Canadian Members of Parliament (MPs). In the midst of a contentious national debate on federal government support for the oil industry, we invited MPs and their staff to watch a webinar or read a written summary of the webinar. The webinar contained a variety of expert viewpoints on the future prospects of oil extraction in Canada. Some MPs were randomly assigned to information about the distribution of opinion in their constituency on the issue of whether the government should be involved in actively helping the resource sector, including in the construction of pipelines. We estimate the effect of receiving this district opinion on an MP seeking out expert knowledge in the form of the webinar. We particularly focus on the degree to which opinion disagrees with a politician’s party position. We find that politicians who are offside their constituency opinion do not appear more likely to seek out expert information on contentious policy issues.