Legislative Cooperation and Selective Benefits: An experimental investigation on the limits of credit claiming

Do legislators get credit for working with the other party? Studies on this have been limited due to a lack of an appropriate counterfactual. This paper experimentally estimates the value of credit claiming on a small project that was produced with bipartisanship or with an uncooperative party. I argue that process does indeed matter. Specifically, I hypothesize voters will punish in-party partisans for working with the other side and punish out-party partisans when they do not work with their side. However, in-party partisans do not care whether their party works with the other side. Out-party partisans punish members for uncooperative legislating. Further, I argue and find that these effects are distinguishable from overall partisan effects, demonstrating that members can use distributional projects to gain out-party support in a polarized environment. These findings have important implications for lawmaking and polarization.