Replication Data for: Losing Touch: The Rhetorical Cost of Governing

The electoral 'cost of governing' is widely considered a law-like phenomenon. However, costs of governing are not limited to the electoral dimension. This paper highlights and documents an unappreciated non-electoral cost of holding government office: diminished rhetorical simplicity. I argue that the functional demands of running government compel government members to speak less simply than is electorally optimal. I refer to this effect as 'the rhetorical cost of governing'. I test this theory using rich data on individual legislator careers and parliamentary speech in Denmark across three decades. Consistent with the theory, government membership reduces rhetorical simplicity. Additional analyses suggest the effect is transitory and is driven by constraints on issue emphasis. I then provide experimental evidence of downstream electoral consequences, showing that respondents prefer politicians using simple language. The results enrich our understanding of the costs of governing, the opposition advantage, and the mass grievances fueling populist political movements. Replication guide To replicate tables and figures in the manuscript, place all scripts and data sets in the same folder with folders \"figures\" and \"tables\" for output. Then use the following scripts: - models.R replicates all main results in the paper. - topics.R replicates the analysis using a topic model. - validation.R replicates the validation of the simplicity measures. - experiment.R replicates the followup experiment.选举层面的“执政成本”被广泛视为一种类规律现象。然而，执政成本并不局限于选举维度。本文着重揭示并论证了担任公职鲜为人知的非选举性成本：修辞简洁性的下降。笔者认为，执掌政务的功能性要求迫使政府成员的演说简洁度低于选举最优水平。笔者将这一效应称为“执政的修辞成本”。 本文基于丹麦三十年跨度内的议员个人职业生涯与议会演说的丰富数据，对该理论展开实证检验。研究结果与理论预期一致：政府成员身份会降低演说的修辞简洁性。补充分析显示，该效应具有暂时性，且由议题侧重所受约束驱动。随后，本文提供了关于下游选举后果的实验证据，表明受访者更青睐使用简洁语言的政客。 本研究深化了学界对执政成本、反对党优势，以及催生民粹主义政治运动的民众怨愤的认知。 复制指南：若要复现论文中的表格与图表，请将所有脚本与数据集置于同一文件夹，并分别创建用于输出结果的"figures"与"tables"文件夹。随后运行以下脚本： - models.R：复现论文中的所有核心结果 - topics.R：复现基于主题模型的分析 - validation.R：复现简洁性测度的验证工作 - experiment.R：复现后续实验