Replication Data for: \"How Modern Lawmakers Advertise Their Legislative Effectiveness to Constituents\"

In a complex information environment, members of Congress must communicate to their constituents their value as a representative. Specifically, they aim to convince voters that they are effective representatives and therefore ought to be reelected. Modern scholarship has focused largely on legislators’ effectiveness as lawmakers in areas like bill introduction, sponsorship, and shepherding of legislation through congressional procedures (Volden and Wiseman 2014). But legislators do more than traditional lawmaking activities; they also engage in representational acts of advocacy and district-focused activity. This expanded notion of representational effectiveness is what legislators must publicize to constituents in order to maintain and build support and stay in office. Drawing on textual analysis of nearly 90,000 official newsletters from House members to their constituents from 2009-2020 (Cormack 2017), we demonstrate that legislators actively publicize these three types of effectiveness, and the ways in which their communication strategies depend on personal, electoral, and institutional factors.

在复杂的信息环境中，美国国会议员必须向其选区选民阐明自身作为代表的价值。具体而言，他们旨在说服选民，自己是称职的代表，因此应当获得连任。现有学术研究大多聚焦于议员作为立法者在法案提案、联署及推动法案通过国会程序等领域的履职成效（Volden与Wiseman，2014）。但议员的工作不止于传统立法活动；他们还会开展倡导性活动与聚焦选区的履职行为。这种拓展后的代表履职成效概念，正是议员为维持、巩固选民支持并保住职位，必须向选区选民宣传的内容。本研究依托2009年至2020年间近9万份众议院议员致选区选民的官方通讯文本分析数据（Cormack，2017），证实议员会主动宣传这三类履职成效，同时其沟通策略会因个人、选举及制度层面的因素而有所不同。