Replication Data for: "Polarization and Place-Based Representation in U.S. State Legislatures"

Recent scholarship has shown that legislators with deeper local roots and other pre-existing place-based attachments to their districts enjoy far-reaching electoral advantages over their more “carpetbagging” colleagues. In this paper, we consider how local roots, and its intersection with legislative polarization influences legislative behavior, using a dataset of nearly 5,000 state legislators and novel measures of their local roots. We hypothesize that state legislators with deep local roots in their districts should be less ideologically polarized than their less-rooted colleagues. This is precisely what we find. Using Shor-McCarty ideology measures, we show that the most locally-rooted legislators are 16% less ideologically extreme than their unrooted counterparts. These effects are comparable to or exceed those of district partisanship, chamber seniority, or other legislator characteristics. Collectively, these findings show that legislators’ local roots not only affect their electoral fortunes, but also have major implications for legislative activity and party polarization.

现有研究表明，相较于那些“空降式”（carpetbagging）同僚，拥有深厚本地根基以及对其选区既有的地域归属感的议员，拥有更为显著的选举优势。本文旨在探讨本地根基及其与立法极化的交互作用如何影响立法行为，研究采用了涵盖近5000名州议员的数据集，以及全新的本地根基衡量指标。我们提出如下假说：在选区拥有深厚本地根基的州议员，相较于根基较浅的同僚，其意识形态极化程度更低。实证结果恰好印证了这一假说。通过采用肖尔-麦卡蒂（Shor-McCarty）意识形态测度标准，我们发现，本地根基最深的议员，其意识形态极端程度较无本地根基的同行低16%。该效应的强度与选区党派属性、议院资历或其他议员个体特征的影响相当，甚至更为显著。综上，本研究结果表明，议员的本地根基不仅会影响其选举运势，还会对立法活动与政党极化产生重要影响。