Does Responsiveness Stop at the Water's Edge? Examining the Foreign Policy Electoral Connection

Abstract

Are legislators responsive to public opinion on foreign policy issues? Despite the prevalence of preference-based approaches to international relations, no existing study has systematically assessed the relationship between constituency preferences and foreign policy roll-call votes in the U.S. House. Using multi-level regression and post-stratification (MRP), we create original estimates of constituency preferences, broken down by party, on various trade, security, and immigration bills and measure the responsiveness of members of the U.S. House of Representatives. We find that members are responsive to their median constituent on all issue areas, but there is less responsiveness on trade bills than on security and immigration. We also find that members of Congress are more responsive to co-partisan constituents than to the median on security bills--the reverse holds for trade bills. Additional analyses suggest that cases of greater responsiveness to co-partisans do not result from voters taking partisan cues from their representatives.