Political Ambition and Constituent Service: Does Ambition Influence How Local Officials Respond to Electoral and Non-Electoral Service Requests?

Abstract

Theoretically, political ambitions paired with elections generate more responsive elected officials. In this paper, we test whether the progressive political ambitions of public officials affect whether and how they respond to their constituents by conducting a experimental audit study where local public officials receive both an electorally related service request and a generic service request. We combine their responses (or non-responses) with data from a survey of these public officials conducted months prior about their political ambition in seeking higher office. On the whole, we find that politically ambitious officials are not more responsive to electorally oriented service requests and that there are not systematic differences in the content of the responses of ambitious and non-ambitious elected officials. In areas of constituency service, ambition does not seem to affect representational behavior, regardless of whether the service requests are electorally related or not.