The Polarization of American Environmental Policy: A Regression Discontinuity Analysis of Senate and House Votes, 1971-2013
The Polarization of American Environmental Policy: A Regression Discontinuity Analysis of Senate and House Votes, 1971-2013
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DOI：
10.1111/ropr.12238
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发表时间：
2017-07-01
影响因子：
2.1
通讯作者：
Urpelainen, Johannes
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Kim, Sung Eun;Urpelainen, Johannes
环境政策的党派两极分化是美国政治的一个重要发展，但目前尚不清楚这种两极分化在多大程度上反映了选民的偏好，而不是党派精英之间的分歧。我们对1971-2013年参议院和众议院的所有主要环境和能源投票进行了回归不连续分析。总共有368，974名参议员和众议院代表的个人唱名投票。在势均力敌的选举中选举民主党人而不是共和党人对环保投票的因果影响很大：当民主党人获胜时，环保投票增加了40多个百分点。由于准实验研究设计，这种差异不能归因于中间选民的偏好。接下来，我们测试的假设可能的解释精英党派冲突。当化石燃料利益集团完全为共和党人做出贡献时，当州一级的公众舆论两极分化时，民主党和共和党的差距最大。
The partisan polarization of environmental policy is an important development in American politics, but it remains unclear how much such polarization reflects voter preferences, as opposed to disagreements between partisan elites. We conduct a regression discontinuity analysis of all major environmental and energy votes in the Senate and the House, 1971-2013. In total, we have 368,974 individual roll call votes by senators and House Representatives. The causal effect of electing a Democrat instead of a Republican in close elections on pro-environmental voting is large: when a Democrat wins, pro-environmental voting increases by over 40 percentage points. Because of the quasi-experimental research design, this difference cannot be attributed to the median voter's preferences. Next, we test hypotheses concerning possible explanations for the elite partisan conflict. The Democrat-Republican gap is the widest when fossil fuel interests make contributions exclusively to Republicans and when state-level public opinion is polarized.