Campaign Rhetoric and the Incumbency Advantage
Campaign Rhetoric and the Incumbency Advantage
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DOI：
10.1177/1532673x18822314
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发表时间：
2020-01-01
影响因子：
1.5
通讯作者：
Parkin, Michael
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Druckman, James N.;Kifer, Martin J.;Parkin, Michael
国会在职优势反映了竞争中的不公平候选人仅仅因为他们在职而获得选举优势。学者们已经确定了一系列有助于在职优势的因素;然而，竞选活动的作用在很大程度上被忽视了。我们认为，运动是在职优势的工作机制。所有其他不变的是，现任者把他们的竞选活动集中在反映他们立场的因素上，比如他们对选民的熟悉程度以及为他们的地区/州采取的行动。因此，选民在作出决定时依赖这些在职因素。结果是挑战者处于极端不利的地位，竞选活动提供的实质性参与很少。我们提供的证据，这些动态与大规模的内容分析的运动网站和实验。在这样做的时候，我们强调了对民主代表制理论的挑战，这种理论侧重于平等竞争和/或实质性的竞选参与。
The congressional incumbency advantage reflects an inequity in competition-candidates receive an electoral edge simply because they hold office. Scholars have identified an array of factors that contribute to the incumbency advantage; however, the role of electoral campaigns has been largely ignored. We argue that campaigns are a mechanism through which the incumbency advantage works. All else constant, incumbents focus their campaigns on factors that reflect their standing position, such as their familiarity to voters and actions taken for their district/state. Voters consequently rely on such incumbency factors when making their decisions. The outcome is challengers are at an extreme disadvantage, and campaigns offer scant substantive engagement. We offer evidence for these dynamics with a large-scale content analysis of campaign websites and an experiment. In so doing, we highlight a challenge to theories of democratic representation that focus on equal competition and/or substantive campaign engagement.