Leaders Can Sway Constituents' Attitudes and Behaviors
Michael Neblo, associate professor, political science, is co-author of a new national study finding that political leaders can persuade their constituents directly on substantive attitudes regarding policy issues, leaders’ qualities and voting behavior. Social scientists have long studied the relationship between elite behavior and mass opinion. However, this is the first study of its kind to focus on the ability of leaders to directly impact attitude and behavior.
The study, "Field experiment evidence of substantive, attributional, and behavioral persuasion by Members of Congress in online town halls," is published in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“When members of Congress substantively engage constituents about controversial subjects, they can persuade them on policy, increase trust in their leadership and even garner more votes,” according to Neblo. “The key is to reach out to regular citizens who may not have the passion of intense partisans, but who want to be involved in the democratic process – it doesn’t matter if they’re talking to someone from a different political party or not.”
For the study, Neblo and his collaborators, William Minozzi, associate professor, political science; Kevin Esterling (University of California, Riverside); David Lazer (Northeastern University and John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University) and the Congressional Management Foundation, worked with 12 members of the U.S. House of Representatives (seven Democrat and five Republican) and one senator to organize 20 online town halls with their constituents. These meetings took place in 2006 and 2008.
In each of the town halls, members of Congress and citizen participants talked about a hot-button issue linked to recent or pending legislation. In the case of the representatives, they discussed whether there should be a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. The senator (Carl Levin, a Democrat from Michigan) discussed terrorist detainee policy. In all cases, the members of Congress clearly stated their views on the subjects during the town halls.
In addition to being online rather than in an actual hall, researchers recruited a random group of eligible voters among each member’s constituents to participate. The results were clear and striking.
“Because these town halls included randomly selected citizens – and not just strong partisans – the discussions were remarkably civil and substantive,” said Neblo. “The members concentrated on arguing for their position on the merits rather than relying on ‘red-meat’ talking points that fire-up strong partisan supporters.”
In addition, participating in these town halls actually changed the constituents’ voting behavior. Attendance increased constituents’ intent to vote for their representative by 13.8 percent after the town hall. Participants were surveyed again after the next November election and they found a 9.8 percent increase in the likelihood of these constituents actually voting for their representative in that election. This election occurred about four months after the town hall, suggesting that these sessions had a relatively long-lasting effect.
According to Neblo, town-hall participants’ views on issues actually moved closer to that of their member of Congress. More striking, people rated their member of Congress as more trustworthy and were more likely to approve of his or her performance after being a part of the town hall.
Moreover, these patterns scaled-up. Similar results were found for those who attended Senator Levin’s town hall, even though nearly ten times the number of people participated. In fact, researchers estimate that if members of the House spent just two hours a week doing outreach similar to the study, they could interact with almost half of the voters in their districts over the course of a few election cycles.
“This study,” said Neblo, “gives us a plausible roadmap for how we can begin to use online communications to improve our political discourse, in particular by offering attractive forums for those citizens who may not be participating now. The cynical view of political discourse is that members of Congress can’t really persuade their constituents. But this study finds something much more encouraging about how political leaders and citizens can talk to each other – leaders talking about real issues with their constituents, without the intense partisan heat.”
