Home Field Advantage

Roots, Reelection, and Representation in the Modern Congress
Erscheinungsjahr 2022
ISBN: 978-0-472-13314-7
Verlag: University of Michigan Press

Buch, Englisch, 296 Seiten, Hardback, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm

Reihe: Legislative Politics And Policy Making

Although partisan polarization gets much of the attention in political science scholarship about Congress, members of Congress represent diverse communities around the country. Home Field Advantage demonstrates the importance of this understudied element of American congressional elections and representation in the modern era: the local, place-based roots that members of Congress have in their home districts. Charles Hunt argues that legislators’ local roots in their district have a significant and independent impact on their campaigns, election outcomes, and more broadly on the relationship between members of the U.S. House of Representatives and their constituents. Drawing on original data, his research reveals that there is considerable variation in election outcomes, performance relative to presidential candidates, campaign spending, and constituent communication styles that are not fully explained by partisanship, incumbency, or other well-established theories of American political representation. Rather, many of these differences are the result of the depth of a legislator’s local roots in their district that predate their time in Congress. Hunt lays out a detailed “Theory of Local Roots” and their influence in congressional representation, demonstrating this influence empirically using multiple original measures of local roots over a full cross-section of legislators and a significant period of time.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Systeme Staats- und Regierungsformen, Staatslehre

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- List of Illustrations
- List of Tables
- Acknowledgements
- CHAPTER 1.    Introduction
- CHAPTER 2.    Sharing Space: Local Roots and the Representational Relationship
- CHAPTER 3. Rediscovering Roots: New Empirical Perspectives on Local Backgrounds
- CHAPTER 4. Beyond Partisanship: Outperforming the Party Label With Shared Local Identity
- CHAPTER 5. Cultivating the Grassroots: Expanding Electoral Support Across Constituencies
- CHAPTER 6. Power of the Personal: Local Roots and Campaign Spending
- CHAPTER 7. The Talk of the Town: Local and Partisan Communication Styles
- CHAPTER 8. Is All Politics Still Local? Local Roots in Historical Perspective    
- CHAPTER 9. Shifting Boundaries: Political Geography, Redistricting, and Local Roots
- CHAPTER 10. What’s Next? Concluding Thoughts and New Directions in the Study of Local Roots
- Appendix
- References
- Notes
- Index

Über Autor(innen)

Charles Hunt is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Boise State University.