In their book, Justin Grimmer, Sean Westwood, and Solomon Messing provide a much-needed and updated look at how members of Congress use federal spending decisions to cultivate a personal vote in their districts. The central argument is that the benefit gained by lawmakers from federal spending decisions is variable and dynamic—affected by how lawmakers seek to claim credit throughout the federal appropriations process, how constituents allocate credit for these actions, and how both of these processes are influenced by the local and national political environment. In elucidating these previously unappreciated dynamics, The Impression of Influence provides an impressive look at this very important topic, and will become standard reading for anyone interested in congressional representation.
While “a large literature analyzes how district expenditures affect support for congressional incumbents” (p. 1), Grimmer, Westwood, and Messing uncover important depth and nuance and significantly improve our understanding of this relationship. The bulk of the book demonstrates how the relationship is influenced by various dynamics. One of the most important findings is that it is not the spending itself that bolsters support for lawmakers among their constituents; rather it is the ability of lawmakers to convey an impression that they had influence over these spending decisions through their messaging and communication efforts.
In several chapters, the authors draw on creative experimental studies that replicate lawmakers’ real-world credit-claiming messages to assess how constituents respond. Among their robust findings is that the credit constituents allocate does not vary by the size of the federal expenditure coming to the district. Credit is applied equally to very large and relatively small expenditures. Credit is also equally applied regardless of the level of involvement that lawmakers can claim they had over the spending decision. Constituents do not distinguish between lawmakers’ claims that they directly secured funding via earmarks and lawmakers’ simple announcements of federal grant decisions over which they had no direct control. The benefit provided to the officeholder is the same. The conclusion to be drawn here is clear—it is the message that matters more than the money.
Rather than by the spending itself, variation in the amount of credit lawmakers can derive is influenced by the political environment they face. Grimmer, Westwood, and Messing use computational, supervised learning methods to code nearly 170,000 press releases—every press release published by every member of the House of Representatives from 2005 to 2010—for their content, and utilize this data to uncover patterns in lawmakers’ propensities for claiming credit for federal spending, as well as the words they use to make the credit claims. Analyzing these data alongside additional experimental evidence, the authors find that “legislators credit claiming rates reflect both district characteristics and short-term political forces” (p. 51). Reminiscent of Richard Fenno’s (Homestyle 1978) finding that a lawmaker’s representation style is influenced by his or her district’s characteristics, Grimmer, Westwood, and Messing find that cross-pressured legislators—such as Democrats representing Republican-leaning districts—issue credit claims more frequently as they seek to develop a reputation as an effective advocate for their district, which can allow them to deemphasize their partisanship in upcoming elections.
From my perspective, one of the most interesting findings in the book, and one that speaks to contemporary arguments about earmark reform in Congress, is that as the Republican Party’s rhetoric became more vehemently antispending following the 2008 election and the rise of Tea Party activists, the benefit that lawmakers representing conservative- and Republican-heavy districts could gain from credit claims declined. Primarily drawing on experimental evidence, Grimmer, Westwood, and Messing find that when lawmaker’s credit claims are accompanied by messages expressing the negative fiscal impact of the spending, support among all but the most liberal respondents, and especially among self-identified conservatives, actually declines. This finding suggests that lifting the earmark ban would not do nearly as much to help Congress overcome gridlock as some reformers believe. In fact, it suggests that the political environment favoring fiscal austerity post-2008 may have contributed to the adoption of the earmark ban in the first place. With credit claims for federal spending providing Republicans, and many Democrats, with less electoral benefit, or even becoming an electoral liability, lawmakers had more to gain from broadcasting their opposition to federal spending, rather than attempting to claim any credit for it.
As a whole, the book is impressive and persuasive, especially regarding its central claims. However, there are some aspects that could have benefited from further development and consideration. For one, little attention is given to each party’s majority or minority status in Washington, and how that status may affect the dynamics of credit claiming and federal spending decisions. While the Republican’s sharp rhetorical turn against federal spending did coincide with the rise of the Tea Party, it also coincided with their loss of control over the White House. As the out-party, attacking the government for reckless spending suddenly became more advantageous than it was when Republicans controlled the White House and the levers of congressional power. Indeed, a party’s majority/minority status may have wide-ranging implications for the ways in which lawmakers seek credit for federal spending decisions. It may be that while Democrats from left-leaning districts always prefer more federal spending and more pork, Republicans’ willingness to claim credit for federal spending decisions may vary on the basis of their party’s position in Washington. After all, earmarking reached its height during the unified Republican control of Washington from 2003 to 2006, despite the Republican Party’s self-professed reputation as the party of fiscal conservatism.
One final critique regards the language that Grimmer, Westwood, and Messing use to describe lawmakers’ attempts to claim credit for bureaucratic decisions about federal spending in their districts. Throughout the book, these actions are presented as deceitful or described as lies. I find this language a bit harsh. While, indeed, lawmakers have a more direct claim to influence over some spending decisions than others, and while examining a competitive grant program provides a clever way to understand how far lawmakers can go with their credit claiming, it is unclear how frequently lawmakers make claims regarding grant program decisions completely insulated from their direct influence. Consequently, it is difficult to truly evaluate how concerned we should be, if indeed we should be concerned at all, about these actions. After all, it is not clear that Congress and its members should not be able to claim credit for any and all federal spending since they ultimately hold the power of the purse. To their credit, the authors provide a relatively balanced discussion of the normative implications of the leeway with which lawmakers can claim credit. Nonetheless, explicitly labeling congressional representatives as deceptive and liars strikes me as unnecessarily harsh.
Relative to the important contributions of Impression of Influence, however, these are minor concerns. Ultimately, Grimmer, Westwood, and Messing have provided an updated, impressive, and in-depth look at how lawmakers are able to claim credit for, and benefit from, federal spending decisions. I expect that this book will be read by students of Congress for many years.
