UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.
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Item Home Field Advantage: Roots, Reelection, and Representation in the Modern Congress(2019) Hunt, Charles Russell; Miler, Kristina; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Prior scholarship has alluded to the importance of biography and other differentiating characteristics between candidates that are reflected in divergent electoral support from their voters. However, recent trends in partisanship and nationalization of congressional elections have led many to believe that these differences are no longer meaningful to voters or elites. In this dissertation, I argue for the continued importance of one aspect of the constituent relationship that has gone previously unstudied: the lived local roots in their districts that members of Congress often (but do not always) share with their constituents. I argue that the shared local identity that emerges from these mutual roots strengthens these legislators’ constituent relationships, and as a result improve legislators’ electoral dynamics in their districts. This project has multiple theoretical and empirical aims: first, to disentangle the concept of local district roots from related but ultimately distinct concepts like the incumbency advantage, “home styles”, and the personal vote; second, to use originally-collected biographical data from nearly 3,000 members of Congress to more precisely specify what district roots are, and to capture the full breadth of benefits they provide both legislators and constituents; and finally, to use advanced quantitative methods to demonstrate the significant positive effects that district roots continue to have on the quality and durability of a legislator’s relationship with their constituents. I first demonstrate in Chapter 3 that when legislators have deep local roots in their district, they are uniquely suited to cross-cut partisanship and outperform their party's presidential nominee in their district. In Chapter 4, I demonstrate that deeply rooted legislators have broader, more supportive constituencies than similarly-situated legislators without District route, and that as a result they outperformed expectations in both the primary and general election stages. Finally, in Chapter 5, I show that in part because they are so influential the legislator-constituent relationship, district roots also have a significant effect on legislators’ campaign spending activity. Deeply-rooted legislators require significantly less campaign spending to achieve results comparable to otherwise-similar legislators without deep local roots; and when they do spend, they do so at much higher proportions within the geographic confines of their districts. All three sets of results demonstrate that district roots are not only an important component of many legislators’ relationships with their constituents, but are also positive conditioners of their electoral dynamics in the district. I close in Chapter 6 by summarizing my results, and by laying out several noteworthy implications that these findings have on future research in congressional elections and representation. I also make a broader case for why, in many circumstances, deep local roots in the district are a normatively desirable component of congressional representation.Item The Politics of Population Aging in Germany, Italy, and Japan(2008-08-18) Sciubba, Jennifer Dabbs; Pirages, Dennis; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The purpose of this study is to determine the extent to which population aging has led to the emergence of age-based politics in Germany, Italy, and Japan. Many argue that the increase in the share of aged relative to youth has led to the development of gerontocracy--as aging has intensified, so has the political power of the aged. I argue that assuming political power from the size of demographic groups is flawed because political institutions are important vehicles that mediate and articulate the myriad interests of a population. The first pillar of the study explains how different party systems create different pressures for the emergence of age-based politics through the ways they articulate these interests. A second pillar of the study uses recent labor reforms to examine the trajectory of generational winners and losers within the labor policy arena. The study compares quantitative data and includes qualitative reviews of primary source material, such as party doctrine. In Germany, Italy, and Japan, there are few signs that older groups are hijacking the political agenda--gerontocracy is mostly a myth. Labor policy in all three states is adjusting to bring youth into the labor market and reforms often go against the interests of the aged. Though aging issues are present in politics in all three states, the competitive multiparty system in Germany encourages parties to appeal to particular age groups, while Japan's more limited system encourages broad appeals. The fractured Italian system shows signs of both types of appeals. Aging issues do not dominate the agendas of these states and in some cases regional identities are more important than age-based identities. As aging intensifies we should expect that institutions will continue to mediate the interests of different age groups the way they have over the past decade. External pressures, such as those stemming from globalization, will likely continue to encourage convergence in labor policies that bring underutilized groups of all ages into the workforce.