The legislative legacy of congressional campaigns / Tracy Sulkin.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Promises to Keep? -- Campaigns as Signals -- Campaign Appeals and Legislative Activity -- Mechanisms Underlying Promise Keeping -- Promise Making and Promise Keeping on Defense and Environmental Issues -- The Who, When, and Where of Follow-through -- The Electoral Implications of Promise Keeping -- Promises and Policy Making -- Representation, Responsiveness, and the Electoral Connection

Do members of Congress follow through on the appeals they make in campaigns? The answer to this question lies at the heart of assessments of democratic legitimacy. This study demonstrates that, contrary to the conventional wisdom that candidates' appeals are just "cheap talk," campaigns actually have a lasting legacy in the content of representatives' and senators' behavior in office. Legislators face clear incentives to offer sincere claims in their campaigns, so their appeals often serve as good signals about the issues they will pursue in Congress. Levels of promise-keeping vary in a systematic fashion across legislators, across types of activity, across time, and across chamber. Moreover, legislators' responsiveness to their appeals shapes their future electoral fortunes and career choices, and their activity on their campaign themes leaves a tangible trace in public policy outputs. Understanding the dynamics of promise-keeping thus has important implications for our evaluations of the quality of campaigns and the strength of representation in the United States. This book asks whether winning representatives and senators follow through on the promises they made in their campaigns. The conventional wisdom is that candidates say what it takes to win but then ignore these promises once in Congress. However, Sulkin shows that their campaigns have a lasting legacy in the content of their behavior in office, particularly in the content of the bills they introduce and cosponsor. These findings have important implications for our evaluations of the quality of campaigns and the strength of democratic representation in the United States.