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Heather K. Evans - Competitive Elections and Democracy in America: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

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Book:
Competitive Elections and Democracy in America: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Author:
Heather K Evans
Publisher:
Routledge
Genre:
Books / Politics
Year:
2013
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Competitive Elections: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly examines an important topic that has far-reaching consequences for democracy. Evans does a great job discussing competing perspectives of competitive elections and brings unique data to bear on these questions. This book offers significant contributions to the study of American politics.

Jennifer Hayes Clark, University of Houston

Heather Evans provides a fresh perspective about the role of competition in American congressional elections. While she supports the conventional wisdom that competitiveness can be very healthy for American democracy, she supplies evidence for some of the less heralded downsides it generates in politics as well. Evans successfully points out that understanding both sides of this equation is crucial to fairly evaluate the quality of the electoral system in the United States.

Brian Frederick, Bridgewater State University

Competitive Elections and Democracy in America

Routledge Research in American Politics and Governance

1 Lobbying the New President
Interests in Transition
Heath Brown

2 Religion, Race, and Barack Obamas New Democratic Pluralism
Gastn Espinosa

3 Direct Democracy in the United States
Petitioners as a Reflection of Society
Edited by Shauna Reilly and Ryan M. Yonk

4 American Exceptionalism in the Age of Obama
Stephen Brooks

5 An Empire of Ideals
The Chimeric Imagination of Ronald Reagan
Justin D. Garrison

6 Resisting Injustice and the Feminist Ethics of Care in the Age of Obama
Suddenly, All the Truth Was Coming Out
David A.J. Richards

7 Interfaith Advocacy
The Role of Religious Coalitions in the Political Process
Katherine E. Knutson

8 Social Contract Theory in American Jurisprudence
Too Much Liberty and Too Much Authority
Thomas R. Pope

9 Voting and Migration Patterns in the U.S.
George Hawley

10 Democracy, Intelligent Design, and Evolution
Science for Citizenship
Susan P. Liebell

11 Inventive Politicians and Ethnic Ascent in American Politics
The Uphill Elections of Italians and Mexicans to the U.S. Congress
Miriam Jimnez

12 Competitive Elections and Democracy in America
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Heather K. Evans

First published 2014
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2014 Taylor & Francis

The right of Heather K. Evans to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Evans, Heather K.

Competitive elections and democracy in America :

the good, the bad, and the ugly / Heather K. Evans.

pages cm. (Routledge research in American politics

and governance ; 12)

1. ElectionsUnited States. 2. DemocracyUnited

States. 3. Politics, PracticalUnited States. 4. United States
Politics and government. I. Title.

JK1976.E83 2013
324.973dc23
2013022804

ISBN: 978-0-415-63267-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-09551-5 (ebk)

Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC

I would like to dedicate this to my daughter, Samantha

Contents

I would like to express my gratitude to a few individuals who have made possible this work on competitive elections. First, I would like to thank Dr. Edward G. Carmines (Ted) at Indiana University for his advice and assistance through this project. Without Teds assistance, this work would have never been possible. He serves as the principal investigator for the Indiana University team on the CCES, which is the dataset used extensively in .

I would also like to thank three of my graduate assistants, as well as my Fall 2012 Media and Politics class, who made part of the fourth chapter possible. Victoria Cordova, Savannah Sipole, and Andrew Anderson, as well as the 39 students in my Media course, spent tireless hours coding tweets. You guys rock!

While at Sam Houston State University, I have had the pleasure of working with a few people who have helped me sort out my thoughts on this book as time has progressed. Thank you, Stacy Ulbig, Lauren Edwards, and Clayton Wukich for listening to me rant about my research, and for offering helpful advice.

I would also like to thank my husband for providing me with support when I have needed it. There have been multiple days when I have needed a few hours to finish this work, and my husband has always pitched in to help with our daughter and has given me the time I needed to complete my writing. For instance, even as I write this paragraph, he is baking cupcakes for one of my upper-level classes so that I can get this manuscript in on time.

Finally, I would like to give a shout-out to P. I eagerly await your five-page summary.

1
Are You Ready to Rumble? It Is Election Season Again!

It is election season again (groan)! As a professor of political science, I love and hate election season. While students seem more energized about the material that I present, many of them become turned off to politics due to the constant bickering they see on television. Since I teach in Texas, many of my more liberal students also feel alienated during the electoral process. Some have stated in class that they feel like their vote does not matter. Texas is a Republican-dominated state, which means that Democrats do not see the point of turning out and even Republicans think voting is a waste of time. Why vote if we already know the outcome of the election?

Elections have a lot to do with how people feel about government. As Mayhew explains in his Electoral Connection , elections are how citizens hold their leaders accountable. If elected officials are not doing what they were sent to office to do, then we should vote the bums out. People become more aware of what their current representatives do in Congress during election season through campaign advertisements. If their representatives have been slacking off (shirking) on the job, their constituents can hold them accountable.

While participation in congressional elections tends to be lower than for presidential elections (especially in midterm elections), research shows that when congressional elections are close, participation tends to increase.presidential level. Yet millions of people come out to the polls each election against what Downs would say is irrationality.

Since millions of people vote, citizens must gain something from the process other than just seeing the person they picked end up in office. Riker and Ordeshook (1968) suggest that citizens vote because it makes them feel like they are part of a democracy. There are costs and benefits to voting, as Downs suggests, but there is also an unmeasurable D term, which Riker and Ordeshook describe as citizen duty. Citizens vote because they feel more American when they do so; citizens feel like their votes mean something even though a single vote might not change the outcome of the election. By turning out on election day, citizens not only have the chance to elect their preferred candidate, but they also get to wear an I voted sticker and feel more like they have done their democratic duty.

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