Adam R Brown

Peer-Reviewed Publications

• 2010. "Are Governors Responsible for the State Economy? Partisanship, Blame, and Divided Federalism".
  • Forthcoming in the Journal of Politics .
  • Abstract: In the United States, voters directly elect dozens of politicians: Presidents, governors, legislators, mayors, and so on. How do voters decide which politician to blame for which policy outcomes? Previous research on gubernatorial approval has suggested that voters divide policy blame between governors and the president based on each office's "functional responsibilities"—requiring that responsibilities are clearcut, which is seldom true. Using data from four surveys, I show that voters actually divide responsibility for economic conditions in a partisan manner, preferring to blame officials from the opposing party when problems arise.
• 2008. "Party, Performance, and Strategic Politicians: The Dynamics of Elections for Senator and Governor in 2006" 
  • With Gary C. Jacobson . State Politics and Policy Quarterly  8 (winter): 384-409.
  • Data: When you unzip the files, you will find Stata datasets and do files. Data on Senators is forthcoming. Data on governors (zip).
  • Abstract: In this article, we analyze a unique set of state-level monthly survey data covering the eighteen months preceding the 2006 election to estimate (1) the relative effects of national and local conditions on the strength of challenges to incumbent senators and governors and (2) the effects of these challenges on incumbent popularity and, ultimately, vote shares. The analysis confirms several of the basic components of the theory that the strategic behavior of candidates and campaign contributors amplifies the effects of local and national conditions on election results, thereby enhancing electoral accountability. But it also uncovers a striking difference between the two offices. Even taking the strongly pro-Democratic national climate into account, the election context had a strong tendency to reduce the approval ratings of Senators, while it had an equally strong tendency to increase the approval ratings of governors. We speculate as to what might account for this difference.

Talks and Conference Papers

• 2010. "Twitter: The Electoral Connection."
  • With David S. Lassen and Scott Riding. To be presented at the 68th annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, held in Chicago, Illinois, April 22-25, 2010.
  • Abstract: The rapid rise of popular online communication tools such as Twitter has enticed a large number of members of Congress to adopt these services themselves. Such waves of technological adoption are comparatively rare in Congressional history, leaving us with little knowledge about why some members of Congress adopt new technologies while others do not. We show that adoption rates are driven in part by political considerations, but also by demographic ones: Twitter use is more common among younger members, members of the minority party, and among Congressional leaders. We test this hypothesis with a model that incorporates a number of electoral vulnerability markers—including district profile, previous margin of victory, and candidate fundraising ability—to predict member usage of Twitter. Central to this project is an intriguing, novel data set we have compiled of over 30,000 Twitter posts, or "tweets," published by members of Congress.
• 2010. "Casual Encounters: Members of Congress and Online Friend-Making."
  • With Scott Riding and David S. Lassen. To be presented at the 68th annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, held in Chicago, Illinois, April 22-25, 2010.
  • Abstract: In recent years, members of Congress have increasingly begun using Twitter and other social media. It is possible, however, that the service's conversational, abbreviated, and informal nature has influenced the type of communication members engage in. Using a dataset of over 40,000 Twitter posts, or "tweets," we have compiled—including every tweet ever posted to or by a member of Congress—we explore how Twitter usage differs from other Congressional communications. We find, consistent with Mayhew, that most members of Congress use Twitter merely to broadcast their positions and accomplishments without paying much attention to what constituents post in reply. But we also find that a smaller group uses Twitter as a tool for genuine interaction with constituents. This new form of interaction, which we term "friend making," consists largely of informal conversation between member and constituent that may have only a slight connection to political matters. If such two-way dialog on Twitter and other social sites becomes more widespread, it may have far-reaching consequences for American representative democracy.
• 2009. "Campaign Spending and Spurious Correlations: Why Self-Financed Gubernatorial Candidates Lose" 
  • Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, held in Toronto, Canada, September 3-6, 2009.
  • Abstract: A revised and updated take on "What Money Can't Buy," listed below. Critics are quick to accuse wealthy gubernatorial candidates of attempting to "buy" elections. But although self-financed gubernatorial candidates sometimes win, their electoral success does not necessarily imply that voters can be bought. To the contrary, I present evidence that self-financed campaign spending has a far weaker marginal effect on electoral results than externally-financed campaign spending. For every Corzine, there's a DeVos—who spent record amounts in his 2006 attempt to unseat Michigan's incumbent governor, only to lose by an embarrassingly wide margin. Money can't buy the governor's mansion. This empirical finding presents a theoretical puzzle—why would externally financed spending trump self-finance? The solution lies in strategic incentives facing would-be campaign donors. A candidate's ability to raise funds serves as a crucial indicator of her electoral viability. When it comes to influencing voters, a candidate's ability to raise money matters far more than her ability to spend it. As such, the apparent correlation between campaign spending and votes is largely spurious.
• 2009. "What Money Can't Buy: Self-Financed Candidates in Gubernatorial Elections" 
  • Paper presented at the ninth annual Conference on State Politics and Policy, held in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, May 22-23, 2009.
  • Abstract: Critics are quick to accuse wealthy gubernatorial candidates of attempting to "buy" elections. But although wealthy gubernatorial candidates sometimes win, their electoral success does not necessarily imply that voters can be bought. To the contrary, I present evidence that self-financed campaign spending has a far weaker marginal effect on electoral results than externally-financed campaign spending. For every Corzine, there's a DeVos—who spent record amounts in his 2006 attempt to unseat Michigan's incumbent governor, only to lose by an embarrassingly wide margin. Money can't buy the governor's mansion. This empirical finding presents a theoretical puzzle—why would externally financed spending trump self-finance? The solution lies in strategic incentives facing would-be campaign donors. A candidate's ability to raise funds serves as a crucial indicator of her electoral viability. When it comes to influencing voters, a candidate's ability to raise money matters far more than her ability to spend it.
• 2008. "Does Challenger Quality Matter? Candidates and Donors in the 2006 Gubernatorial Elections" 
  • Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, held in Boston, Massachusetts, August 28-31, 2008.
  • Abstract: In a recent paper I showed that potential challengers and their financial backers behaved strategically when deciding whether to challenge incumbent governors in 2006; governors who appeared vulnerable in late 2006 attracted the most experienced, best-funded challengers. In this paper, I ask whether challenger strength even matters by examining two outcomes of interest: Changes in the incumbent's popularity over the course of the campaign, and the incumbent's performance on election day. Challenger strength turns out to matter only weakly, with a stronger effect on election results than on incumbent popularity. This difference suggests that if challenger strength matters, it does so partly because inexperienced challengers do not provide voters with a real choice on election day—experienced challengers are not necessarily better campaigners than inexperienced ones.
• 2008. "Partisanship, Blame, and Divided Federalism: How Voters Assess Gubernatorial Responsibility for the State Economy" 
  • Paper presented at the 8th annual State Policy and Politics Conference , held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, May 30-31, 2008.
  • Abstract: Elections are thought to provide a means for voters to hold politicians responsible for their behavior in office. But in the United States, voters directly elect dozens of politicians: Presidents, members of Congress, governors, legislators, mayors, and so on. How do voters decide which politician to blame for which policy outcomes? In some policy areas, one particular office may have a clear "functional responsibility," making blame easy to assign. But in many policy areas—economic development in particular—responsibility is shared. I argue that partisanship plays a crucial role in shaping voter allocations of blame, particularly in policy areas where functional responsibility is shared. I find support for this argument in analyses of both the 1982 and 2006 gubernatorial elections. Particularly under "divided federalism" (i.e., when the governor and the president belong to different parties), voter partisanship influences how voters perceive the state's economy and whether voters hold the governor responsible for the state's economic health.
• 2007. "Party, Performance, and Strategic Politicians: The Dynamics of Elections for Senator and Governor in 2006" 
  • With Gary C. Jacobson . Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, held in Chicago, Illinois, August 30-September 2, 2007.
  • Abstract: This paper analyzes a unique set of state-level monthly survey data covering the eighteen months preceding the 2006 election to estimate (1) the effects of national and local conditions on the strength of challenges to incumbent senators and governors and (2) the effects of these challenges on changes in state electorates' ratings of officeholders and their share of votes on election day. The analysis confirms several of the basic components of the theory that the strategic behavior of candidates and campaign contributors amplify the effects of local and national conditions on election results, thereby enhancing electoral accountability. But it also uncovers a striking difference between the two offices: Even taking the strongly pro-Democratic national climate into account, the election context had a strong tendency to reduce the approval ratings of Senators, while it had an equally strong tendency to increase the approval ratings of governors. We speculate as to what might account for this difference.
• 2007. "Gubernatorial Approval and Strategic Entry in the 2006 Elections" 
  • Paper presented at the 65th annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, held in Chicago, Illinois, April 12-15, 2007.
  • Abstract: Previous work has shown that candidate quality and strategic donors mediate Congressional election results, but this insight has had little treatment in the literature on gubernatorial approval and elections. Rather than examine challengers and donors, most studies have attributed gubernatorial election outcomes entirely to voter behavior, which has the misleading implication that the variables driving election results also determine gubernatorial job approval ratings. This paper presents a new model of gubernatorial elections, paying special attention to how potential challengers in 2006 responded strategically to January's gubernatorial approval ratings.