More specifically, policy reforms in the states they represent can increase pressures members face from organized groups and individuals in their constituencies to promote aligned federal policies. Empirically, I examine the effects of state marijuana legalization. The inferential design leverages differences across the states in statewide citizen initiative institutions, which provides exogenous variation in legalization. Instrumental variables analysis indicates legalization influenced pro-marijuana bill sponsorship and roll calls in the 116th Congress. The evidence points to growing influence of industry in legalizing states— including the ability to mobilize employees and customers—as the key mechanism, thus underscoring the importance of a political economy perspective for studying interdependencies in American federalism.During his tenure in the Senate , Cory Gardner became a central figure in federal marijuana policy. In 2018, Gardner vowed to block judicial nominees in the Senate until he received a commitment that the federal government would not prosecute marijuana industry . In the 116th Congress, Gardner sponsored core marijuana-related legislation including the SAFE Banking Act and the STATES Act. Gardner was not always so pro-marijuana. He opposed Colorado’s landmark 2012 ballot initiative legalizing marijuana for adult-use , and there is little in his record prior to 2012 that would indicate he would become an important marijuana proponent. At a basic level, Gardner’s pro-marijuana turn appears to be driven by a policy shift in the state he represented. The adoption of adult-use legalization in 2012 led to rapid marijuana industry growth in Colorado, which, as of 2018, took in the most industry revenue per capita of any state. The industry, according to journalist accounts, has gained leverage in Colorado politics,vertical grow racks compelling even conservative politicians like Gardner to support industry demands .
That a policy shift in the state of Colorado might affect the future politics—in this case by shaping the behavior of a member of Congress—accords broadly with the notion of policy feedback, whereby “policy, once enacted, restructures subsequent political processes” . Yet, these dynamics do not fit cleanly within existing policy feedback frameworks for two reasons. First, the policy feedback studies that investigate lawmaking as an outcome tend to rely on broad historical institutional analysis of qualitative data —not micro-level, quantifiable examinations of lawmaker behavior. While, more recently, the policy feedback literature has taken a micro-level turn, research in this vein has focused on the effects of policies on individual-level behavioral outcomes like turnout and attitudes , not the behavior of lawmakers. As a result, we have accumulated much quantitative evidence on how policies affect voters, and to a lesser extent, interest groups, but little on how it matters for lawmaking and public policy decisions. The second reason has to do with how policy feedback mechanisms operate within the federal system of American government. Classic studies of policy feedback examine the political implications of national policies, with scholars only more recently turning their attention to the sub-national level. Most of this sub-national-level work examines the effects of state policies on the politics in the states they were adopted. In this paper, I argue that state policy decisions can also affect how states and districts are represented at the national level. Broadly speaking, this is because members of Congress represent geographically demarcated units that are embedded in state policy landscapes, and these policy landscapes affect the political pressures that they face. First, state policies structure state economies, and in so doing can affect the ability of organized economic interests to engage in politics and make demands on their representatives. Second, state policies can affect the mobilization and preferences of individual voters, and thereby condition the pressures faced by re-election seeking members.
Finally, beyond potentially shaping preferences, state policy enactment might send a signal of constituent preferences that can be difficult for members of Congress to ignore. Put together, these mechanisms suggest the adoption of a policy at the state level can increase the pressure on members of Congress to promote aligned federal policies. Empirically, I examine marijuana policy reform, a case that provides critical analytical leverage for testing the argument. The wave of state-level legalization over the past two decades has produced great variation in policy landscapes across the states. Moreover, the importance of the statewide citizen initiative—only available in 24 of the states—for passing legalization provides exogenous variation that allows for causal estimation of the effect of state policy shifts on representation in Congress. Does marijuana legalization in the states they represent affect members’ behavior in Congress? Studying the 116th Congress, I find evidence that it does. Using whether states permit citizen initiatives as an instrument, I find that members of Congress representing legalizing states were more likely to sponsor or co-sponsor key pro-marijuana pieces of legislation, and also more likely to cast certain pro-marijuana roll-call votes. Bringing quantitative evidence and elite interviews together to investigate mechanisms, I find the most support for the role of growing industry influence in legalizing states, but also find some support for the role of signaling constituent preferences. I find little support for the notion that effects were driven by positive shifts to public favorability wrought by legalization. Though inability to precisely decompose mechanisms is a limitation, such a decomposition is not critical for the paper’s core contributions, which are two-fold. First, this paper provides novel theory and evidence on the ways that the policy terrain affects lawmaking in Congress. Establishing causation using quantitative designs in policy feedback research is notoriously difficult . This study is, to my knowledge, the first to leverage a quantitative causal inference design to estimate the effect of prior policy decisions not just on voter behavior or interest group mobilization, but also on the actions of lawmakers in Congress. In doing so, it has the potential to serve as a bridge between work in policy feedback and scholarship on Congress. Second, this study contributes to a growing body of literature that is fruitfully applying ideas about policy feedback to the study of policy interdependence and diffusion in American federalism.
While recent work has illuminated how state policies can “feed into” the interest group politics in other states and at the national level , this study explores how state policy decisions shape the politics in Congress. In doing so, it demonstrates the importance of federalism as an institution that structures policy and political change over time in American politics. The paper unfolds as follows. First, I develop the core theoretical framework linking state policy decisions to representation in Congress. I proceed to introduce the case—the politics of marijuana—and the design for estimating the causal effect of state legalization on the behavior of members of Congress. I next present the main empirical results, discuss the evidence on the contributions of different mechanisms, and conclude.What determines how members of Congress represent their states and districts? While analyses have highlighted diverse drivers of congressional behavior including ideology and partisanship , a consistent finding in the literature is that members represent the preferences of the citizens and organized groups that make up their constituencies. Individual- and group-level inputs are often taken, in this literature, as exogenous. But these factors, in addition to influencing policy, are also shaped by previously established policy through dynamics of policy feedback. Scholars have identified several mechanisms. Broadly speaking, considering individual behavior, policies both condition the resources that individuals can devote to politics and the way they interpret the role of government in their lives . Considering organized interests, policies can incentivize beneficiaries to form citizens groups to advocate for the preservation or expansion of policies . Public policies can also,indoor grow light shelves by changing the rules governing the economy, increase the political capacities of organized economic interests like firms and unions . If policies can affect the behavior of individuals and the landscape of organized interests, and members of Congress are responsive to the individuals and organized interests that make up their constituencies, we might then expect policy feedback dynamics to ultimately influence the lawmaking process. Indeed, classic historical institutional accounts have traced the full policy feedback cycle, showing how previously adopted policies reshaped the politics, and in doing so, affected the decisions of lawmakers decades later . The strength of this historical institutional scholarship is the wide lens and attention to macro-level change. However, this also means that it is more limited for generating expectations about how shifts to policy landscapes might affect the decisions of individual lawmakers. And because more micro-level policy feedback work generally focuses on intermediate outcomes at the voter and interest group levels, we have accumulated little quantitative evidence that captures the full policy feedback cycle. One important exception is Campbell’s analysis of the relationship between Social Security and senior political participation. While Campbell’s seminal account is mainly concerned with the individual and group-level feedback effects of Social Security, one chapter investigates outcomes in Congress, thereby completing the “participation-policy cycle” . Campbell shows that, while Democratic members across the board tended to oppose cuts to programs that principally benefit seniors, Republican members’ willingness to vote for program cuts depended in part on the number of seniors in their districts. This analysis provides useful evidence but does not provide a clear-cut test of the core hypothesis that the prior adoption of pro-senior policies affected lawmaker behavior in a future political era.
The reason is that we would expect members representing districts with more seniors to vote for more pro-senior policies even in the absence of prior policy adoption driving seniors’ political mobilization.24 Ideally, we would be able to compare the behavior of members representing districts in locales featuring pro-senior policies to the behavior of members representing locales without pro-senior policies. But, because programs like Social Security have national scope, there is limited variation to leverage. This paper relies on state policy variation for empirical leverage. Scholars of policy feedback are increasingly interested in state policy, and broadly speaking, studies have shown that state policies can produce the same sorts of feedback effects on voters and interest groups as national ones. The approach I take here is somewhat different. Instead of examining policies’ political implications in the states where they are passed, I examine the national-level political implications. In particular, I focus on how state policy decisions in the places they represent shape lawmakers’ behavior in Congress. There are several reasons why state policy decisions might affect representation in Congress. The first set of explanations I put forward focus on how state policies structure states’ political economies. State policy decisions can influence what sorts of economic activities are profitable, and as a result, which types of firms establish and grow—as well as which fail. And while this paper focuses on firms, the same is true of another set of powerful organized economic interests: labor unions. The ability of unions to develop and maintain organizational strength is heavily influenced by state policies like collective bargaining rules and “right-to-work” laws . This matters also for politics. These interests will therefore be in a stronger position to influence national politics. Moreover, the groups that benefit from, and are strengthened by, state-level policy decisions are likely to also benefit from the adoption of aligned policies at the national level—so might leverage their newfound strength towards that end. One core potential avenue for doing so is putting pressure on members of Congress representing geographic areas where they have a significant presence. It is well-established that members of Congress generally are more responsive to the interests of industries that employ constituents and provide state and local tax revenue in the districts they represent. What is novel here is the understanding that which interests grow and develop a strong presence can be a function of prior state-level policy decisions. In considering the mechanisms linking state policy to congressional representation, members’ re-election motive is a good starting point . Members generally care about their re-election, and firms and unions have demonstrated an ability to transform their economic presence into political power by engaging in elections. Firms mobilizing employees to support their political interests is widespread in contemporary American politics . Similarly, mobilizing members in elections is a key source of union political strength .