Unfolding Ambition in Senate Primary Elections: Strategic Politicians and the Dynamics of Candidacy Decisions

(Hardback)

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Theories of ambition teach us that elected offices are valuable commodities to certain politicians, and under the right circumstances, the benefits of running for an office outweigh the associated risks. Yet, some ambitious politicians emerge as candidates while others do not. This book analyzes strategic candidacy decisions to explain how primary elections for the United States Senate unfold. With new, comprehensive data on pools of potential candidates, it examines the determinants of electoral and fundraising success, analyzes the importance of the timing of candidacy decisions and the strategic interactions of prospective officeholders, and investigates the impact of strategic retirements. Using both qualitative and quantitative tools, including event history techniques to capture the complex dynamics of these races, it concludes that the manner in which politicians interact with one another and the unique context within each campaign leads to individuals emerging from the pool of potential candidates in systematic ways. In the end, the strategic behavior of ambitious politicians has important implications for the slate of candidates available to the electorate and ultimately, the quality of representation between constituents and their legislators.

Reviews

The focus on ambition is fitting given the ambitious goals of the study. King tackles the intuitively appealing notion that candidate emergence is contingent on ever-changing conditions prior to filing deadlines. Though this characterization has been recognized by others and is undoubtedly correct, moving beyond case studies presents a number of data collection and modeling challenges that have limited previous investigations. King provides a detailed, illuminating account of the data collection strategy, demonstrating how pools of potential US Senate candidates were identified, offering an alternative to existing methods of determining ambition. These data are employed to assess both primary outcomes and the electoral process with an eye toward explaining how alternatives are presented to the public, which is fundamental to the representation received by constituents. The true innovation comes in the exploration of the timing of entry decisions and the interactions among members of the pool of potential candidates. The technical discussion of the models and results will limit the audience for the book, but this investigation marks the beginning of a new chapter in the literature on political ambition and its consequences for representation. Summing Up: Highly recommended. * CHOICE *
We know a lot about how voters choose, given the choices. But where do the choices come from In this remarkable book, Aaron King dives deep into the data on why we get the candidates we get in U.S. Senate races. His findings will change the way you think about the political world. Often surprising, deeply informed, and resolutely careful to avoid over-interpreting the results, this book will take its place among the classics of the American politics literature. -- Michael C. Munger, Director of PPE Program, Duke University
This book fills an important void in the literature on primary elections by focusing specifically on the behavior of strategic politicians in the context of U.S. Senate elections. King offers a theory of candidate decision-making in Senate primaries to better understand why an increasing number of primary contests do not feature experienced candidates. He argues that the problem is not a shortage of ambitious candidates, but rather unwillingness to run given the enormous opportunity costs and risks associated with winning. By focusing on questions of political ambition and representation in primary elections, King offers a new perspective on Senate primaries as well as how factors such as the timing of primary elections can influence candidate emergence decisions. This is an important work for anyone interested broadly in electoral accountability and representation in the context of primary elections. -- Jamie Carson, University of Georgia
This path-breaking study is one of the first to examine the dynamic nature of candidate entry. King provides a detailed look into the complexity of candidate emergence with a new and impressive dataset of potential U.S. Senate candidates and captures how the dynamics of a campaign shape the timing of candidacy decisions. This book will change the way scholars think about political ambition and candidate emergence, and it has important implications for choice and competition in American elections. -- Danielle Thomsen, University of Syracuse
Political Ambition has been a major focus of research in American politics for more than half a century, but analysis has been limited by the lack of adequate data on potential candidates and their choices. In this book Aaron King builds a solid theoretical base to address the dynamic context of candidate emergence and the interactive nature of potential candidates decisions. Then he constructs a truly unique set of data on those candidates and their choices that permits, for the first time, adequate testing of the relevant hypotheses. This volume will be the standard against which all future research on this topic is measured. -- David Rohde, Duke University

Author Bio

Aaron S. King is an assistant professor of political science at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington.