Universalism and Political Representation: Evidence from the Field

This paper provides field evidence on the link between morals and political behavior. We develop a theory-guided real-stakes measure of each U.S. district's values on the universalism-particularism continuum, which reflects the degree to which charitable giving decreases as a function of social distance. District universalism is strongly predictive of local Democratic vote shares, legislators' roll-call voting, and the moral content of Congressional speeches. These results hold in both across- and within-party analyses. Overall, spatial heterogeneity in universalism is a substantially stronger predictor of geographic variation in political outcomes than traditional economic variables such as income or education.