Authors Wayne L. Francis and Lawrence W. Kenny examine why states differ in ease of entry into state and national political office and analyze the strategic decision making behavior of politicians in their attempts to move up the political ladder. The authors take a look at the careers of US presidents, showing how they successfully climbed the political ladder after starting at the bottom and working their way up. The traditional solution to poor performance in office is for citizens to vote legislators or chief executives out of office. But for many offices, voters have difficulty perceiving who, for example, has become responsive only to special interests at the cost of the larger majority. That is, voters may have difficulty perceiving whether their representative is casting the votes they would like cast.
Incumbents have clear information advantages.
They can send out a stream of positive messages during their term and can command greater campaign resources to offset negative information from challengers. A citizen would need to be very attentive to public affairs to objectively monitor the representative's official behavior.