Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- 1 The Unanswered Question of Legislative Perceptions
- 2 A Dyadic Theory of Subconstituency Representation
- 3 The Psychology of Constituency Representation
- 4 Subconstituents Relevant to Health Policy and Natural Resources Policy
- 5 Explaining Legislative Perceptions
- 6 The Effects of Legislative Perception on Participation
- 7 Reassembling the District as a Whole
- 8 Perception, Reform, and Representation in Congress
- Appendix A Sampling
- Appendix B Interviews
- Appendix C Measurement of Primary Independent Variables
- Appendix D Measurement of Legislative Participation
- Appendix E Instrumental Variables Model of Legislative Participation
- References
- Index
2 - A Dyadic Theory of Subconstituency Representation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- 1 The Unanswered Question of Legislative Perceptions
- 2 A Dyadic Theory of Subconstituency Representation
- 3 The Psychology of Constituency Representation
- 4 Subconstituents Relevant to Health Policy and Natural Resources Policy
- 5 Explaining Legislative Perceptions
- 6 The Effects of Legislative Perception on Participation
- 7 Reassembling the District as a Whole
- 8 Perception, Reform, and Representation in Congress
- Appendix A Sampling
- Appendix B Interviews
- Appendix C Measurement of Primary Independent Variables
- Appendix D Measurement of Legislative Participation
- Appendix E Instrumental Variables Model of Legislative Participation
- References
- Index
Summary
Despite widespread agreement on the importance of constituency representation in Congress, what representation looks like in practice is highly problematic. A number of issues complicate scholars' inquiries and make it challenging to recreate the reality of Capitol Hill in models of congressional behavior. The most notable of these issues is the question of who is being represented by a Member of Congress. In its most simplified form, representation is assumed to be the match between a single district interest and the actions taken by a legislator. However, this parsimonious notion of representation falls short of capturing the reality of congressional districts or the challenges of constituency representation. Concerns with summary measures of “the district” have been raised at least as far back as Fiorina (1974), and this chapter builds on the argument that legislators do not represent a single constituency, but rather multiple subconstituencies within their district. As a result, there is not one representative relationship between a legislator and his district, but rather a collection of representative relationships within a district that scholars must examine in order to understand constituency representation in Congress.
Toward this goal, this chapter develops a new theory of congressional representation that reflects this more complex notion of the representative relationship. This dyadic theory of subconstituency representation focuses on the relationship between legislators and the multiple subconstituencies in their district who are relevant to a specific policy issue.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Constituency Representation in CongressThe View from Capitol Hill, pp. 15 - 29Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010