Representation in Congress
A Unified Theory

Representation in Congress presents a theory of representation in the US Congress that is also applicable to many other legislatures.

Kim Quaile Hill (Author), Soren Jordan (Author), Patricia A. Hurley (Author)

9781107107816, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 2 July 2015

238 pages, 17 b/w illus. 9 tables
23.6 x 16 x 2.1 cm, 0.51 kg

'In sum, this important book offers a long overdue and elegant model of representation that will surely refocus the field and motivate scholars of representation to extend this work to other contexts.' Jennifer Hayes Clark, Congress and The Presidency

Representation in Congress provides a theory of dyadic policy representation intended to account for when belief sharing, delegate, responsible party, trustee, and 'party elite led' models of representational linkage arise on specific policy issues. The book also presents empirical tests of most of the fundamental predictions for when such alternative models appear, and it presents tests of novel implications of the theory about other aspects of legislative behavior. Some of the latter tests resolve contradictory findings in the relevant, existing literature - such as whether and how electoral marginality affects representation, whether roll call vote extremism affects the re-election of incumbents, and what in fact is the representational behavior of switched seat legislators. All of the empirical tests provide evidence for the theory. Indeed, the full set of empirical tests provides evidence for the causal effects anticipated by the theory and much of the causal process behind those effects.

1. The scientific study of constituency representation
2. The party polarization and issue complexity theory of dyadic representation
3. The research design and data for the principal verification tests for the party polarization and issue complexity theory
4. Verification tests for the original predictions about patterns of representational linkage
5. Novel implications of the theory about elections and representation
6. Electoral marginality and constituency representation
7. Conclusions, implications, and future research.

Subject Areas: Comparative politics [JPB], Politics & government [JP]