Representation in Congress

A Unified Theory

Kim Quaile Hill, Soren Jordan, Patricia A. Hurley

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781107107816
• eBook ISBN: 9781316311042
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Politics & International Relations

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title
• Title page
• Copyright information
• Table of contents
• Preface
• 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: In Search of Theoretically Unified Findings
• 7 Conclusions, Implications, and Future Research
• Methodological Appendix
• Bibliography
• Index