Instability in Representational Role Orientation in a State Legislature: a Research Note

Abstract

ESEARCH concerning representational role orientations, the way in which legislators relate themselves to their decision-making behavior, recognizes three distinct models: trustee, delegate, politico (Wahlke et al. 1962). The trustee claims to vote his convictions and principles as his conscience dictates. The delegate follows the wishes of his constituents even if they are contrary to his own. The politico is a combination of both the trustee and delegate roles. Much of the research dealing with representational roles assumes both implicitly and explicitly that representational role orientations remain constant over time. That is, it has been assumed that once a legislator becomes comfortable with a particular role orientation, he will generally maintain that role orientation throughout his legislative career. The assumption that roles remain stable over time is a prerequisite for those who argue that representational role orientations may be used as a general theory for explaining and predicting legislative behavior. Within the literature concerning representational roles, there are only a few studies that discuss the stability of role choice. These studies generally focus on the changing role patterns of freshman legislators and/or candidates for various legislative bodies (Bell and Price 1975; Clarke and Price 1981; Asher 1973). In an effort to extend that work, this note concerns change in the representational roles of non-freshman legislators.