The Missing Links in Legislative Politics: Attentive Constituents

Abstract

In democratic theory one of the central postulates is that linkages between representatives and the represented provide for access, representation, and accountability. Some research has been focused on these linkages, but it has been confined largely relations between legislators and the general publics of their districts.' It is very unlikely, however, that representatives actually think of their constituents en masse.? There is also some evidence that political interest groups organized on a system-wide basis do not supply the major linkage between constituents and representatives.3 Rather, the major linkage appears be through the politically active subculture in legislative constituencies, those middlemen in politics who, in a variety of ways, mediate between mass publics and representative elites. V. 0. Key thought these middlemen constituted a missing piece of the puzzle in research efforts to assemble the elements that