Constituency Opinion Research Articles

Constituency Opinion and Congressional Policy Making: The Reagan Defense Buildup

Rrepresentatives' votes on a series of defense budget roll calls in the first year of the Reagan administration's Pentagon buildup are related to constituency opinions on defense spending during the 1980 election campaign. The strong aggregate constituency demand for increased defense spending in 1980 is estimated to have added almost $17 billion (about 10%) to the total fiscal year 1982 Pentagon appropriation. The impact of constituency opinion was largely independent of specific political circumstances: differential responsiveness in districts with partisan turnover, intense districtlevel competition, and strong presidential coattails together accounted for less than $1 billion in additional appropriations, with the remaining $16 billion attributable to across-the-board responsiveness by even the most safely incumbent representatives.

Constancy of Legislative Perceptions of Constituency Opinion

This article develops the dynamic implications of the Miller-Stokes model of constituency representation by exploring the extent to which there was constancy between two “generations” of French Socialist party candidates for the National Assembly from the same constituencies, in their perceptions of the opinions of their constituents. The data derive from personal interviews conducted with the candidates shortly after the legislative elections of 1967 and 1978. The phenomena discussed include the relationship between constancy of candidate perceptions and accuracy of candidate perceptions. The authors also examine the extent to which the candidates base their perceptions of district opinion on the political composition of their constituencies. That practice has daunting implications both for the comparative study of representation and for the representative process itself.

Linking Constituency Opinion and Senate Voting Scores: A Hybrid Explanation

This paper attempts to explain better the linkages between constituency opinion and the voting records of senators. A hybrid explanation-the modified twoconstituency thesis-is presented here, and the analyses provide evidence in support of the explanation. Senators' voting scores are most strongly related to the weighted position of their party's constituents. The extent to which senators' voting scores diverge from the preferences of constituents of their own party depends on the weighted positions of independents and constituents of the other party.

Legislative representation on a technical policy issue: Hazardous waste in Tennessee

Hazardous waste disposal is an example of an issue that government officials increasingly must confront but find difficult to resolve—complex scientific and technical problems that frighten the public. This study compares legislator's must estimate the attitudes of the public. This study compares legislators' opinions with constituency opinions using surveys of the general public and of legislators in Tennessee. It finds that citizens are more concerned than the lawmakers, that they are more willing to find solutions than the legislators believe, and that they trust scientific experts more than they trust public officials.

Policy Voting in the U. S. Senate: Who Is Represented?

This study develops new state-level measures of mass and party elite ideology to assess senatorial responsiveness to different constituencies. The ideological preferences of two groups-independent identifiers and senators' state party elites-prove important in accounting for senatorial Conservative Coalition scores (1981-84), while the preferences of state partisans have no direct effect on roll-call voting. The often noted ideological differences between same-state senators from different parties are explained by the differing values of their respective state party elites. Challengers, in contrast to incumbents, are unresponsive to independents; their campaign issue stances are consistent with the more extreme values of their state party elites. As a result Senate elections tend to be contests between relatively moderate incumbents and ideologically extreme challengers. Popular understanding and academic theory agree that a fundamental feature of modern democratic government is the representation of constituency interests by elected legislators. Studies of representation examine how constituency opinion is related to legislative attitudes and behavior and what conditions promote or inhibit this central relationship. In the theoretical and empirical work on legislative elections, a growing number of studies deals with the role of issues and policy in explaining Senate elections. This work assumes that elections are the chief mechanism for achieving accountability and for insuring legislative responsiveness to constituency preferences. Several features of the contemporary U.S. context shape the potential for legislative responsiveness to constituents. Our electoral rules-single-member district elections, the direct primary, and the Australian ballot-enhance legislative responsiveness to voters rather than to party or the president, as does the decline in partisanship among voters and within Congress. Split-ticket voting is at such levels that while many seats are safe for specific incumbents, fewer and fewer can be considered safe for the parties. Of course the institutional changes in Congress-decentralized power, increased perquisites of office with

The Grass Roots Connection: Environmental Activists and Senate Roll Calls

Interest groups resort to grass roots lobbying tactics with increasing frequency, but they are unsure when and how such a strategy affects congressional decision making. In analyzing citizen activists who belong to environmental organizations and their influence on Senate roll calls, this paper defines the limits and possibilities of such grass roots pressure. In general, the statistical results indicate that grass roots mobilization has a modest value as a lobbying tool, but they also suggest that certain issues, state conditions, and characteristics of the group members themselves shape the receptivity of senators to organized constituent opinion.

The Structure of Constituency Representation: On Theory and Method

We argue that constituency representation is best conceptualized as taking a nonlinear rather than a linear form, especially when legislative roll-call behavior is influenced by constituency opinion. We analyze data on constituency representation showing that a logistic model provides a better fit over a linear model. The improvement is greatest under conditions associated with constituency influence, supporting our theoretical contention that a linear form can be expected when constituencies and legislators share opinion, but that departure from a linear to a logistic structure will occur with constituency influence.

Electoral Change and Policy Consequences

This article compares constituency opinion and roll call voting behavior of U.S. representatives in the 96th (1979-1980) and 97th (1981-1982) Congresses for four classes of district types: those that switched party in the 1980 election, those that replaced a representative with a new member of the same party, those that returned Democrats, and those that returned Republicans to Congress. Switched-seat districts exhibit the largest changes in voting behavior from the 96th to the 97th Congress, yet the behavior of the new representative is not always consistent with constituency preferences. All four groups of representatives voted more conservatively in the 97th Congress than they or their counterparts had in the 96th, suggesting that House members may have interpreted the 1980 election as a mandate for conservatism. Yet more often than not this conservatism moved representatives away from, rather than toward, constituency preferences, suggesting that voters made retrospective rather than prospective choices in 1980.

Preference Revelation and Public Policy: Making Sense of Citizen Survey Data

Surveys of citizen opinion have become commonplace features of contemporary American life. Along with their use by market researchers and political polling organizations, local governments have been making increasing use of citizen surveys as one method of gathering information about institutional performance. The value of these data to decision makers is found in the unique distributional character of those responding to a general population survey. Unlike public hearings and informal contact with constituents, general population surveys (if done correctly) provide potentially useful information regarding the preferences and assessments of a random cross-section of their constituents. In fact, cities such as Dayton, Ohio, St. Petersburg, Florida, and Dallas, Texas have gone so far as to incorporate annual or biennial surveys of constituent opinion into their routine management process.' An increasing number of articles-several of which have appeared in the Public Administration Reviewhave been published in recent years which deal with the use of citizen surveys by local government. Among these various papers are those which address the interpretation of citizen preference information2 and various methodological issues associated with the conduct of such surveys.3 Reflected in this literature is an implicit assumption that at least two different purposes may be served by such surveys of constituent opinion: they may be used as a type of performance indicator and / or to inform decisions about the distribution of monies across different policy areas. In the first instance, interest is focused upon the issue of citizen satisfaction with current services. In the second, interest is directed toward constituent opinion regarding the division of an hypothetical budget. With specific reference to questions about the size of a budget, significant questions remain about the utility of citizen survey data to decision makers. When respondents to a general population survey are asked if they would like their city government to spend more, the same, or less on the provision of a specific good or service, are the preferences expressed by respondents real preferences or are they merely artifacts of a particular research methodology? In the literature of public

American political science review: Albert D. Cover and Bruce S. Brumberg, ‘Baby books and ballots: The impact of congressional mail on constituent opinion’, 76:2, June 1982, pp. 347–59

We examine the partisan, logistic, and contextual factors affecting citizens' perceptions of electoral integrity. Drawing on original survey data collected at different stages of the 2012 Mexican presidential election, we find that confidence in the integrity of the electoral process varies not only over time, but also across partisanship. While those who supported the candidate on the left consistently expressed concerns about electoral corruption, supporters of the incumbent party discredited the integrity of the election only after learning their candidate's defeat. Furthermore, we provide the first empirical assessment of the relationship between voters' perceptions of electoral integrity and the presence of observers and party representatives at the polling station. Our findings contribute to a better understanding of the political factors that influence citizens' trust in elections.

Baby Books and Ballots: The Impact of Congressional Mail on Constituent Opinion

Studies have shown that members of the U.S. Congress attempt to exploit many of the perquisites of office for their electoral advantage, but the actual impact of this exploitation has never been clear. Thus a potentially significant part of the advantage of incumbency has been subject to more speculation than analysis. This study develops a simple model that can be used to determine the electoral significance of perquisite use by officeholders. It begins by examining a particular perquisite, the franking privilege, to determine how it affects incumbent saliency and reputation among constituents. Within the context of an appropriate research design, the study finds that the distribution of government pamphlets does boost an incumbent's saliency while also creating a more positive evaluation of the incumbent. The saliency and evaluation effects erode over time, but this erosion can be mitigated through follow-up mailings. These results are incorporated into a model that is used to predict the electoral consequences of perquisite use. The model suggests that perquisites have their greatest impact in constituencies with a relatively small proportion of voters who identify with the incumbent's party.

Baby Books and Ballots: The Impact of Congressional Mail on Constituent Opinion

Studies have shown that members of the U.S. Congress attempt to exploit many of the perquisites of office for their electoral advantage, but the actual impact of this exploitation has never been clear. Thus a potentially significant part of the advantage of incumbency has been subject to more speculation than analysis. This study develops a simple model that can be used to determine the electoral significance of perquisite use by officeholders. It begins by examining a particular perquisite, the franking privilege, to determine how it affects incumbent saliency and reputation among constituents. Within the context of an appropriate research design, the study finds that the distribution of government pamphlets does boost an incumbent's saliency while also creating a more positive evaluation of the incumbent. The saliency and evaluation effects erode over time, but this erosion can be mitigated through follow-up mailings. These results are incorporated into a model that is used to predict the electoral consequences of perquisite use. The model suggests that perquisites have their greatest impact in constituencies with a relatively small proportion of voters who identify with the incumbent's party.

The Calculus of Representation: a Congressional Perspective

INCE the time of Edmund Burke, the mandate vs. independence coil troversy has been a staple of representation theory.' It has been givet new life in recent years by the success of Hanna Pitkin's seminal studv (1967). Yet attempts to operationalize this construct in empirical research have yielded rather tentative results. In their comparative study of four state legislatures, John Wahlke an(d associates (1962: chs. 12-13) attempted to distinguish between two dimensions of representation. The first, areal concerned the individual legislator's propensity to further the interests of constituents in the district. as opposed to the populace of the state as a whole. The second, termed th'style of representation, involved a distinction between deference to th' expressed wishes of constituents (the delegate role) and following the dictates of conscience (the trustee role). Wahlke et al. failed to establisli clearly how or why legislators come to adopt a specific role. Moreover, thev found that about one-fourth of the legislators could not be assigned to either of the categories, and that one-third fell between the two polar focus categories. Roger Davidson (1969: ch. 4) subsequently applied this typology to congressmen (altering the focus dimension, of course, to the district vs. the nation). With regard to focus, he found a local orientation predominant, but 31 percent of the members could not be classified as primarily representing either the nation or the district. Similarly, on the dimension, while delegates and trustees each accounted for about one-fourth of the sample. fully 46 percent were classified as exhibiting a mixture of the two role orientations. As Davidson himself notes, Many congressmen observe that their problem is one of balancing the one role against the other' (p. 119). In their pioneering study of constituency influence on congressional rollcall voting, Miller and Stokes (1966) concluded that variations in the representative relation are most likely to occur as we move from one policy domain to another (p. 371). In particular, they found congressmen in 1958 were most responsive to constituency opinion on civil rights, with a moderate degree of influence prevailing on social welfare issues and virtually none apparent on foreign policy. Donald Gross (1978) later reanalyzed the Miller-Stokes data after classifying the sample of congressmen with regard to representational style. Like Davidson, Gross found a plurality of politicos in the House. The difference in constituency responsiveness between delegates and trustees was readily apparent on the highly salient issue of civil rights, while the impact of style on the support of constituency opinions on social welfare or foreign policy was shown to be insignificant. In January 1977, the Commission on Administrative Review interviewed 154 non-freshman members of the House of Representatives to obtain their views on a variety of topics relevant to the functioning of the House.2 After about 30 minutes of largely open-ended questioning of the

Measuring Constituency Opinion in the U. S. House: Mail versus Random Surveys

Measuring Constituency Opinion in the U. S. House: Mail versus Random Surveys

Constituency Preference and Potential Economic Gain

This article evaluates two aspects of constituency interest on legislative voting, the expressed preferences of a constituency on a policy, and the economic costs and benefits constituents would derive from a policy, using data from U.S. Senate voting on the 1972 Family Assistance Plan (FAP). When considered simultaneously, neither constituency opinion nor FAP's projected economic impact reveals a significant effect. The modest importance of constituency opinion in voting on this issue contrasts with earlier research findings. The most important factors in senators' voting on FAP were their ideological orientation and party affiliation. These results are consistent with case studies of the FAP policy process and with expectations regarding the decision process in redistributive policy areas.

Measuring Constituency Opinion: The 1978 U. S. Congressional Election Survey

This paper discusses the major potential research advantages of using congressional districts as the primary sampling unit for election studies, as was done in the United States in 1978. This permits use of the district (rather than the respondent) as the unit of analysis. The paper describes how correlations between constituency opinion and roll-call behavior can be corrected for the reliability of the sample constituency characteristic. Data from the 1978 survey are analyzed, using this technique, and they show that roll-call behavior is quite responsive to constituency opinion.

Reply to Adams and Ferber

IN A RECENT RESEARCH NOTE in the Journal of Politics, Adams and Ferber present data bearing on my earlier analysis of responsiveness to perceived constituency opinion by Texas legislators. They compared legislative votes on two constitutional amendments submitted to Texas voters as referenda liquor by the drink and a provision for annual legislative sessions. They conclude, Public referenda as an empirical indicator of constituency opinion reveal a quite different portrait of the representativeness of the Texas House than that of Jones' research. ' In particular, Adams and Ferber suggest that more responsiveness exists than I found. I would like to comment on several aspects of their analysis that weaken the conclusions they would like to make. Three issues stand out: the issue of comparing comparables, the issue of a baseline measure for assessing congruence, and the issue of generalizability from referenda issues to a more general legislator-constituency linkage. The Issue of Comparing Comparables. As Adams and Ferber themselves note, congruence between the legislative vote and constituency opinion is not the same as deliberate responsiveness to perceived constituency opinion. In my JP article, I did not attempt to assess congruence. Rather, I was primarily interested in the linkage between legislative attitudes, perceptions, and roll call

The Dynamics of Constituency

This study offers a longitudinal analytic model designed to tap the degree to which members of the U.S. House of Representatives are responsive to constituency opinion in a dynamic sense. This, after all, is what constituency electoral control means: Regular elections are supposed to assure ongoing constituency control and force the representative to change his or her policy making behavior with changes in constituency opinion. The study employs roll call data and the University of Michigan national election survey series to show evidence of constituency electoral control when there is a decline in the margin of victory for the incumbent over time or when there is actual turnover. Under more normal conditions, however, and even when there is a visible source of change in constituency opinion (redistricting), there is little evidence of ongoing constituency control resulting in responsiveness.

The Determinants of Legislators' Support for Judicial Reorganization

This article attempts to extend the concept of support into anarea that to date has received little attention—support for change in one institution by members of another. Specifi cally, we try to identify the determinants of support in the Kentucky legislature for structural reform of the state's judicial system. We suggest that legislators' expectations concerning impact of the proposed changes on both the administration of justice and local autonomy, as well as other variables like constituency opinion, urbanization, and occupation, affect legislative support for judicial reform. In testing the support model, we find that one institution's support for change in another institution is not only a function of the performance of the institution being evaluated (judiciary), but also results from certain political concerns of the evaluating institution (legislature) that have nothing to do with the merits of the actual reform.

Policy representation of constituency interests

This paper examines two aspects of congressional representation: the responsiveness of House candidates to constituency opinion and the effect of candidate positions on House election outcomes. For both Democratic- and Republican-held seats, constituency liberalism (as measured by the constituency's vote for McGovern in 1972) is strongly related to the liberalism of incumbent candidates but less so to the liberalism of challengers. House election outcomes are visibly influenced by the positions of incumbent candidates but not those of nonincumbent candidates. The paper argues that elections contribute significantly to achieving congressional representation. Candidate positions are measured from a 1974 CBS survey of all major House candidates.