The political views of citizens should be reflected in the government of a democratic society. Typically, citizens' views are expressed by their elected representatives. We used the Center for Political Studies (CPS) 1986 National Election Study and a mail survey of the U.S. House of Representatives to look at representation collectively and dyadically. Collectively, we find some degree of congruence between leaders and followers. However, there are significant differences between them on half of the issue items, with the leaders usually taking more extreme positions than the followers. We looked at leaders and followers dyadically in 33 districts using Achen's measures of representation. We found that the representatives' views are fairly close to those of their constituents, that representatives are efficient at positioning themselves at the mean constituent position, and that representatives respond to shifts in liberalism/ conservatism in their districts. Legislative representation has been the topic of numerous political debates. One controversy centers on the role of the legislator in relation to his or her constituency. Are legislators free to act as please? Should use their own judgment to do what is best for their constituents? Or are representatives, by definition, required to reflect accurately the opinions of their constituents? We respond no Public Opinion Quarterly Volume 56:185-205 ? 1992 by the American Association for Public Opinion Research All nghts reserved. 0033-362X/92/5602-0001$02.50 CHERYL LYN HERRERA is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. RICHARD HERRERA is assistant professor of political science at Arizona State University. ERIC R. A. N. SMITH is associate professor of political science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. We would like to thank Richard Brody, John Geer, Kim F. Kahn, John Kessel, Patrick Kenney, Warren Miller, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on previous drafts of this article. An earlier version of this article was presented at the 1988 Western Political Science Association meeting in San Francisco. Some of the data used in this paper were made available by the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research. We bear sole responsibility for the analyses and interpretations presented here. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.33 on Sat, 26 Nov 2016 04:22:08 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 186 Herrera, Herrera, and Smith to the first question and argue that legislators should use their own judgment as well as reflect public and opinion. This is consistent with Pitkin's definition of political representation, which includes the idea that legislators should act in the of those represented and that they should look after the public and be responsive to public opinion, except insofar as non-responsiveness can be justified in terms of the public interest (Pitkin 1967, p. 224). In democracies, citizens' views are expressed by their elected representatives. Thus, most empirical studies of representation focus on the extent of agreement between political leaders and the mass public. Agreement between legislators and the public can be conceived of collectively or dyadically (Weissberg 1978). Collective representation refers to a collective body representing a people, while dyadic representation refers to a particular legislator and the constituency that elected that legislator. We shall employ both dyadic and collective measures of representation in order to provide as much information about the representativeness of members of Congress as possible. We use the opinions of the members of the U.S. House of Representatives, rather than the rollcall votes, because we believe that representatives' opinions serve as proxies for their behavior. Studies show a high correlation between attitudes and behavior (Smith, Herrera, and Herrera 1990; Sullivan and O'Connor 1972). In addition, congressional attitudes are important in their own right, functioning in the long gestation period before roll-calls, setting the agenda, and framing the specific questions to be decided by a roll-call (Backstrom 1977, p. 412).