Representation in Congress: A Unified Theory

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:
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; 7. Conclusions, implications, and future research.

About the Author :
Kim Hill is the Cullen-McFadden Professor of Political Science and Presidential Professor of Teaching Excellence at Texas A & M University. He is the author, co-author, and editor of several political science textbooks and of the following books of original research: Toward a New Strategy of Development (1979), The Criminal's Image of the City (1979), Democracies in Crisis: Public Policy Responses to the Great Depression (1988) and Democracy in the Fifty States (1994). Professor Hill has also served as editor of the American Journal of Political Science and as the President of the Southern Political Science Association. He has been on the editorial boards of a number of professional journals, and he has served in a variety of leadership roles in national and regional political science professional associations. Soren Jordan is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at Texas A & M University. His research has appeared in the Forum. Patricia Hurley is a Professor of Political Science and the Associate Dean of Liberal Arts at Texas A & M University. Her articles have appeared in the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, Legislative Studies Quarterly and American Politics Quarterly, among others. Professor Hurley is a past president of the Southwestern Social Science Association and the Southwestern Political Science Association. She has been a member of the executive councils for the Legislative Studies Section and the Elections, Voting Behavior and Public Opinion Section, both organized sections of the American Political Science Association. She has been a member of the National Science Foundation's Advisory Panel for the Political Science grants program and of the Committee of Visitors for the Political Science program at the National Science Foundation. She also presently serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Politics and the American Journal of Political Science, and has been a member of editorial boards for a number of other political science journals.

Review :
'Representation in Congress pushes our parsimonious understanding of policy representation forward in qualitative and consequential ways. Over the past sixty years, scholars have proposed a diverse and largely disconnected set of models to explain how legislators represent their constituents in roll call voting. These include belief-sharing, delegate, responsible party, trustee, and party elite-led perspectives on representation. Hill, Jordan, and Hurley propose that all such forms of representation occur in Congress, but that they occur in very different contexts.' Lawrence C. Dodd, Manning J. Dauer Eminent Scholar in Political Science, University of Florida 'Hill, Jordan, and Hurley make a major contribution to our understanding of political representation. They bring together a diversity of prior research while offering new findings and insights of their own, firmly grounded in empirical data. The result is a smart and comprehensive study that promises to be the definitive work on the subject for years to come.' Matthew Green, Catholic University of America, Washington DC 'This book serves as a welcome reminder that many elected officials view themselves as leaders, rather than followers. Its development of a theory for when this happens is truly admirable, and an important course correction for the field.' John D. Griffin, University of Colorado, Boulder 'This is a serious new work on the representational relationship between voters and their elected representatives. The authors compile an impressive set of disparate data sets to provide and rigorously test a new theory of representation in Congress. The result is a much-needed update to a long-standing literature. This is a must-read for students of Congress, elections, and representation.' Jason Matthew Roberts, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill 'In sum, this important book offers a long overdue and elegant model of representation that will surely refocus the field and motivate scholars of representation to extend this work to other contexts.' Jennifer Hayes Clark, Congress and The Presidency