How do party members manage recurring and divisive foreign policy agendas? Do they stay the course or switch their position? The annual decision in Congress regarding the extension of China’s most favored nation (MFN) status was a high-profile foreign policy battle between the anti-China coalition and its pro-China counterpart. To test theories of members’ vote choice and change, this article analyzes the U.S. House of Representatives roll call votes over China trade policy from 1990 through 2000. Despite the conventional wisdom of voting stability over a recurring agenda, some members engaged in a substantial amount of vote switching. Changes in voting context such as party status, constituency interests, campaign finance, and seniority contributed to members’ position shifts. The findings of this study suggest that cross-cutting domestic interests over foreign policy debates in the post—Cold War era lead party members to recalculate the benefits of vote stability and the costs of vote switching.

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Legislative responses to social changes signify how representative democracy works. Yet research is still needed to find out whether and how representatives in new democratic countries address the constituents’ interests and demands. We revisit the 18th National Assembly in Korea (2008–12) to examine legislative activities surrounding the issue of economic inequality. To understand how lawmakers in the new democracy like Korea respond to the demands of redistributive policies, we turn to representatives’ co-sponsorship behaviour. We find that Korean lawmakers do respond to constituents’ preferences. More specifically, Korean lawmakers representing conservative districts tend to care less about economic inequality than other representatives while controlling their partisanship. This study fleshes out the link between the represented and the representatives in a new democracy where party discipline at the expense of constituency connection has long dominated legislative politics.

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