Collective vs. Dyadic Representation in Congress

Weissberg, Robert

doi:10.1017/cbo9780511816406.008

Cited by 54 publications

(65 citation statements)

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“…As we demonstrate, some of these conceptualizations are narrower or contain less information than others; in addition, some are more appropriate to particular research questions than others. Overall, we argue that conceptualizing many-to-one congruence in terms of relative citizen congruence has a number of significant advantages over alternative concepliterature (Weissberg 1978). As will become clear, notions of dyadic and collective representation do not fully capture what we mean when we speak of one-to-one, many-to-one, and many-to-many congruence relationships.…”

Section: Many-to-one Relationshipsmentioning

confidence: 89%

Ideological Congruence and Electoral Institutions

Golder

Stramski

2009

American J Political Sci

475

431

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Although the literature examining the relationship between ideological congruence and electoral rules is quite large, relatively little attention has been paid to how congruence should be conceptualized. As we demonstrate, empirical results regarding ideological congruence can depend on exactly how scholars conceptualize and measure it. In addition to clarifying various aspects of how scholars currently conceptualize congruence, we introduce a new conceptualization and measure of congruence that captures a long tradition in democratic theory emphasizing the ideal of having a legislature that accurately reflects the preferences of the citizenry as a whole. Our new measure is the direct counterpart for congruence of the voteseat disproportionality measures so heavily used in comparative studies of representation. Using particularly appropriate data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, we find that governments in proportional democracies are not substantively more congruent than those in majoritarian democracies. Proportional democracies are, however, characterized by more representative legislatures.A re representatives in some democracies more congruent with the ideological preferences of the people than those in other democracies? A large number of studies have examined the relationship between ideological congruence and electoral institutions (Blais and . Most have found that democracies employing proportional representation (PR) electoral rules produce more ideological congruence between citizens and their representatives than democracies employing majoritarian ones. This literature, however, has paid relatively little attention to how ideological congruence should be conceptualized.To date, the predominant way to conceptualize and measure citizen-representative congruence is in terms of the absolute ideological distance between the median citizen and the government. However, this is just one of

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Section: Many-to-one Relationshipsmentioning

confidence: 89%

Ideological Congruence and Electoral Institutions

Golder

Stramski

2009

American J Political Sci

475

431

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“…Previous out-party explanations of support for term limits focus on the partisan composition of the political institution and the collective representation (Weissberg 1978) it provides. It is possible, however, that voters pay more attention to their own representatives' partisanship than to the partisan balance in the institution in which those representatives serve.…”

Section: Individual Versus Institutional Representationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Public Support for Term Limits: Another Look at Conventional Thinking

Stein¹,

Johnson²,

Post³

2002

Legislative Studies Qtrly

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Americans are enamored with term limits for elected officials at all levels of government. Explanations of public support for term limits focus on partisanship, group underrepresentation, voter dissatisfaction with specific political institutions, political cynicism, and ideology. We qualify the conventional wisdom that term limits are mostly a Republican issue: Support for term limits is more a function of the incongruence between an individual's expressed partisanship and the party of their representative than of the individual's party affiliation. Further, the effect of unsatisfactory representation is strongly related to a voter's engagement with politics and willingness to monitor political affairs actively.

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“…For it is not clear whether civil rights fits the model of a policy field in which members do have independence from the public. As Costain and Majstorovic (1994) point out, while there is consistent evidence of a correlation between public opinion and congressional voting on civil rights (Miller and Stokes 1963;Weissberg 1978), the direction of causation is not clear.…”

Section: The Controversymentioning

confidence: 99%

Civil Rights Roll-Call Voting in the House of Representatives, 1957-1991: A Systematic Analysis

Sanders

1997

Political Research Quarterly

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The record of civil rights roll-call votes in the House of Representatives has yet to be systematically explained or predicted. In particular, it is not clear why House members sometimes appear to have a great deal of inde pendence from constituency, but at other times are limited by negative public assessments. I contend that the key is the variation in content of different types of civil rights bills, and construct a categorical scale which rates bills voted on in the House from 1957-1991 according to potential costs (whether actual or perceived) to white Americans. The expectation that an increase in category will result in decreased likelihood of passage, and significantly smaller supporting coalitions, is supported. While par tisanship also emerges as a significant determinant of roll calls, a more complete explanation is arrived at when it is considered in conjunction with the legislative classification variable.

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Collective vs. Dyadic Representation in Congress

Cited by 54 publications

References 0 publications

Ideological Congruence and Electoral Institutions

Ideological Congruence and Electoral Institutions

Public Support for Term Limits: Another Look at Conventional Thinking

Civil Rights Roll-Call Voting in the House of Representatives, 1957-1991: A Systematic Analysis

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