Descriptive and Substantive Representation in Congress: Evidence from 80,000 Congressional Inquiries

Abstract

A vast literature debates the efficacy of descriptive representation in legislatures. Though studies argue it influences how communities are represented through constituency service, they are limited since legislators' service activities are unobserved. Using Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, we collected 88,000 records of communication between members of the U.S. Congress and federal agencies during the 108th-113th Congresses. These legislative interventions allow us to examine members' "follow-through" with policy implementation. We find that women, racial/ethnic minorities, and veterans are more likely to work on behalf of constituents with whom they share identities. Including veterans offers leverage in understanding the role of political cleavages and shared experiences. Our findings suggest that shared experiences operate as a critical mechanism for representation, that a lack of political consensus is not necessary for substantive representation, and that the causal relationships identified by experimental work have observable implications in the daily work of Congress.

Essential Work Is Gender Segregated: This Shapes the Gendered Representation of Essential Workers in Political Office

“…Legislators pursue policies that help those with whom they share occupational or class backgrounds (O'Grady, 2019). Veterans in Congress advocate on behalf of veteran constituents (Lowande, Ritchie, and Lauterbach, 2019). We believe that the representation of essential workers is critically important for designing policies that best respond to the pressing issues surrounding COVID‐19.…”

Do elected officials serve the poor on health care? Evidence from a field experiment on members of Congress and state legislators

“…There is good reason to expect, as Butler et al (2012) find, that legislators might be more responsive to requests for service than for policy. Legislators see service as a way to help constituents with shared group attributes (Lowande et al, 2019) and reconcile the conflicting preferences of subconstituencies, donors, and party leaders (Ritchie, 2018). While decades of scholarship examine the extent to which policy responsiveness to different groups varies based on race, ethnicity, and gender, scholars have only recently begun examining these differences with respect to service.…”

“…In particular, the ability of poor and working class citizens to obtain benefits, assistance, or information from their government -a form of representation called service responsiveness -is a central but understudied aspect of representation. Evidence suggests that legislators are more responsive to service than policy requests (Butler et al, 2012) and are, for example, more likely to work or act on requests from constituents that are racially similar to them (Broockman, 2014;Lowande et al, 2019). Assistance and information is especially important when, for example, political actors like the Trump Administration work to impede citizens' ability to access government programs like the Affordable Care Act (e.g., Lovelace, 2018).…”

Do Reserved Seats Work? Evidence from Tribal Representatives in Maine

“…To begin, a note on measuring substantive representation. Many studies rely on roll call data, although more recent work examines constituency service and legislative oversight (Minta 2009;Lowande, Ritchie, and Lauterbach 2019). In this paper, we examine bill sponsorship for two reasons.…”