We consider the relationship between the preferences of American voters and the preferences of the U.S. legislators who represent them. Using an Internet-based, national opinion survey in conjunction with legislator voting records from the 109th and 110th Congresses, we show that members of Congress are more extreme than their constituents, i.e., that there is a lack of congruence between American voters and members of Congress. We also show that when a congressional legislator is replaced by a new member of the opposite party, one relative extremist is replaced by an opposing extremist. We call this leapfrog representation, a form of representation that leaves moderates with a dearth of representation in Congress. We see evidence of leapfrog representation in states and House districts and in the aggregate as well: the median member of the 109th House was too conservative compared to the median American voter, yet the median of the 110th House was too liberal. Thus, the median American voter was leapfrogged when the 109th House transitioned to the 110th. Although turnover between the 109th and 110th Senates occurred at approximately the same rate as between the 109th and 110th Houses, the Senate appears to be a more moderate institution whose median member does not move as abruptly as that of the House.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0003055410000316

Leapfrog Representation and Extremism: A Study of American Voters and Their Members in Congress

Interest group theory traditionally assumed that policies advocated by group representatives in some sense grow out of the interests or values of the group's members. Mancur Olson and others compelled important revisions in this assumption, but still left the process of interest advocacy to membership groups. It is contended here that institutions, such as corporations or local governments, occupy a dominant position with respect to interest representation in Washington, and this finding requires substantial revisions in both theoretical and descriptive formulations of the governmental process.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S000305540025243X

Interest Representation: The Dominance of Institutions

Theory: Constituent pressures on senators vary by party and heterogeneity of state. Studies of representation based on analysis of roll call voting which fail to take these factors into account will underestimate constituency influence and overemphasize the impact of party and interest group ratings. Hypotheses: (1) The greater the heterogeneity of the electorate, the less predictable will be the relationships between constituency characteristics and roll call votes. (2) The effects of some constituency characteristics on roll call votes are party-specific. Methods: Ordered probit analysis of Senate voting on international trade issues in 199394 was conducted for the whole Senate and for the Senate split into homogenous and heterogeneous states. Results: For homogenous states, general and party-specific constituency characteristics perform very well, while party and interest group ratings perform poorly. For heterogeneous states, general and party-specific constituency characteristics perform poorly, while party and interest group ratings perform well. These results indicate, first, that heterogeneity of state electorates and party strategies is an important factor in determining roll call votes and, second, that there is strong evidence of dyadic representation on roll call voting.

Heterogeneity and Representation: The Senate and Free Trade

In the 19th century what was meant by the term “constitution” was reasonably definite and clear. Paradoxically enough, if the word retained some ambiguity, this was because of the British constitution; that is, because the mother country of modern constitutionalism appeared to have an obscure constitution, or even—according to some of the standards that seemed very important elsewhere—no constitution at all.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/1952788.pdf

Constitutionalism: A Preliminary Discussion*

A long-standing line of inquiry in legislative research has dealt with the social backgrounds, recruitment, and career experiences of legislators. This review essay begins by considering the ways in which opportunities to serve in a legislative assembly are distributed in a variety of societies. It then reviews studies of the motives, incentives, and goals of persons seeking legislative offices, and assesses the relationship between the opportunity to serve as a legislator and the desire to do so. Next it considers the processes through which people become members of legislative assemblies, especially contrasting the United States with non-American systems. Finally, the essay takes stock of research on the careers of legislators, and notes findings on the professionalization of the legislative career. Who belongs to legislative assemblies and how they got there are questions which have attracted the attention of a wide variety of scholars. Researchers interested in political elites, in social stratification, in the political role of personality, in the processes of modernization, and many other large matters have studied the backgrounds and careers of legislators. And next to college sophomores, legislators may be the most accessible subjects for social science research around. The result is a large amount of research which seems, on its face, to have little to say to students of legislative institutions. (For review of this general literature, see Lasswell, Lerner, and Rothwell, 1952; Matthews, 1954a; Bell, Hill, and Wright, 1961; Keller, 1963; Marvick,

Robert F. Karsch

Papers

The Legislative System: Explorations in Legislative Behavior.