Weissberg Collective vs Dyadic Representation in Congress PDF

8/9/2019 Weissberg Collective vs Dyadic Representation in Congress PDF

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Collective vs. Dyadic Representation in CongressAuthor(s): Robert WeissbergReviewed work(s):Source: The American Political Science Review, Vol. 72, No. 2 (Jun., 1978), pp. 535-547Published by: American Political Science AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1954109 .Accessed: 29/01/2013 01:42

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Collective s.DyadicRepresentation nCongress

ROBERT WEISSBERGUniversity of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Previous studies of legislative-constituency representation have focused almost exclusivelyon

pairs of Congress members and their constituencies. It is possible, however, to think of

representation collectively, i.e., to consider the extent to which Congress as an institution

represents the American people. Our analysis delineates this concept of representation, analyzes its

existence by use of probability theory and the Miller-Stokes data, and then considers the

relationship between collective representation and electoral control. We conclude that citizens

probably get better representation than is suggested by the Miller-Stokes analysis, that the amount

of representation may be more a function of institutional arrangements than of electoral control,

and that citizen indifference towards many aspects of legislative politics is quite reasonable, given

the existence of collective representation.

Legislative representation has long been abasic concern in political analysis. Particularlyin the last 20 years a wide variety of theories,data, and methodologies have been employedto examine the question of whether legislators,in some sense, follow district opinion.1 Theresults of these studies are by no meansconclusive and controversies abound on howone should analyze representation and whatcertain types of data actually indicate.2 Never-theless, despite the sheer variety of analyses anddebate, previous studies almost all share onefundamental perspective: they view representa-tion in terms of a particular legislator and theconstituency that elected that legislator. Thisdyadic perspective (i.e., one legislator and oneconstituency) is surely important, but it is notthe only way of approaching representation.Specifically, a long and equally valid traditionexists that views representation in terms of

1See, for example, Warren E. Miller and Donald E.Stokes, "Constituency Influence in Congress," Ameri-

can Political Science Review, 57 (March1963),

45-56; Lewis Anthony Dexter, "The Representativeand His District," Human Organization, 16 (Spring1957), 2-13; Wilder W. Crane, Jr., "Do Representa-tives Represent?" Journal of Politics, 22 (May 1960),295-99; and Robert S. Erikson, "The ElectoralImpact of Congressional Roll Call Voting," AmericanPolitical Science Review, 65 (December 1971),1018-32; John W. Kingdon, Congressman's VotingDecisions (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), esp.Ch. 2; and Aage R. Clausen, How CongressmenDecide: A Policy Focus (New York: St. Martin's,1973), pp. 126-50.

2Several of these controversies are presentedin

Morris P. Fiorina, Representatives, Roll Calls, andConstituencies (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1974),Cb. 1.

institutions collectively representing a people.3Within this tradition the central question wouldbe whether Congress as an institution repre-sented the American people, not whether eachmember of Congress represented his or herparticular district.

This paper will explore both theoreticallyand empirically this notion of collective repre-sentation.4 In so doing we shall not onlyelaborate on an important (but frequentlyneglected) concept in the study of legislatures,but within the limits of our data we willattempt to show the following: (1) legislativerepresentation of citizen opinion when viewed

collectively is not nearly as poor as is indicatedin most studies of legislator-constituency rela-tionships; (2) at least some features of Ameri-can politics typically associated with poorrepresentation may in fact contribute to ac-curate representation; and (3) much of thepublic ignorance of legislative politics andopposition to disciplined parties is reasonable,

3Several political scientists have considered thetheory of collective representation. See, for example,Samuel C. Patterson, "Introduction," in AmericanLegislative Behavior (Princeton: D. Van Nostrand,1968), p. 4 and Alfred De Grazia, Public and Republic(New York: Knopf, 1951), pp. 5-8. Analyses of themechanics of electoral representation also, in a sense,are concerned with collective representation. At amore theoretical level, Hanna F. Pitkin, The Conceptof Representation (Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress, 1967), pp. 216-25.

4Though definitions of "representation" abound,our analysis defines representation as agreement be-tween legislative voting and citizen opinion. The closerthe agreement, the "better" the representation. Thisdefinition is consistent with notions of representationemployed in most empirical analyses of representa-tion. It is identical to the conception of representationguiding the Miller-Stokes analysis.

535

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536 The American Political Science Review Vol. 72

given the operation of collective representation.We shall first explicate the dyadic approach

to the study of legislative-constituency opinionrepresentation. This approach will then becontrasted with collective and virtual concep-

tions of representation. Second, nondyadicaspects of representation will be discussed andin part illustrated by data collected by WarrenMiller and Donald Stokes. We shall see, forexample, that a particular legislator's misrepre-sentation of constituency opinion can, undercertain conditions, increase the overall level ofopinion representation. We shall also show thatpartisan legislative voting discipline can likewisedecrease opinion representation, despite claimsto the contrary. Third, we will consider non-dyadic representation in the context of demo-

cratic control of leaders through elections. Weshall argue that there is no one-to-one rela-tionship between accurate representation ofcitizen preferences and citizen electoral controlover legislators. Indeed, random selection oflegislators would maximize representation atthe expense of citizen control. Finally, we shallexamine certain citizen attitudes and behaviorsin the light of different conceptions of repre-sentation and misrepresentation. We hope toshow, for example, that ignorance of one'sparticular Congress member's voting record,

political apathy, or even voting for unrespon-sive legislators are much more reasonable thanpreviously claimed, given collective representa-tion.

Before proceeding we should note twolimitations. First, while we speak of legislatorsin general, our analysis will be of members ofthe U.S. Congress in particular. No doubt thereare legislatures whose rules and functions wouldmake our analysis irrelevant. Second, our dataare the well-known Miller and Stokes data, adata set somewhat limited by small sample sizein several districts. Nevertheless, both theseproblems are not serious since our effort islargely theoretical and illustrative. For such apurpose the Miller-Stokes data are perfectlyadequate and restricting ourselves to the U.S.likewise poses no serious problem.

Conceptions ofCitizen-Legislative Representation

Perhaps due to our underlying democraticvalues, recent American research on legislativeresponsiveness has usually viewed representa-tion in an electoral context. That is, citizens are(or are not) represented by an elected officialthey could have voted for or against. In thissense, a citizen could only be represented by

one member of Congress, one governor, twosenators, and one president, but not-say-aSupreme Court justice. Scholars have thereforeasked: do elected officials represent those whoelected them (or who live in their districts)?

Regardless of whether constituency opinion ismeasured by interviews or inferred from socio-economic or demographic data, the units ofanalysis have always been the legislator and thedistrict, paired. Representation means a highcorrelation between constituency opinion androll-call voting on a pairwise basis.

It should be obvious, however, that therepresentation of an opinion (or interest) istheoretically independent of an electoral con-nection between the person with a preferenceand the person doing the representing. Much in

the same way that individuals' economic in-terests can be advanced by organizations towhich they do not belong (these are called"free riders"), their interests can be served inCongress among any one of 435 representativesand 100 senators. Moreover, it is quite likelythat one's best representative could change overtime and across issue areas. In fact, it isextremely unlikely that out of a pool of 435legislators one's own legislator will representone's particular opinion on an issue. An excel-lent illustration of such representation inde-

pendent of an electoral relationship no doubtoccurred when northern black and liberal whiteCongress members articulated the preferences ofdisenfranchised southern blacks during the1950s and 1960s.

Though it is not customary to separaterepresentation from a direct electoral relation-ship, any review of the various meanings ofrepresentation will show that representativeinstitutions were never automatically equatedwith electoral institutions. Moreover, evenwhen elections and representation were linked,

dyadic representation was never the dominanthistorical model. In her analysis of the variousmeanings of representation, Pitkin describes animportant school of thought that viewed legisla-tures as a group of individuals collectivelyrepresenting the people as a whole. 5 Thepurpose of the legislature is to create anaccurate reflection of the community; mis-representation occurs when the diverse interestsand opinions of the political community areexcluded from debate. A particular legislator,according to this view, was not a delegate forthose particular people who chose him or her,but all the legislators taken collectively wouldact as if all the people themselves were acting

5Pitldn, p. 61.



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1978 Collective vs. Dyadic Representation in Congress 537

since they were a reflection of the whole. Thisprinciple is quite similar to the principle ofrandom sampling: a particular individual in asample of 1500 from a universe of 210 milliondoes not personally represent 140,000 people,

but the sample collectively is a close approx-imation of the 210,000,000 people.

The concept of virtual representation, par-ticularly as employed by Edmund Burke, alsoseparates the electoral association between twoindividuals from their representational relation-ship. As Burke put it, virtual representationoccurs where "there is a communion of interestand sympathy in feelings and desires betweenthose who act in the name of any descriptionsof people and the people in whose name theyact, though the trustees are not actually chosen

by them."6 Hence, at least for Burke, the cityof Birmingham is not automatically unrepre-sented merely because it has no delegate inParliament. Because Bristol, which has the samecommercial interests as Birmingham, does sendmembers to Parliament, Birmingham is virtuallyrepresented. Indeed, Burke asserts that in manyinstances virtual representation is superior toactual representation (i.e., the representation ofelectors' interests by their elected officials)since virtual representation is based on commonsentiment, not fallible attempts to advance

interests one might not share.7 To be sure,Burke is not talking about constituency opin-ions when he speaks of "interest," but the basicthrust of his argument-that legislators "lookout" for nonconstituency interests and thusrepresent them-is equally applicable, to theanalysis of opinion representation.

Moreover, many recent studies of legislativedecision making have examined nondyadicrepresentational relationships, though rarely hasthis type of relationship been deemed to be ofspecial theoretical importance. For example,

Wahlke, Eulau, Buchanan, and Ferguson intheir study of four state legislatures find asignificant number of legislators viewing them-selves as representing state, as opposed todistrict, interests.8 Studies of interest group/

6Cited in Pitkin, p. 173. Excellent discussions ofvirtual representation are also found in Samuel H.Beer, British Politics in the Collectivist Age (NewYork: Knopf, 1967), pp. 15-20 and De Grazia, pp.36-45.

7PitkIn, p. 175.

8John C. Wahlke, Heinz Eulau, William Buchanan,and LeRoy C. Ferguson, The Legislative System (NewYork: Wiley, 1962), pp. 290-91, 270. Also see RogerH. Davidson, The Role of the Congressman (NewYork: Pegasus, 1969), pp. 121-26, and Randall B.

legislative interaction have often noted thatinterest groups must of necessity cut acrosspurely geographical division so that, say, a NewYork industry wanting tariff protection may be"represented" by a member of Congress from

California who happens to be on the relevantcommittee.9 Equally familiar are instances inwhich legislators will "broaden" their constitu-encies by becoming spokespersons for non-geo-graphically based interests, e.g., automobilesafety, withdrawal from Vietnam, or the fate ofSoviet Jews. It is clear, then, that manyresearchers have dealt with nondyadic represen-tation but this behavior has rarely been concep-tually distinguished from purely district-oriented activity.

Finally, the concept of collective representa-

tion is even embedded in the idea of responsibleparty government despite this doctrine's em-phasis on individual citizen policy voting. Thatis, citizens choose a party and the victoriousparty represents a national majority; membersof the victorious party do not represent theirdistrict majority except insofar as district ma-jorities are congruent with a national majority.Thus it is proper to speak only of nationalmajorities being represented, not the relation-ship between particular voters and thelegislators they actually selected. Indeed, one of

the major purposes of party disciplineis to

eliminate purely dyadic representation.In short, even if we require an electoral

connection between citizens and their represen-tatives, there is no historical or theoreticalreason to limit analysis to dyadic representa-tional relationships. To focus exclusively onsuch questions as "does Representative X fol-low the constutency's preferences on policiesA, B, and C?' thus ignores several equallyplausible ways of asking whether elected repre-sentatives represent.

Ripley, Congress: Process and Policy (New York:Norton, 1975), p. 18.

9We suspect that the non-dyadic nature of or-ganized interest representation in Congress is so"obvious" that it is seldom explicitly mentioned. Thatis, it is self-evident that a legislator "looking out" for,say, his own peanut farmers will also represent peanut

farmers not in his own district. Also see JohnE.

Schwarz and L. Earl Shaw, The United States Congressin Comparative Perspective (Hindsdale, Ill.: DrydenPress, 1976), Ch. 10, for an excellent analysis of howgroups such as blacks are represented by non-groupmembers.



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Representation WithoutControl or Agreement

According to the dyadic model, the maxi-mum possible degree of representation would

occur if legislators followed the preferences oftheir constituents (somehow defined). It wouldtherefore seem to follow that citizens wouldnot be represented if (a) all members ofCongress voted randomly or (b) all members ofCongress-for any number of reasons-violatedconstituency preferences. We shall argue herethat misrepresentation need not occur if Con-gress members voted randomly or otherwisechose to ignore constituency opinion. Whatmakes such an argument possible is an ac-ceptance of a collective perspective on represen-

tation which focuses on the representation ofan opinion within an institution independent ofan electoral relationship between opinion hold-er and legislator. Let us begin by consideringrandom legislative voting and collective repre-sentation. Subsequently we shall examine howmisrepresentation by some legislators can resultin better overall responsiveness to citizenpreferences.

Random Voting and Representation. As wehave stated, analyses of representation based on

the dyadic model measure representation interms of nonrandom association between pairsof constituencies and legislators (i.e., a highcorrelation indicates close representation). Arewe then to equate a zero correlation (i.e.,perfect randomness) with zero representation?Our answer is that even with perfectly randomlegislative voting it is unlikely that nationalopinion would be violated about more than halfthe time. In a sense, the use of measures ofassociation with random baselines, togetherwith the dyadic approach, can readily lead to

an underestimation of how often majoritypreferences are heeded.10 To assess the impactof perfect randomness, let us assume a legisla-ture of 20 members and constituencies. (Weshall assume an N of 20 since probabilitycalculations of the type we are going toperform for an N of 435 would be impossible

10We should emphasize that our theoretical con-cern is the degree of representation, ot the predicta-bility of this representation. Merely because some

representation an,in a

purelystatistical

sense,be

predicted on the basis of a random model does notmean that this representation does not exist. If mymember of Congress "votes right" on a key issue itmay be irrelevant to me whether this results fromrandom actors or careful attention to my desires.

with existing accessible computational facilities.Changing the N to 435 would not alter outconclusion, however.) Furthermore, let eachrepresentative adhere to the following be-havioral rules:

(1) on any given issue a legislator decides tovote "yes" or "no" by flipping a coin(i.e., votes randomly);

(2) legislators vote simultaneously and inde-pendently of each other (i.e., there is noparty discipline, logrolling, or presi-dential pressure);

(3) each constituency (assumed to be singu-lar) decides its preferences by likewiseflipping a coin for "yes" and "no"issues.

In view of the "majority wins" rule inlegislative decision making, let us add a furtherstipulation: accurate representation occurs ifthe majority on a given issue receives 50percent + 1 in a vote. In other words, if 75percent of the constituencies favor policy Yand policy Y is passed even by a bare majority,we will conclude that supporters of Y arerepresented.1 1 We should also add that minori-ty opinion within constituencies is excluded.

In this hypothetical legislature the probabili-ty that a particular legislator will be in agree-ment with his or her own constituency is .5(.25 for the "yes-yes" pair and .25 for the"no-no" pair, for a total of .5). In a 20-memberlegislature, how many pairwise agreements be-tween legislators and constituency majoritiesshould one expect? Table 1 presents the prob-abilities (calculated from the binomial) ofvarious representative-constituency matches. Asone might expect, the likelihood of perfectdyadic agreement on a given issue is extremelyremote-p = .0000095 (for 435 relationship,this number is virtually zero). It is equallyunlikely, however, that all legislators will be onthe opposite side from all their constituencies(p = .0000095). To determine the probability

11Since our conception of collective representationrefers to policy agreement between a majority of allcitizens and a majority of legislators, ur analysis herefurther requires the assumption that all legislativedistricts are of equal population. Unless this were trueit would be theoretically possible for a majority ofconstituencies and a population majority to be in

opposition. This assumption is reasonable for theHouse and unless district size were assumed to beconstant, our hypothetical example here would be-come hopelessly confused. Unequal district size couldbe included in this analysis, but it would not addanything heoretically mportant.



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1978 Collective vs. Dyadic Representation n Congress 539

that a majority of constituencies and their ownrepresentatives will be in agreement, one maysum the probabilities for the bottom rows inTable 2. The sum if .412, which means thatassuming random voting by legislators, a majori-

ty of constituency-representative dyads will bein agreement 41.2 percent of the time in aseries of votes. If we combine this probabilitywith the probability that exactly half of theconstituency-legislative pairs will be in agree-ment (p = .176), the probability is approxi-mately .588 that 50 percent or more constitu-encies will have their representatives vote"right" even if the representatives vote random-ly.

It is also possible, by using the joint prob-ability of independent events form of the

binomial distribution, to calculate the likeli-hood of legislative majorities being on the sameside as a majority of constituencies, regardless

Table 1. Probabilities* f Successful PairwiseLegislative Matches Given Random Legislative Voting,

Random Constituency Opinions N=20)

Number of SuccessfulPairwise Matches P

0 .00000951 .000019072 .000181203 .001087194 .004620065 .014785776 .036964427 .073928838 .120134359 .16017914

10 ?- - - .17619800111 .1601791412 .1201343513 .07392883

14.03696442

15 .0147857716 .0046200617 .0010871918 .0001812019 .0000190720 .0000095

*The calculations are from the binomial. The for-mula is:

PfrJ = N prq(N-r)r (N-r)

whereN = total number of pairs (20 in this example)r = number of successes out of 20

(N-r) = number of failures out of 20P = probability of success (here, .5)q = probability of failure (here, .5)

of the degree of pairwise agreement.12 Theodds of concurrent legislative-constituency ma-jorities occurring in this formulation are .5(excluding ties). It should be noted that arepresentation "success" (majority-majority

agreement) can occur even when pairwise agree-ment is extremely low. Moreover, the chancesof legislative distribution of votes being, say, 10to 15 percentage points within the distributionof constituency majorities are quite good (inthe range of 60 to 70 percent likelihood).Hence, even where a majority of constituenciesare misrepresented, the outcome given randomvoting will more than likely be "close." It canfurther be shown, moreover, that even a slightimprovement over randomness in legislativeadherence to constituency opinion will result in

a majority of constituencies being represented amajority of the time and many more "closer"losses. In short, we cannot equate legislativeignorance of constituency opinion, a lack ofdesire to be a delegate and other such impair-ments to dyadic representation as automaticallyleading to complete, systematic misrepresenta-tion.

Two additional comments are relevant to theissue of representation by random voting. First,this random model seems most applicable tosituations where legislators have no knowledge

of constituency opinion, no clues from districtinterest groups (i.e., the "worst" conditions forrepresentation). Where information onpreferences is clear, or can be accuratelyguessed, representation is likely to be muchbetter. Certainly few southern Congress mem-bers during the 1950s and 60s could supportpro-civil rights legislation in the face of strong,unambiguous constituency opinion. Hence, if amember of Congress toes the line on these sortsof issues and votes randomly on all others, theproportion of votes on which legislative and

constituency majorities agree will be some-where between .5 and 1.0, depending on themix of unambiguous and ambiguous issues.

A second point concerns individual judg-ments about how well one's own preferencesare being represented in the legislature. If we

12The formula of the binomial distribution for thejoint probability of independent events is:

N1 N2 . plrlqNl 1-r.

Nl (Nl-rl) N2 (N2-r2)

p2r2q2 N2-r2

Subscripts refer to samples (i.e., 1 = members ofCongress, 2 = constituents); the notation is describedin Table 1.



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were to say that a "preference is represented"when the preference finds at least one legisla-tive advocate, then it is clear that on aparticular issue both sides are extremely likelyto have at least 40 percent of the legislative

votes most of the time (about 73.6 percent ofthe time in a 20-seat legislature), given purelyrandom voting. This likelihood of a "goodshowing" even if one's preference was a majori-ty but lost in the legislature seems particularlyimportant where one's knowledge of the trueopinion distribution is unknown. That is, acitizen who favors policy X might guess thatfellow supporters of this policy amounted to,say, between 40 to 70 percent of the popula-tion. A legislative outcome of 40 percentagainst 60 percent in favor might thus appear

reasonableto a

supporterof X even if the true

(but unknown) proportion in favor were greaterthan 50 percent. We are not suggesting thatlosing is, therefore, cheerfully accepted;rather,misrepresentation would usually be obscuredby public ignorance of the true distribution andby random legislative voting. Compare this towhat might happen if all legislators votedtogether on what they (falsely) believed to bemajority opinion-a majority would be mis-represented by a 20 (or 435) to zero vote. In asense, random voting may only guarantee repre-sentation half the time, but it also makes grossmisrepresentation (i.e., a popular majority be-ing countered by an extremely lopsided legisla-tive vote) a remote possibility.

Individual Misrepresentation and CollectiveRepresentation. A different and somewhatbroader way of viewing the amount of represen-tation is to think of both constituency andlegislative preferences (or votes) in terms of acontinuum (or scale) as opposed to a ves-novoting dichotomy. This was Miller's and Stokes'

approach and it allows us to consider morerefined degrees of representation. In addition,with a sufficient distribution on a continuumwe can examine the extent to which relativelysmall policy minorities are represented. Inmaking this examination we make the samebasic contention as in our previous discussionof representation; namely, that a certain degreeof representation is likely though legislatorsmay ignore or be oblivious to constituencyopinion. Let us begin by considering the hy-pothetical data in Tables 2A-2B which depict a

legislature of three constituencies.Table 2A shows what might be considered

perfect representation. Each district is repre-sented by a legislator with the precise scaleposition as his or her constituency. Moroever, if

Table 2A. Perfect District-by-District Agreement,Perfect Aggregate Agreement

Opinion/Roll Call DistrictScores for 1 2 3 Districts

ConstituencyPreferences (X) 1 2 3 2

Legislators(scale scores) 1 2 3 2

Differences inPreferences 0 0 0

Table 2B. Poor District-by-District Agreement,Perfect Aggregate Agreement

Opinions/Roll Call District AllScores for 1 2 3 Districts

ConstituencyPreferences (X) 1 2 3 2

Legislators(scale scores) 3 2 1 2

Differences inPreferences -2 0 2

we consider national opinion to be the sumtotal of individual legislator opinion (or be-havior), the last column of Table 2A showsperfect representation. Table 2B, on the otherhand, shows a situation in which two of thethree districts are substantially misrepresented(districts 1 and 3). Does this show that citizensin these districts go without adequate represen-tation? In this particular example, it is evidentthat citizens in district 1 are represented by thelegislator from district 3 and vice versa. Equallyimportant, observe that the mean scale posi-tions for both constituents and legislators in

Table 2B are identical. Thus, on the whole,constituents are perfectly represented by legi-slators, though not necessarily on a dyadicbasis. In the Burkean sense, representation isvirtual, not actual.

What we have illustrated in Tables 2A-2B isa general phenomenon. Specifically, by sum-ming across both districts and legislators sep-arately, then subtracting the grant totals, anddividing by the number of districts, we allowpositive and negative district deviations tocancel each other out. Thus, as we see in Table

2B, the scores for district 1 and 3, which showdeviations of 2 and -2 scale positions fromconstituency means, cancel each other outwhen added together. Hence, citizens of district1 are represented because legislators in both



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district 3 and district 1 misrepresent theirconstituents in precisely opposite ways. Sta-tistically, this principle is:

IId -R I - d - 2R

N N

where

d = the mean district scale scoreR = the representatives scale scoreN = the number of pairs

In words, this formula can be stated thus: theaverage legislator-constituency difference on adyadic basis is equal to or greater than theaverage difference between all legislators and allconstituents. Moreover, for reasons that will bemore fully discussed below, it will usually be

LI d -R I Id - 2Rthe case that N > so citi-

zens as a whole are better represented byCongress than are citizens in each district bytheir particular legislators.

This principle can be illustrated with theMiller-Stokes data. Though an ideal illustrationwould require that both legislators and consti-tuents be measured on the same scale, we shallmake do with scales composed of differentitems and of different ranges.13 Table 3 showsboth dyadic and aggregate (or virtual) repre-sentation on the issues relating to social wel-

13That congressional scores may range 0 to 9 whileconstituency scores range from 0 to 3 is no problemwith a correlation coefficient that "standardizes"these scores. We cannot, however, use standard scoressince these would (by definition) yield means of zeroin column 2 of Table 3, thus rendering our analysisstatistically nonsensical. We should also acknowledgethat the mean or any other measure of central

tendencycan be a poor indicator of what is to be

represented, given the wide variety of opinion distribu-

fare, civil rights, and foreign affairs. Observethat the mean district by district legislator-con-stituency difference (here measured by themean of all those identifying with the legisla-tor's party) ranges from 4.34 for foreign policy

to 2.92 for civil rights.14 However, as thevalues in the second column indicate, thisdiscrepancy is significantly reduced if viewed interms of aggregate differences. For social wel-fare the overall legislator-constituency dif-ference is reduced by about 25 percent of theaverage of dyadic differences, while on foreignaffairs-which shows the largest amount ofdyadic misrepresentation-representation is im-proved 40 percent in the aggregate. The latterfinding is particularly important since the near-zero constituency-Congress members' correla-

tion in foreignaffairs reported by Miller and

Stokes would lead us to expect extensivemisrepresentation, when in fact Congress as an

tion in a district. It certainly seems politically im-portant whether or not the distribution is bell-shapedor U-shaped. These and several other questions dealingwith the measurement of constituency are consideredin greater detail in Robert Weissberg, "Some Issues inthe Analysis of Legislator Constituency Policy Agree-ment," unpublished mimeographed paper.

140ur use of legislators' party identifiers as "con-stituency opinion" (as opposed to, say, the entiredistrict) derives from two considerations. First, of allthe groups we could have used, those belonging to aCongress member's party seem the most relevant interms of representational relationship. Certainly amember of Congress could not be expected torepresent everyone in the district or partisans of theopposition party. In any case, the use of the score forthe entire district would not change the thrust of ouranalysis. Second, subsequent analysis considers thetheoretically important questions of district minorityrepresentation and this requires that we disaggregatedistrict opinions.

Table 3. Dyadic Versus Collective Representation, by Issue Domain, 1958(District Majorities)

X Difference betweenMember of Congress Difference between

and Partisan All Legislators and "Improvement"Constituents on All Districts in the of Collective

Issue Domain Dyadic Basis Aggregate over Dyadic*

Social Welfare 3.26 2.45 24.8%

Civil Rights 2.922.41 17.5%

Foreign Affairs 4.34 2.62 39.6%

Source: Survey Research Center, University of Michigan.*Improvement is calculated by subtracting the aggregate from the dyadic scores and dividing the result by the

dyadic score.



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institution is doing a better job than suggestedby the very low correlation. This is not to saythat dyadic representation is poor (see recentanalyses by Fiorina and Kingdon, for exam-ple);15 rather, whatever the degree of dyadic

representation, collective representation isequal or better.More generally, several politically important

Li -dRI -principles can be deduced from N >

Zd- Z2RN .First, as we have seen, extreme cases

of dyadic misrepresentation (i.e., district maver-icks) need not result in misrepresentation ofany or all constituents. The quality of repre-sentation is in part dependent on the distribu-

tion of misrepresentation; the absolute level ofdyadic misrepresentation is less important thanhow it is distributed. Imagine, for example, anextremely liberal district that happens to berepresented by an extremely conservative mem-ber of Congress. If this were the only district ina political system these liberal citizens wouldindeed be misrepresented. But, if there alsoexisted an extremely conservative district hav-ing an extremely liberal member of Congress,misrepresentation in the second district resultsin overall representation. It follows, then, that

aggregate (or virtual) representation will bebetter than dyadic representation to the extentthat dyadic misrepresentation is equally dis-tributed on both sides of the overall constitu-ency mean. Only if there is misrepresentationon both sides of the constituency mean canmisrepresenting actions cancel each other outso if all legislators vote the same way or allviolate constituency preferences in the samedirection, dyadic and aggregate representationwill be identical (this would be unlikely, ofcourse, if legislators voted randomly).

This last point has important implicationsfor the doctrine of responsible party govern-ment or, for that matter, any doctrine callingfor greater legislative party cohesion. Specifical-ly, in a legislature with two (or more) highlycohesive parties only two (or more) points inthe distribution of citizen opinion will beprecisely represented. To be sure, the pointrepresented by the majority party may be themodal constituency issue position or the mean

15Morris P. Fiorina, "Constituency Influence: AGeneralized Model and Its Implications for StatisticalStudies of Roll-Call Behavior," Political Methodology,2 (1975), pp. 249-66; and John W. Kingdon, Con-gressmen's Voting Decisions (New York: Harper andRow), Ch. 2.

of all constituency issue position, but manyissue positions are not literally represented inthe legislature. On the other hand, let usimagine a situation consisting of two partieswith different ideological centers of gravity but

where some legislators can diverge substantiallyfrom the official "party line." If party deviates(i.e., those at odds with the official partyposition) are equally dispersed on the "right"'and the "left," the mean legislative partypositions may be the same as in the case of acohesive party system. The obvious difference,however, between the two situations is thatmany more constituency opinions are preciselyrepresented in the instance of decentralizedparties. Thus, even if the legislative outcomesare identical in both instances, the less cohesive

situation possesses the likely advantage ofoffering a greater variety of legislative spokes-persons for various citizen positions.

Our arguments here are also relevant to theproblem of representing minority interests in asystem of single-member, first-past-the-post dis-tricts. On the long debate over the merits ofproportional representation (PR) vs. singlemember districts (SMD), the representation ofsizable interests without a majority in anyparticular district has usually been consideredone of the advantages of PR and a democratic

weaknessof the SMD arrangement. This weak-

ness can disappear, however, if some legislators(1) violate preferences of their own and allother constituency majorities and (2) if theseviolations are equally dispersed around themean of all constituency majorities. Hence, solong as extreme misrepresentation in one direc-tion is balanced by equal misrepresentation inthe opposite direction, extreme preferences notdominating any particular electoral district(e.g., the Klu Klux Klan race position) can berepresented without overall constituencypreferences being violated. We are not claimingthat such balanced misrepresentation need re-sult in PR-like equal representation of all publicopinion in exact proportion to its popularstrength; rather, in the aggregate, the violationof constituency preferences can produce aspokesperson for minority preferences whilenot resulting in the legislature in general mis-representing constituency majorities.

To assess the representation of district mi-norities via virtual representation, using theMiller-Stokes data we have computed the meandistrict-by-district difference between Congressmembers and members of the minority partyand the overall difference between all districtminorities and all members of Congress in theaggregate. These differences for the issues ofsocial welfare, civil rights, and foreign policy



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are presented in Table 4. Not surprisingly, themean pairwise gap between the Congress mem-ber and the mean of minority-party identifiersis larger than the gap for majority-party iden-tifiers depicted in Table 3. This larger gap does

not indicate, however, that district minoritiesreceive poorer congressional representationthan constituency majorities. Indeed, compari-son of the aggregate legislator-minority con-stituency differences in Table 4 with thecomparable figures in Table 3 shows that incivil rights and social welfare policy, the con-stituency minorities receive better overall repre-sentation than do majorities. For example, oncivil rights issues and the mean aggregatedifference for the majority is 2.41, while forthe minority it is 2.20. In short, "minority

representation" in a single-member district ap-pears to be a problem only if viewed on adistrict-by-district basis. Viewing the legislatureas an institution representing a collectivity doesnot mean, of course, that all minoritypreferences are, therefore, proportionatelyrepresented; rather, our analysis suggests that inthe aggregate a district minority may receive nobetter representation than constituency majori-ties.

The final point in our analysis of dyadicversus collective representation concerns the

number of legislative districts. If all legislatorsperfectly followed district opinion the numberof districts would, obviously, be irrelevant forthe improvement of dyadic representation, i.e.,LId-RI Edv-T

N would always equal N . On the

other hand, as legislators diverge from constitu-ency preferences it seems clear that, assumingnonsystematic divergences, the larger the num-ber of districts, the greater the likelihood thatthe distribution of extreme misrepresentationwill be symmetrical, so the improvement due tothe aggregating of opposing misrepresentationwill likewise increase. In other words, the

likelihood of, say, extreme liberal misrepresen-tation being canceled out by extreme conserva-tive misrepresentation is greater in a largeassembly than in one of, say, 5 or 10 members.To illustrate this principle we have computed

the ratios of dyadic to collective representationfor random samples of the districts in theMiller-Stokes study (Table 5). We should addthat since Miller and Stokes do not collect dataon all Congress members, even the 1.00 sampleis not the population of the House of Represen-tatives; quite likely the full 435 cases asopposed to the 146 here would show evengreater improvement of representation due toaggregation.

As expected, the greater the number oflegislators, the more representative the institu-

tion as a whole. For the 1 of 10 sample (i.e.,about 15 cases), dyadic and aggregate represen-tations are nearly identical in social welfare andcivil rights. Aggregate representation shows asizable gain in the .5 sample (about 75 districts)where the figures are quite close to those forthe entire set of districts. Though we cannotsay with any certainty what the dyadic toaggregate ratio would be for all 435 cases, ourfigures here suggest that any improvementwould likely be quite modest (though a verylarge assembly would likely give voice to many

more points of view).

Political Control andRepresentative Government

Representation, at least as considered in thecontext of elections, is usually viewed as aconsequence of political control (i.e., the abili-ty of citizens to remove undesirable of-ficials).16 By means of popular, direct elec-

16Since concepts like "electoral control" are al-ways troublesome, t might be useful to reiterate hat

Table 4. Dyadic Versus Collective Representatives, by Issue Domain, 1958(District Minorities)

X Difference betweenMember of Congress Difference between

and Opposing AlULegislators and "Improvement"Partisan on All District Minorities of Collective

Issue Domain Dyadic Basis in the Aggregate over Dyadic*

Social Welfare 3.41 2.38 30.2%Civil Rights 3.21 2.20 31.5%Foreign Affairs 4.79 2.70 43.6%

Source: SRC, University of Michigan.*See Table 3 for computation of "Improvement."



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Table 5. Legislatures Size andImprovement of Collective Representation

by Issue by Issue Area, 1958

Sample

Issue Domain .10 .50 1.00Social Welfare .96* .77 .75Civil Rights .98 .86 .82Foreign Affairs .86 .65 .60

Source: SRC, University of Michigan.*Entries are the ratios of collective to.dyadic legis-

lator-district differences; the lower the number, thegreater the improvement due to collective representa-tion.

tions, the argument goes, citizens select of-ficials, and this selection process will lead to oris necessary, though not sufficient for, therepresentation of citizen preferences (or in-terests) in policy making. Conversely, it isassumed that leaders free from citizen control(whether by being "safe" electorally or beingappointed) will feel freer to ignore constituencydemands. No doubt this logic of politicalcontrol encouraging representation accounts forthe often-sought relationship between electoralcompetition (a supposed measure of control)and various policy responses that are viewed asresponses to citizen preferences. There is, how-

ever, no logical inter-connection between con-trol of an official via the electoral capacity toterminate tenure and representatives. Perhapsthe major reason why electoral control andrepresentation appear so intimately linked isthe plausibility of the connecting supposition,namely, that leaders will seek to please (i.e.,represent) those who control their fate, and theclearer the control, the greater the effort toplease.

We have seen, however, that representationof opinion can occur apart from an electoralcontrol relationship. Indeed, it is likely thatcitizens will be best represented by someonewith whom they have no electoral relationship,and even under random voting constituencymajorities would frequently be followed. Whatwe shall do here is explore the relationship

all we mean by "electoral control" is the opportunityavailable to citizens to determine who shall governthem. The maximum amount of control conceivable

would be a political system ofone

official and onevoter. Adding a second voter reduces the first voter'samount of control. Electoral control over one'sgovernment would be even further reduced if a secondofficial were added or one were not allowed toparticipate in the selection process.

between the representation of citizen opinionby legislators collectively and citizen electoralcontrol of legislators. We shall show that if oneaccepts the notion of collective, as opposed tddyadic, representation, high levels of citizen

control are not only unnecessary but may be infact a hindrance to accurate representation.If one's constitutional goal were simply the

best institutional representation of mass opin-ions, the optimal solution is clearly a randomsample of about 1500 citizens who would thusaccurately "represent" the population7 Al-ternatively, the population could be subdividedinto relatively homogeneous groups and citizenswould be selected randomly from within eachof these groups (as in quota samples). Neitherof these random-sample solutions would, of

course, allow citizen intervention through vot-ing or geographically defined units such asstates. Nevertheless, the model of a legislatureby random sample need not be abandoned if weintroduce the requirements of citizen choiceand election districts defined by criteria otherthan homogeneity of opinion. It is possible toapproximate a random sample while still main-taining existing constitutional requirements forthe electoral system. The most obvious mechan-ism of approximation would be to increase thenumber of legislators. If we had a legislature of

42,000 members (i.e., each legislatorrepre-

sented 5000 citizens) we would expect thelegislature by virtue of its sheer size to be amuch better microcosm of the population thanwhere the ratio were, say, 1 to 500,000. Oneonly has to compare the racial, ethnic, andsexual composition of the U.S. House ofRepresentatives with that of the Senate to seehow a large institution is a "better" samplethan a small institution. Of course, each citizenhas an electoral relationship, and thus a pos-sibility of electoral control, with only 1 of 435Congress members compared to 2 of 100senators.

What if huge assemblies of citizens wereunacceptable or impractical? On the basis ofthe random sample model we would suggestthat collective representation would be in-creased if election districts were as homo-

17Though our main purpose in raising the idea ofrandom selection is to have a baseline model of perfectrepresentation, lotteries for office-holding have a long

theoretical and practical tradition. The random-selec-tion principle has appeared in ancient Greece, med-ieval Spain, and modern jury selection. See Dennis C.Mueller, Robert D. Tollison, and Thomas D. Willett,"Representative Democracy Via Random Selection,"Public Choice, 12 (Spring 1972), 57-68.



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representation, so turnout should be greater inelections for small legislatures. The irony of thisrelationship is, of course, that low-involve-ment-generating large institutions are more like-ly to be representative of citizen preferences

than the high-interest-generating smaller institu-tions.

A second set of predictions based on col-lective representation concerns citizen satisfac-tion with the performance of individual legisla-tors. It has been commonplace to observe that,barring extreme misrepresentation on an es-pecially salient issue (e.g., a southern memberof Congress voting pro-civil rights during the1950s and 60s), most legislators can get awaywith ignoring district opinion without electoralretribution.19 This absence of retribution

might appear to be an odd situation until onerealizes that legislator inattention does notnecessarily mean that either the district majori-ty or a particular individual's opinion goesunrepresented by the legislature as a whole.Hence, we would guess that citizen satisfactionwith legislators could very well be independentof satisfaction with policy outcomes in general.Overall legislative performance (even if thelegislature itself were not highly evaluated)would thus "explain" the survival of legislatorswho do not perform particularly well in repre-

senting their districts. On the other hand, thesame reasoning would account for why legisla-tors doing a good job of representing constitu-ency opinions sometimes meet defeat if thingsas a whole go badly.20

Our analysis of collective representationwould also predict a less obvious relationshipbetween citizen satisfaction and powerlessness.Discussions of political power usually treatpower as an instrumental value. We have ar-gued-both in our discussion of random votingand the representation electoral control

19See, for example, Dexter, "The Representativeand His District." However, also see n. 13.

20Corroborating evidence on the vulnerability ofindividual Congress members to national economicevents is offered in Gerald H. Kramer, "Short-TermFluctuations in U.S. Voting Behavior, 1896-1964,"American Political Science Review, 65 (March 1971),131-43. Data on how particular members of Congresscan be "innocent victims" of economic conditions andpresidential popularity are presented in Edward Tufte,"Determinants of the Outcomes of Midterm Congres-

sional Elections," American Political Science Review,69 (September 1975), 812-26. Actually, the relation-ship between evaluations of one's own Congressmember and the institution of Congress is morecomplicated than suggested here. Fenno's recent ob-servations on citizens liking their own Congress mem-

nexus-that citizens can receive benefits with-out holding much or any electoral power overlegislators. Indeed, the absence of some coer-cive mechanisms such as a strong two-partysystem, close elections, may be associated with

accurate representation. The fact that citizensstill receive benefits (i.e., representation) underpoor control situations, and even when theycan affect only a very small portion of alegislature's composition, may make citizentoleration (if not satisfaction) with these"poor" conditions quite reasonable. This logicwould seem particularly relevant for districtand national minorities who would get "shutout" completely if legislators slavishly followeddistrict majorities. No doubt notorious Houseiconoclasts like H. R. Gross or Vito Marcan-

tonio represented significant numbers of other-wise unrepresented citizens while probably mis-representing their district majority.

The benefits of collective representationmight also make more plausible widespreadpublic indifference towards the idea of respon-sible party government or other schemes involv-ing greater legislative cohesion.21 The presentsystem with its complement of mavericks andparty deviates does give expression, no doubt,to preferences that might very well be excludedin a system of disciplined, coherent legislative

parties. To a certain extent the existing systemgives citizens the best of both worlds: reason-ably accurate representation (even for districtminorities) and legislators who are willing toperform narrow constituency services. Hence,to ask citizens to give up the such particularisticbenefits as, for example, legislative interventionin the bureaucracy, for the promise of betterrepresentation when existing representation isprobably substantial (though not perfect), is tomake an easily refusable offer. Such an offer ofgreater party discipline might be more at-

bears while holding a low opinion of Congress as aninstitution supports our contention that such evalua-tions can be independent of each other. What istroublesome is why citizens should prefer members ofCongress to Congress as a whole when the latter islikely to be more representative than the former.Clearly, as Fenno points out, much more is involved inthese evaluations than policy satisfaction. See RichardF. Fenno, Jr., "If, as Ralph Nader Says, Congress Is'the Broken Branch,' How Come We Love OurCongressmen So Much?" in Congress in Change, ed.Norman J. Ornstein (New York: Praeger, 1975), pp.277-87.

21Jack Dennis, "Support for the Party System bythe Mass Public," American Political Science Review,60 (September 1966), 600-15.



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1978 Collective vs. Dyadic Representation n Congress 547

tractive if (1) citizens knew the true distribu-tions of preferences in the population; (2) ifpopular majorities were systematically violatedin lawmaking by these undisciplined lawmakers,and (3) the misrepresented citizens believed

that responsible parties, as opposed to "better"Congress members, would rectify the misrepre-sentation. Obviously, these requirements arequite poorly met. In short, given the reasonableamount of legislative success under presentconditions, a drastic change lacks appeal.

Summary and Conclusions

The major points of our discussion can besummarized as follows:

(1) If we define the worst possible condi-tions of representation as random legislativevoting, under such conditions a majority ofconstituencies will still be represented abouthalf the time, and even when this majority isviolated, the legislative vote will usually befairly close. Given citizens' ignorance of truemajorities in the population and the use ofbroad estimates, citizens will probably perceiveless blatant misrepresentation than is suggestedby low correlations of the Miller-Stokes type.

(2) Collective representation will never beworse than dyadic representation. If individuallegislators are "free" to deviate from districtopinion it is likely that deviations will approachnormality and the institution as a whole will bemore representative of national opinion thanthe average legislator is representative of districtopinion.

(3) Collective representation also appears tosolve the troublesome theoretical problem ofhow minorities are to be represented in asystem of single-member districts with first-past-the-post elections. As long as extremedeviations from district majorities are "canceledout" by opposing deviations, both the publicgenerally and district minorities can be givenrepresentation.

(4) Electoral control is not a logical pre-requisite to accurate representation. Indeed, itappears unlikely that one's "best" representa-tion will come from the individual one votes for(or against). It also appears likely that byreducing the proportion of a legislature acitizen can choose by increasing the number oflegislators, and by reducing electoral competi-tion by creating homogeneous districts, theaccuracy of representation will be improved.

(5) Finally, if we accept collective represen-tation as meaningful for citizens, several some-what puzzling attitudes and kinds of behaviorbecome more understandable. Among these are

citizen apathy towards legislative elections,willingness to tolerate unresponsive legislatorsfrom their districts, and a distaste for greaterlegislative party cohesion.

Lest our arguments be misunderstood, we

should also add:(1) We have not claimed that dyadic repre-

sentation is unimportant. Obviously, as May-hew and many others acknowledge, what Con-gress members do for their constituents ishighly relevant for both their own careers andconstituent voting.22 We are not trying toreplace the study of dyadic representation withthe study of collective representation; collectiverepresentation exists in addition to dyadicrepresentation.

(2) We have not argued that collective repre-

sentation is accurate representation. Our argu-ment is that collective representation is likelyto be more accurate, not perfectly accurate.Unfortunately, the Miller and Stokes data as weemploy them do not allow statements aboutthe absolute degree of representation.

(3) We do not state that elections lead tomisrepresentation. We claim that it is possible,even quite likely, that representation of citizenpreferences will occur independently of anelectoral connection between member of Con-gress and a constituent. Elections are not

irrelevant to the faithfulness of representation,but they are not the only determining factor.Some final observations on the study of

representation are appropriate. As we havepreviously indicated, the model of dyadic repre-sentation has completely dominated con-temporary research. This is true whether thedata are opinions or constituents or socio-economic characteristics of the district. Givenboth our constitutional order, which was neverdesigned to make legislators into perfect mir-rors of popular opinion, and the absence of

unbiased communication channels between citi-zens and leaders, the search for extensivedyadic agreement may be the search for theimpossible. It may be impossible for onelegislator to represent 400,000 people with anydegree of accuracy; it may, however, be pos-sible for 435 legislators to represent moreaccurately the opinions of 220,000,000 citi-zens. To be sure, whether or not a particularlegislator follows his or her constituency is animportant question, but this question is notnecessarily the most appropriate one if we ask,"Do representatives represent?"

22David R. Mayhew, Congress: The Electoral Con-nection (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974).

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