IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/polstu/v54y2006i1p103-122.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Public Preferences for Parliamentary Representation in the UK: An Overlooked Link?

Author

Listed:
  • Christopher Jan Carman

Abstract

Representation, both as a normative concept and a political process, has generated a rich literature across several national contexts. To develop our understanding of representational systems, scholars tend to assess the degree of policy congruence between parliamentarians and constituents as well as the role orientations adopted by elected parliamentarians and legislators. This paper contends that in order to have a complete understanding of representational systems, we must consider not only the representational roles adopted by parliamentarians, but also the publics’ preferences regarding parliamentary representation. Specifically, I posit that individuals have attitudes about the type and degree of relationship that they believe should exist between elected parliamentarians, parties and constituents. Using data from a 2003 survey of the British public, I test the related hypotheses that individuals have meaningful and predictable preferences for the representational relationship they share with their members of parliament (MPs) and that these representational preferences in turn influence how individuals evaluate MPs. Finding support for both hypotheses, I argue that developing an understanding of normative public preferences for political representation is an important and overlooked component in advancing models of public support of both elected officials and governing institutions.

Suggested Citation

  • Christopher Jan Carman, 2006. "Public Preferences for Parliamentary Representation in the UK: An Overlooked Link?," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 54(1), pages 103-122, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:polstu:v:54:y:2006:i:1:p:103-122
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2006.00568.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.2006.00568.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1467-9248.2006.00568.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Anthony Downs, 1957. "An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65(2), pages 135-135.
    2. Eulau, Heinz & Wahlke, John C. & Buchanan, William & Ferguson, Leroy C., 1959. "The Role of the Representative: Some Empirical Observations on the Theory of Edmund Burke," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 53(3), pages 742-756, September.
    3. Valerie Heitshusen & Garry Young & David M. Wood, 2005. "Electoral Context and MP Constituency Focus in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 49(1), pages 32-45, January.
    4. Weissberg, Robert, 1978. "Collective vs. Dyadic Representation in Congress," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 72(2), pages 535-547, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Floralba Padrón Pardo, 2015. "El concepto y función de las bancadas: las transformaciones de la representación política," Books, Universidad Externado de Colombia, Facultad de Derecho, number 748, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Matt Golder & Jacek Stramski, 2010. "Ideological Congruence and Electoral Institutions," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 54(1), pages 90-106, January.
    2. Peter Aranson, 1991. "Calhoun's constitutional economics," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 2(1), pages 31-52, December.
    3. Zoltán Fazekas & Martin Ejnar Hansen, 2022. "Incentives for non-participation: absence in the United Kingdom House of Commons, 1997–2015," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 191(1), pages 51-73, April.
    4. Stadelmann, David & Torrens, Gustavo & Portmann, Marco, 2020. "Mapping the theory of political representation to the empirics: An investigation for proportional and majoritarian rules," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(3), pages 548-560.
    5. Christophe Crombez, 2004. "Introduction," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 16(3), pages 227-231, July.
    6. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 2002. "Political economics and public finance," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 24, pages 1549-1659, Elsevier.
    7. Kaivan Munshi & Mark Rosenzweig, 2008. "The Efficacy of Parochial Politics: Caste, Commitment, and Competence in Indian Local Governments," NBER Working Papers 14335, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Burkhard Schipper & Hee Yeul Woo, 2012. "Political Awareness and Microtargeting of Voters in Electoral Competition," Working Papers 124, University of California, Davis, Department of Economics.
    9. Marco Faravelli & Randall Walsh, 2011. "Smooth Politicians And Paternalistic Voters: A Theory Of Large Elections," Levine's Working Paper Archive 786969000000000250, David K. Levine.
    10. Hank C. Jenkins-Smith & Neil J. Mitchell & Kerry G. Herron, 2004. "Foreign and Domestic Policy Belief Structures in the U.S. and British Publics," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 48(3), pages 287-309, June.
    11. Eric Kaufmann & Henry Patterson, 2006. "Intra‐Party Support for the Good Friday Agreement in the Ulster Unionist Party," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 54(3), pages 509-532, October.
    12. Micael Castanheira, 2003. "Why Vote For Losers?," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 1(5), pages 1207-1238, September.
    13. Peter J. Coughlin, 2015. "Probabilistic voting in models of electoral competition," Chapters, in: Jac C. Heckelman & Nicholas R. Miller (ed.), Handbook of Social Choice and Voting, chapter 13, pages 218-234, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    14. Mihir Bhattacharya, 2019. "Constitutionally consistent voting rules over single-peaked domains," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 52(2), pages 225-246, February.
    15. Marc Henry & Ismael Mourifié, 2013. "Euclidean Revealed Preferences: Testing The Spatial Voting Model," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(4), pages 650-666, June.
    16. , & ,, 2006. "Group formation and voter participation," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 1(4), pages 461-487, December.
    17. Dendi Ramdani & Arjen Witteloostuijn, 2012. "The Shareholder–Manager Relationship and Its Impact on the Likelihood of Firm Bribery," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 108(4), pages 495-507, July.
    18. Alan E. Wiseman, 2006. "A Theory of Partisan Support and Entry Deterrence in Electoral Competition," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 18(2), pages 123-158, April.
    19. Alessandro Olper & Johan Swinnen, 2013. "Mass Media and Public Policy: Global Evidence from Agricultural Policies," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 27(3), pages 413-436.
    20. Armèn Hakhverdian, 2009. "Capturing Government Policy on the Left–Right Scale: Evidence from the United Kingdom, 1956–2006," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 57(4), pages 720-745, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:polstu:v:54:y:2006:i:1:p:103-122. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0032-3217 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.