IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/apsrev/v72y1978i02p535-547_15.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Collective vs. Dyadic Representation in Congress

Author

Listed:
  • Weissberg, Robert

Abstract

Previous studies of legislative-constituency representation have focused almost exclusively on 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.

Suggested Citation

  • Weissberg, Robert, 1978. "Collective vs. Dyadic Representation in Congress," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 72(2), pages 535-547, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:72:y:1978:i:02:p:535-547_15
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0003055400155923/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. 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.
    2. 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.
    3. Meng, Tianguang & Su, Zheng, 2021. "When top-down meets bottom-up: Local officials and selective responsiveness within fiscal policymaking in China," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 142(C).
    4. Mayne, Quinton & Hakhverdian, Armen, 2016. "Ideological Congruence and Citizen Satisfaction: Evidence from 25 Advanced Democracies," Scholarly Articles 25302405, Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
    5. Rareş DUMITRAŞ, 2015. "Achieving Integration of the Roma in the EU: Descriptive Representation as a Policy Solution for Romania," Anuarul Institutului de Cercetări Socio-Umane „C.S. Nicolăescu-Plopșor” (“C.S. Nicolăescu-Plopşor” Institute for Research in Social Studies and Humanities Yearbook (CSNIPSSH Yearbook)), Institutul de Cercetări Socio-Umane „C.S. Nicolăescu-Plopșor” al Academiei Române, issue XVI, pages 125-136, December.
    6. 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.
    7. Besley, Timothy & Coate, Stephen, 2008. "Issue Unbundling via Citizens' Initiatives," Quarterly Journal of Political Science, now publishers, vol. 3(4), pages 379-397, December.
    8. Stadelmann, David & Portmann, Marco & Eichenberger, Reiner, 2014. "The law of large districts: How district magnitude affects the quality of political representation," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 128-140.

    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:cup:apsrev:v:72:y:1978:i:02:p:535-547_15. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/psr .

    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.