Constituent Demand and District‐Focused Legislative Representation

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lsq.12217
• Published date: 01 February 2019
• Date: 01 February 2019
• Author: Mathias Wessel Tromborg,Leslie A. Schwindt‐Bayer

35

LEGISLATIVE STUDIES QUARTERLY, 44, 1, February 2019

DOI: 10.1111/lsq.12217

MATHIAS WESSEL TROMBORG

Aarhus University

LESLIE A. SCHW INDT-BAYER

Rice University

Constituent Demand and District-

Focused Legislative Representation

Legislative responsiveness to constituent demands is integral to the con-

cept of representation. Yet, research on district-focused legislative behavior and

priorities, such as allocating resources to districts, has largely ignored constituent

demand as an explanatory variable. In this article, we propose a demand-based

theory of district-targeted legislative resource allocation. The theoretical model

suggests that district demand for legislative resources is determined by the dis-

trict’s relative deprivation of such resources and that legislators have an electoral

incentive to respond to district demand due to the credit-claiming opportunities

associated with doing so. These possibilities are tested with region-wide mass and

elite survey data from Latin America, and the results suggest that constituent

demand is not only a normatively but also an empirically important predictor of

district-focused legislative behavior.

Representative democra cy is rooted in the relationship be-

tween constitue nts and their elect ed officials. According to p er-

haps the most common vi sion of representative democ racy, those

elected are supp osed to be respon sive to the concer ns and prefer-

ences of constituents (Eulau and Karps 1977; Fenno 1978; Glazer

and Robbins 1985; Lax and Phillips 2009; McDonald and Budge

2005; Miller and Stokes 1963; Page and Shapiro 1983; Pitkin 1969;

Powell 2000; Wahlke 1971). A prominent line of resea rch in this

area has focused on what motivates elected repr esentatives to

focus attention on their dist ricts and, more sp ecifi cally, prioritize

and engage in the provision of public good s and resources to their

districts. Yet, most of this work has exami ned the ways in which

electoral and other pol itical institutions shape legislators’ d istrict-

focused behavior (Carey 2009; Carey and Shugart 1995; Chang

and Golden 2007; Crisp et al. 2004; Heitshusen, Young, and Wood

2005; Ingall and Crisp 2001; Morgenstern 2004; Stratma nn and

Baur 2002) rather than consider ing the inf luence of con stituent

preferences on legi slators’ priorities and a ctions.

© 2018 Washington University in St. Louis

36 Mathias Wessel Tromborg and Leslie A. Schwindt-Bayer

We argue that if represe ntation is rooted in repres entatives

being responsive to their constituents, t hen constituent demand

for district-focused legi slative representation may be a critically

important, but often overlooked, explanation for that repre sen-

tation.1 Existing res earch has often i mplicitly assu med that de-

mand for district-focused leg islative behavior is constant, in other

words, that all constituents i n all electoral districts h ave the same

level of demand for district-focused representation. Yet, that is

unlikely to be t he case. Demand for different types of re presenta-

tion is likely to vary ac ross districts and have different imp acts on

representative behavior. Therefore, in this article, we br ing con-

stituents to the forefront and articu late a demand-based theory of

district-focused legislative representation.

Our theory focus es speci fically on one type of distr ict-focused

representation— the allocation of legislative resources (money,

goods, and/or services) to districts.2 We begin with the obser vation

that individuals l ive in distric ts with vary ing levels of resources.

Some districts h ave lower levels of public and private re sources than

others, which can c reate feelings of relative deprivation among citi-

zens in those d istricts. This, in tur n, spurs citizens to demand more

public resource s from their elected represe ntatives to improve their

conditions. Legislators a nd parties re cogniz e the credit-clai ming

and vote-getting opportu nities that are generated by voter demand s

in their constit uencies and thus have inc entives to prioriti ze being

responsive to the nee ds of their distr icts through loc ally targeted

public goods and resourc es. As a result, district repre sentatives are

more likely to prioriti ze district-targeted resource a llocation when

their constituents are relatively deprived of such re sources.

We test this theory with a region-wide analysis i n Latin

America, u sing data from the Latinobarómet ro mass survey and

the Parliamentar y Elites of Latin America ( PELA) elite survey. We

find empir ical support for all pa rts of the theory. First, we fi nd

that rural citi zens are more dis satisfied w ith their local servic es

and more likely to contact the ir elected leg islators about the prob-

lems in their c ommunities t han urban citiz ens. Then, focusi ng on

a subset of data where we can agg regate to the distr ict level, we

show that this occur s at the district level a s well. We then provide

evidence that leg islators who represent more ru ral distri cts are

more likely to prioriti ze the provision of public resourc es to their

districts, and we show with a two-stage least-squa res model that

the likely mechan ism link ing distri ct urbaniz ation and this leg-

islative behavior is voter demand. Overall, these f indings sugge st