What Do Citizens Want from Their Member of Congress?

• Author: Matt Levendusky,John Lapinski,Ken Winneg,Kathleen Hall Jamieson
• Date: 01 September 2016
• Published date: 01 September 2016
• DOI: 10.1177/1065912916652240
• Subject Matter: Articles

Political Research Quarterly

2016, Vol. 69(3) 535 –545

© 2016 University of Utah

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DOI: 10.1177/1065912916652240

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Article

What do ordinary citizens want from their member of

Congress? Do they want someone who will go to

Washington to serve the district, passing bills to help the

local area, performing constituency service, and bringing

back federal projects and monies to the district? Do they

want someone who will go and serve as a watchdog over

federal agencies? Or do they want someone who repre-

sents their views on the key national issues of the day? We

know a great deal about how members think about balanc-

ing these various aspects of their job, dating back to foun-

dational works in the 1970s and 1980s (e.g., Cain,

Ferejohn, and Fiorina 1987; Fenno 1978; Mayhew 1974).

While this “supply side” of the problem is well studied,

the demand side—what constituents want—is somewhat

less so (though see Griffin and Flavin 2011; Harden 2016).

We take up the question of what citizens want from

their members. This is particularly timely given that

Congressional approval is near an all-time low: since

2010, Gallup’s Congressional approval has hovered in

the teens, and occasionally dipped below 10 percent.1 For

the public to restore its faith in Congress, an important

first step is to better understand what constituents want

from their individual representatives.2 We argue that

while voters want members to do all of the jobs above

(e.g., help the district, oversee government, and represent

them on the issues), in the contemporary environment,

citizens especially prioritize a member who reflects their

views on the issues, particularly salient national issues.

Given elite polarization, and beliefs about how members

will behave in D.C., voters see issue representation as

perhaps the core function of a member. To be clear, this is

not to say that they do not value service to the district or

other functions: our data show clearly that they do.

Instead, our argument is that most voters—and especially

the most educated and partisan—value issue representa-

tion in the contemporary context.3 In turn, our findings

have important implications for understanding the related

changes in Congress and American politics more broadly,

such as the nationalization of elections and increasing

levels of polarization in Congress.

What Do Voters Want?

Representation is a multi-dimensional affair (Eulau and

Karps 1977). Members can not only represent their dis-

trict on the issues of the day (Doherty 2013; Miller and

Stokes 1963), but they can also work to serve the district

in other ways, by (say) bringing federal monies to the dis-

trict or by providing constituency services (Cain,

Ferejohn, and Fiorina 1987) or by regulating the bureau-

cracy or providing symbolic representation.Indeed, there

are many different “spheres of representation” (Griffin

and Flavin 2011), and different legislators prioritize these

spheres differently (Harden 2013).

652240PRQXXX10.1177/1065912916652240Political Research QuarterlyLapinski et al.

research-article2016

1University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA

Corresponding Author:

Matt Levendusky, Department of Political Science, University of

Pennsylvania, 208 S. 37th St., Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.

Email: mleven@sas.upenn.edu

What Do Citizens Want from Their

Member of Congress?

John Lapinski1, Matt Levendusky1, Ken Winneg1, and Kathleen Hall Jamieson1

Abstract

What do citizens want from their members of Congress? Do they expect them to be constituent servants? Do they

expect them to work on local problems? Or do they expect them to represent them on the national issues of the day?

While citizens expect members of Congress to perform all of these roles, we argue that, in the contemporary political

environment, citizens especially value members who represent them on the salient national issues of the day. We also

argue that such behavior will be especially pronounced among those who are the most educated and partisan. We

show, using several recent nationally representative surveys, that citizens prioritize this sort of issue representation,

and that such evaluations shape member approval and vote choice. We conclude by discussing the implications of this

pattern for related trends such as elite polarization and the nationalization of elections.

Keywords

Congress, representation, constituency service