Citizens' Orientations Toward Legislatures: Congress and the State Legislature

Abstract

wo decades ago, Wahlke argued forcefully that research on legislative representation should focus more effort on investigating patterns of public orientations toward representative institutions, mapping incidence and variations of support in specific systems, and formulating hypotheses about its conditions and correlates (Wahlke 1978: 83). He advocated inquiry about role of the represented. Citizens' orientations toward legislatures have, in fact, been investigated to some extent. Davidson and Parker (1972) opened up research on support for Congress more than twenty years ago (also see Davidson, Kovenock, and O'Leary 1966: 38-66); and the state of such research was synthesized ten years ago by Dennis (1981). Similar research was conducted with the state legislatures in mind during the 1970s (e.g., Patterson, Hedlund, and Boynton 1975). Most commonly, the thrust of research has gone to the extent of constituents' supportive or unsupportive evaluations of the legislature and its work. Do citizens generally approve or disapprove of the job the legislature does? Such inquiry about legislative performance is an effective, widely understood, and probably the simplest and most direct indicator of public support for the legislature (see Dennis 1981: 324; Ripley 1988). Why should support, or lack of support, for the legislature be investigated? Public support for Congress oscillates over time without apparent dire consequences for the political system. At the same time,