Constituency Attentiveness in the House: 1977-1982

Abstract

This paper examines the constituency-oriented behavior of House incumbents using both public-record and interview data from the late 1970s and early 1980s. It evaluates three broad theoretical perspectives: the rational, which sees constituency attentiveness as the result of electoral threat; the institutional, which holds that the House itself is a powerful molder of behavior; and the sociological, which sees behavior of incumbents as a function of social forces outside the institution. Modes of analysis include: (1) a panel of members, (2) a panel of districts in which the entry of new incumbents can be used to detect cohort effects, and (3) a cross-section to estimate the effects of exogenous variables which do not vary across the span of our panel. All three theoretical perspectives receive considerable support.