Issue Representation in Congress

Abstract

The analysis develops measures to examine the impact of the election process on issue representation. The first section of the paper discusses the construction of equivalent scales to measure citizens' opinions and representatives' positions on four issues. The second section tests models of representation which give varying degrees of importance to citizen positions on issues in candidate recruitment and elections. The last section examines factors (seniority, turnout and electoral competitiveness) hypothesized to affect representation.