Representation and Institutional Design by Herrick Rebekah L.;

Author:Herrick, Rebekah L.; [Herrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic
Published: 2011-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Explaining Variation in Amount

of Symbolic Representation

There are two measures of levels of symbolic representation. Both are based on the amount of time legislators spend contacting their constituents. Time is an appropriate indicator of legislators’ commitment to and work on symbolic representation, since time is a limited resource for legislators (Fenno 1977). On the survey (described in chapter 1) respondents were asked, “When the legislature is in session approximately how many hours a week, on average, do you spend on the following activities? If zero leave blank.” One of the activities was “Keeping in touch with constituents.” In answering this question, respondents were given the following options: 1–4, 5–8, 9–16, or more than 16 hours. Legislators were also asked, “When the legislature is NOT in session, approximately how many hours a week, on average, do you spend on the following activities? If zero leave blank.”1 They were then given the same options to indicate how much time they spend keeping in touch with constituents. This leads to two variables: one for when the legislature is in-session and one for when it is out-of-session. Each variable was coded 1–4 with 4 indicating more time. The means (roughly 2)2 indicated that most legislators spent a fair amount of time keeping in contact. They spent an average of 5–8 hours a week keeping in contact, regardless of whether they were in-session. The independent variables have all been discussed in previous chapters. Since these variables are ordinal, ordered logistic regression is used.

Although the primary focus of the chapter is on how institutional features affect symbolic representation, I also examine the degree to which certain incentives: electoral vulnerability, ambition, and role orientation affect symbolic representation. These incentives are measured by variables discussed in chapters 2–4 and include: vote gap, reelection rates, static ambition, progressive ambition, trustee-delegate role, state-district role, voter-district vote, and surrogate role orientation.

Previous research on legislators’ contact with constituents suggests several control variables that should be included in the analysis (McAdams and Johannes 1985; Parker and Parker 1985; Johannes 1980, 1983; Jewell 1982, Freeman and Richardson 1996; Adler, Gent, and Overmeyer 1998; Ellickson and Whistler 2001; Maestas 2003; Herrick and Fisher 2007). I controlled for the following legislator characteristics: gender, party identification, if the legislator had left the chamber, seniority, levels of legislators’ education, and if the legislator had previous political experience. I also controlled for the following district traits: percentage rural and percentage college educated. Following from the previous chapters, I also controlled for minority party strength and region (southern states). All of these variables have been discussed in previous chapters.

Table 5.1 reports the findings. These findings suggest that it was easier to explain variation when the legislature was not in-session. The pseudo R2 was noticeably larger when the dependent variable measured contact when the legislature was out-of-session than in-session (0.16 compared to 0.05). This implies that legislators had less latitude in their symbolic work when the legislature was in-session, perhaps because they all are busy with lawmaking. Many institutional features were related to symbolic representation in the expected ways.

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