"Representation"

Do congressional staff know what constituents want? Probably not.

My first posts at Unelected Representative have introduced readers to the hidden congressional staffers who act as gatekeepers of information on Capitol Hill. Although they’re usually behind the scenes, they have tremendous influence on politics and policy. I’ve also begun to share a bit about my research focused on where senior staff turn for information on science issues at a time when so many policymakers and ordinary citizens have become suspicious of expertise.

So now let’s turn to representation.

When we elect U.S. Senators and House members to office, we expect them - and by extension, their office staff - to reflect the preferences and attitudes in our district or state. But do they actually know what constituents want?

Well, it’s complicated. On one hand, it’s really difficult to lump thousands of legislative staff, working in hundreds of congressional offices, together for one conclusive answer. On the other, the limited evidence we have so far suggests no.

A few years back, political scientist Alexander Hertel-Fernandez and colleagues surveyed senior staffers about their personal policy preferences, and their perceptions of constituents’ opinions. Topics included attitudes related to gun control, carbon pollution restrictions, repeal of the Affordable Care Act, infrastructure spending and raising the minimum wage.

The results? They found that personal biases of staffers, as well as their relationships with interest groups, drove a disconnect between what staff assume constituents want compared with actual public survey data.

The staffers with opinions most different from majority attitudes were least accurate when estimating district and state priorities. Meanwhile, those who had the most contact with corporate interest groups were the worst at predicting the opinions held by the people they represent. In other words, the researchers concluded that the offices of elected leaders may not accurately reflect the priorities of people they have pledged to serve.

Along similar lines, political scientist Miguel Pereira (2020) explored the tendency of legislators outside of the U.S. to project their own personal attitudes on issues, leading them to misperceive what constituents want. He described that unequal exposure to different opinions, and the tendency of legislators to assign their own preferences to voters, leads to a mismatch between citizens and the offices that represent them.

Pereira reported that decision makers appear to be most influenced by privileged voters, organized groups and their personal positions. His work highlights the way inequalities in political voice can limit representation.

I’ve touched on just two studies in a growing body of literature on representation because both demonstrate a common challenge. Democratically elected leaders may be meant to represent all voters, but their knowledge of public attitudes is always constrained because they lack complete information about every issue, in every situation, related to every potential outcome. This idea touches on the concept of bounded rationality, which I will return to in future posts.

For today, here’s the take home:

Staffers, like the rest of us, are subject to conscious and unconscious bias. They’re often doing the best they can with imperfect data and limited time, ultimately drawing conclusions about our attitudes based on their own experiences, perceptions, beliefs and values.

We have come to expect that the people working in Congress will represent us, but it’s extremely difficult for staffers to recognize true majority priorities.

A lot more on this - including my own findings - to come…

United States Constitution

References

1. Hertel-Fernandez, A., Matto Mildenberger, and Leah C Stokes. 2019. “Legislative staff and representation in congress. American Political Science Review, 113(1):1–18

2. Pereira, Miguel M. 2020. “Understanding and Reducing Biases in Elite Beliefs About the Electorate.”