Ideology and Representation in the US Senate: Roll Calls v. Constituent Assessments

Most research on representation in the US Congress examines the relationship between the voting behaviour of legislators and citizens' preferences. Using a roll call-based measure (DW-NOMINATE scores) of US Senators' ideologies and citizen assessments of Senators' ideologies (from the American National Election Study: Pooled Senate Election Study 1988, 1990, 1992), we demonstrate that judgements about Senators' responsiveness (the extent to which more liberal/conservative Senators represent more liberal/conservative states) is sensitive to measurement issues. In addition, using citizen assessments, we move beyond responsiveness to examine ‘representativeness’ (the extent to which Senators' ideologies match the average ideologies of their constituents) as a dimension of representation. We conclude that citizen assessments should not be overlooked since representation may ultimately be a phenomenon that rests in the eye of the beholder and since governmental legitimacy itself rests on citizens' attitudes and beliefs.     

Approaches to Studying Policy Representation

Some studies of policy representation test hypotheses about the relationship between citizens' views and elites' positions on multiple issues by proceeding one issue at a time. Others summarize citizens' and elites' preferences with “ideology scores” and test hypotheses with these. I show that approach is flawed. It misinterprets citizens' ideology scores as summaries of policy preferences, but these scores actually measure ideological consistency across areas: how often citizens' ideal policies are liberal or conservative. Examples show how attending to this distinction overturns conventional wisdom: legislators appear similarly moderate as citizens, not more extreme; however, politically engaged citizens appear especially moderate.     

Reforming parliament in the United Kingdom: The report of the commission to strengthen parliament

This article explores the effects of new media upon representative democracy. It begins by considering the lessons from studies of the effects of previous communication media, such as television. A survey of British MPs' use of and attitudes towards new media is reported, as is another survey of British citizens' attitudes towards new media and political institutions. The article concludes by suggesting that systemic changes to democratic representation might occur as a result of new media and setting out some principles likely to result in the best use of new media in representative democracies.     

Recent Supreme Court of Canada rulings on criminal defendants' right to counsel

The Supreme Court of Canada recently issued a trilogy of decisions pertaining to suspects' right to legal representation. These rulings further a major difference between the US and Canadian law: Canadian criminal suspects have far less access to legal counsel than suspects in the USA. This paper summarizes these decisions and draws comparisons between Canadian and the US criminal procedure with respect to a suspect's rights to legal representation. We present preliminary data on Canadian citizens' misunderstanding of criminal suspects' right to counsel and also Canadian legal professionals' opinions about the right to counsel. We recommend empirical investigation of the hypothesis that Canadian suspects are more likely than the US suspects to make false confessions.     

Factors affecting likelihood of hiring private investigators (PI): Citizens' traits and attitudes toward police and PI

The aim of this study is to identify factors affecting citizens' likelihood of hiring private investigators (PI) for resolving their criminal and/or civil matters. Limited research has been conducted to investigate factors relevant to private investigators, but none of prior studies have studied citizens' characteristics and attitudes toward police and PI in this regard. To fill the void of the literature, this study utilized data collected from 225 Korean citizens. Factors examined include citizens' demographics, desire for personalized justice, attitudes toward PI's investigation, fear of crime, and attitudes toward public police. Findings indicate that citizens' desire for personalized justice was the most significant factor affecting likelihood of hiring PI for different types of cases. Results of the finding also showed that citizen's satisfaction with police work was negatively related with likelihood of hiring PIs for their criminal and/or civil cases. Based on results, policy implications for law enforcement were discussed.     

Getting Schooled: Legal Mobilization as an Educative Process

This article explores the role of formal education and specific legal knowledge in the process of legal mobilization. Using survey data and in‐depth case narratives of workplace disputes in China, we highlight three major findings. First, and uncontroversially, higher levels of formal education are associated with greater propensity to use legal institutions and to find them more effective. Second, informally acquired labor law knowledge can substitute for formal education in bringing people to the legal system and improving their legal experiences. The Chinese state's propagation of legal knowledge has had positive effects on citizens' legal mobilization. Finally, while education and legal knowledge are factors that push people toward the legal system, actual dispute experience leads people away from it, especially among disputants without effective legal representation. The article concludes that the Chinese state's encouragement of individualized legal mobilization produces contradictory outcomes—encouraging citizens to use formal legal institutions, imbuing them with new knowledge and rights awareness, but also breeding disdain for the law in practice.     

Job Approval and Senate Election Outcomes In the United States

A growing body of congressional scholarship investigates variation in the incumbent electoral advantage that depends on factors such as competence, political skill, and ideological extremity. This article contributes to this line of work by providing analysis of the relationship between senators' home‐state approval ratings and their electoral fortunes using newly available data from the Job Approval Ratings (JAR) collection. The findings show that senatorial job approval affects retirement, quality‐candidate emergence, campaign spending, and outcomes. The myriad indirect effects suggest that strategic political actors are central to the process by which incumbents are held accountable for the reputations they develop in their constituencies.     

Citizens' perceptions of aggressive traffic enforcement strategies

In this study we examine citizens' support for aggressive traffic enforcement strategies and discuss whether the implementation of two different types of traffic enforcement decreases public support. We also examine whether citizens' perceptions of crime, quality of life, and the police are influenced by an increased police presence in their neighborhood. The public opinion data presented here are taken from two experimental target areas and one comparison area. Overall the findings suggest that citizens strongly support aggressive traffic enforcement practices and that the implementation of such strategies does not reduce their support. Residents of areas where police are using these types of tactics do not think that the police are harassing them. Citizens living in one of the experimental areas are significantly more likely to support the police, and think that the police work well with the neighborhood. Residents of the areas that experienced two types of aggressive enforcement, however, did not think that crime had decreased, nor that quality of life had improved. We discuss implications for the use of these strategies and for community policing in general.     

Revisions to rules of conduct and standards of responsibility for representatives. Final rules

We are revising our rules of conduct and standards of responsibility for representatives. These revisions further clarify our expectations regarding representatives' obligations to competently represent their clients and constitute official notice concerning our requirements and procedures. We are also updating other rules about the representation of parties. These changes are necessary because our current regulations are insufficient to address some representative conduct that is inappropriate, but has technically fallen outside the scope of our regulations. These changes will allow us to better protect the integrity of our administrative process, ensure that claimants receive competent and effective representation, and further clarify representatives' responsibilities in their dealings with us and with claimants.     

MPs and the Internet – An Empirically Based Typology

In recent years, both an increase in and a process of differentiation of ‘new’, digital media devices, including rising numbers of citizens turning to them, have stimulated recurring speculation about a readjustment of the communicative relationship between political representatives and the people. The debate about ‘electronic democracy’ has so far focused predominantly on technical potentials on the one hand and citizens' exposure to interactive political communication channels on the other. By contrast, the ‘supply side’, that is, the internet activities of political actors and especially their motives, has been investigated relatively rarely. Against this backdrop, two representative surveys were conducted among German and Austrian members of parliament that investigated their attitudes towards the internet. The results demonstrate similarities and differences in internet-related competences and assessments which are explained by micro- and meso-level factors. Foremost, an age-related ‘digital divide’ was found crossing the parliamentarian rows in both countries.     

Retrieving the ‘subject’ of European integration

In this article, a critical reinterpretation of citizens as subjects of European integration moves the focus of EU law from EU citizens' subjection to their subjectification. This analysis draws on post‐structural social theory in arguing that the law is instrumental to securing the material conditions for transnational political subjectification because it regulates both EU citizens' access to transnational social relations and the perception of difference between them. However, the law also reinforces constraints on the process of transnational subjectification. Systematic obstacles, which must be taken into account, are not limited to economic status, but include other variables like gender or age. It will be argued on this basis that EU law needs to develop a more coherent politics of subjectivity. Towards this goal, the law must carefully attend to what is (and is not) depoliticising in EU citizenship rights.     

Organizational Justice and Job Satisfaction: A Test of Three Competing Models

Using nationally representative data, we test three theories about distributive and procedural justice and their relation to job satisfaction. Our results support the group-value model more than the personal outcomes model by showing that procedural justice is a more important predictor of job satisfaction than is distributive justice. Furthermore, although other research has supported the psychological contract model by showing that experiences with downsizing alter how procedural justice and distributive justice are related to organizational commitment, we find that downsizing does not alter their relationship with job satisfaction.     

Explaining Seat Changes in the U.S. House of Representatives, 1950–98

Abstract: Recent U.S. House elections have challenged existing models of congressional elections, raising the question of whether or not processes thought to govern previous elections are still at work. Taking Marra and Ostrom's (1989) model of congressional elections as representative of extant theoretical perspectives and testing it against recent elections, we find that the model fails. We augment Marra and Ostrom's model with new insights, constructing a model that explains elections from 1950 to 1998. We find that, although presidential approval ratings and major political events continue to drive congressional elections, the distribution of open seats must also be taken into account.     

Is There an Informative Effect of Law? An Experimental Test

Debates on how the law affects citizens' behaviour have traditionally focused on two mechanisms: deterrence and perceptions of legitimacy. In recent years, some scholars have suggested that the law may also affect compliance through expressive mechanisms that reveal information about the world (for example, by eliciting the risks associated with a particular behaviour). Dharmapala and McAdams have called this the informative effect of law. However, to date very little empirical evidence of the existence of such an effect has emerged. In this article, we present the results of an experiment that tests for three different hypotheses as to how this effect may be produced. Our findings show that legislators' sincerity or their access to expert knowledge is not sufficient to produce information effects. Instead, we suggest an ‘asymmetry’ hypothesis: the fact that a law is passed or rejected has an asymmetrical information effect on subjects' risk perceptions.     

Public Support for Term Limits: Another Look at Conventional Thinking

Abstract: Americans are enamored with term limits for elected officials at all levels of government. Explanations of public support for term limits focus on partisanship, group underrepresentation, voter dissatisfaction with specific political institutions, political cynicism, and ideology. We qualify the conventional wisdom that term limits are mostly a Republican issue: Support for term limits is more a function of the incongruence between an individual's expressed partisanship and the party of their representative than of the individual's party affiliation. Further, the effect of unsatisfactory representation is strongly related to a voter's engagement with politics and willingness to monitor political affairs actively.     

Imposing a neo-liberal theory of representation on the Westminster model: A Canadian case

The Conservative government in office in the Canadian province of Ontario between 1995 and 2003 offers a lesson in how the Westminster model can accommodate different interpretations of the role of the elected parliamentarian. The Conservatives espoused a vision of parliamentary representation, rooted in neo-liberal ideology, which held that the primary obligation of elected members was to respect their constituents' interest as taxpayers, superseding attention to any of their other multiple identities traditionally considered to be worthy of representation in the Legislature. The legitimacy of representative democracy was compromised when governments strayed from this norm. This analysis of the purposes of representation provided the intellectual framework for an ambitious restructuring of the Westminster model, most notably an unprecedented reduction in the size of the provincial legislature, as well as the elimination of the Legislature's historic control over its own electoral boundaries and composition.     

Lawyer Satisfaction in the Process of Structuring Legal Careers

This article proposes a new approach to the study of job satisfaction in the legal profession. Drawing on a Bourdieusian understanding of the relationship between social class and dispositions, we argue that job satisfaction depends in part on social origins and the credentials related to these origins, with social hierarchies helping to define the expectations and possibilities that produce professional careers. Through this lens, job satisfaction is understood as a mechanism through which social and professional hierarchies are produced and reproduced. Relying on the first national data set on lawyer careers (including both survey data and in-depth interviews), we find that lawyers' social background, as reflected in the ranking of their law school, decreases career satisfaction and increases the odds of a job search for the most successful new lawyers. When combined with the interview data, we find that social class is an important component of a stratification system that tends to lead individuals into hierarchically arranged positions.