Beyond the Mean: New Directions in Elite Behaviour and Political Representation

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

In the past decade, surveys of elected politicians have become increasingly prominent in the study of political behaviour and representation. Combined with large surveys of the general public, these elite studies have enabled political scientists to make major advances in research on politicians’ alignment with and knowledge of their constituents’ policy preferences. More recently, however, political scientists have begun to move beyond the question of majority opinion and average policy attitudes, focusing instead on other important aspects of representation, such as politicians’ understanding of the socio-demographic composition of their districts, citizens’ support for anti-democratic behaviour and political violence, and politician-citizen alignment on procedural questions of federalism and governance.

This panel includes four examples of papers that move “beyond the mean” in studies of elite political behaviour and political representation. Using data from large-scale surveys of local, regional, and national politicians, the authors explore how politicians think about distributions of opinion among their constituents, how well (or poorly) politicians align with their constituents on the critical question of how they spend their time in office, and the consequences of politicians’ understanding of the composition of their constituencies. Taken together, the papers demonstrate the promise of survey-based elite behavioural research for broad questions of political representation.

Sub Unit

• Division 22: Legislative Studies

Individual Presentations

• The Shape of Public Opinion and Politicians' Perceptual Errors - Nicholas Carlo Dias, University of Pennsylvania; Jack Lucas, University of Calgary; Lior Sheffer, Tel Aviv University

• Politicians and Voters on How Representatives Should Spend Their Time - Stefanie Bailer, University of Basel; Christian Breunig, University of Konstanz

• The Shape of Public Opinion: An Experiment on Politicians' Reactions - Mikael Persson, University of Gothenburg

• Why Do Expressed Policy Preferences Differ between Surveys and Focus Groups? - Paul Marx, University of Bonn; Alice Barth, University of Bonn

Chair

• Jack Lucas University of Calgary

Discussant

• James N. Druckman University of Rochester