A Legislature or a Legislator Like Me? Citizen Demand for Collective and Dyadic Political Representation

Abstract

American politics scholars have long distinguished between legislature-level “collective” and legislator-level “dyadic” representation. However, most research on these concepts focuses on elite-level outcomes (e.g., policy output or roll-call behavior), and whether one or both forms leads to the representation of citizen interests. Less is known about the demand side of the relationship—whether constituents prefer collective or dyadic representation. Yet the citizen perspective is critical to both scholarly and normative discussions of representation. Through a novel survey experiment administered to national samples of Americans, we examine citizen preferences for collective and dyadic representation with respect to two important social identities: race and political partisanship. We posit that citizens prefer collective over dyadic representation because collective representation provides better representation of constituents’ interests via substantive and symbolic benefits. We show results that support this expectation, and then conclude by discussing the implications for scholarly and normative understandings of representation in American politics.