The Public’s Concept of Representation

I examine the public’s stated preferences about the mode of representation congressional repre-sentatives should provide. I also use experimental designs to assess the consequences of these preferences. The evidence I present demonstrates that, like normative and empirical scholars, the public is conflicted about how the representation relationship should work. This said, the experimental evidence I present shows that people are more inclined to reward some modes of representation than others. I also find that, in some situations, policy preferences substantially affect how people resolve their conflicting feelings about which mode of representation is best. The findings offer new insight into how the public thinks about the representation relationship and the potential electoral consequences of a legislator prioritizing one mode of representation over another. The representation process can be characterized as a principal-agent relationship between the public and elected representatives. But exactly who should constitute a representative’s “princi-pal”? And what is the appropriate relationship between the preferences of those principals and the agent’s behavior? The first question pertains to the “focus ” of representation and involves a trade