Constituent Opinion and Legislative Agendas in Congress

• In Event: Public Opinion and Legislative Politics

Abstract

Using data from an original survey of congressional staff from House offices, this paper examines how congressional office practices for understanding constituents’ policy preferences and priorities shape Representatives’ legislative agendas. This paper focuses in particular on constituent correspondence as a resource that members of Congress and their staffers can use to inform their legislative work. Congressional offices that develop accessible and informative systems for managing the high volume of constituent correspondence that they receive should be in a better position to understand district preferences and translate that information into their legislative activity. With a new dataset that catalogs the internal practices in congressional offices for managing incoming letters, emails, phone calls, faxes, and social media contacts, this paper will assess how office treatment of constituent correspondence relates to Representatives’ policy activity in Congress. Specifically, analyses will test whether Representatives with more effective systems for handling correspondence develop legislative agendas that are more responsive to district preferences. This paper examines congressional office learning as a step in the process of representation, assessing whether office efforts to discern constituent opinion can facilitate policy responsiveness.

Author

• Claire Abernathy, Stockton University