Constituent Demand and District-Focused Legislative Representation

Abstract

Legislative responsiveness to constituent demands is integral to the concept of representation. Yet, research on district-focused legislative behavior and priorities, such as allocating resources to districts, has largely ignored constituent demand as an explanatory variable. In this article, we propose a demand-based theory of district-targeted legislative resource allocation. The theoretical model suggests that district demand for legislative resources is determined by the district’s relative deprivation of such resources and that legislators have an electoral incentive to respond to district demand due to the credit-claiming opportunities associated with doing so. These possibilities are tested with region-wide mass and elite survey data from Latin America, and the results suggest that constituent demand is not only a normatively but also an empirically important predictor of district-focused legislative behavior.