From Passive to Active Representation: The Case of Women Congressional Staff

Abstract

Missing from most studies of congressional staff is the insight gained from the representative bureaucracy literature that descriptive characteristics may affect the behavior of unelected bureaucrats. In considering congressional representation as an activity mediated by staff, we ask: Does descriptive representation of congressional committee staff lead to substantive representation? We explore this question, using gender as our descriptive characteristic of interest. We produce a typology of staff roles developed through in‐depth interviews about two cases that illustrate how institutional factors affect and constrain women staffers' contributions as substantive representatives for issues concerning women. We posit that passive representation translates into the active representation only when: 1) interest groups hold expectations for passive representation on an issue and then in turn demand some level of active representation; 2) a staff member possesses the necessary resources of interest, expertise, and status, and 3) the opportunity structure of member‐staff relations, staff autonomy, and political salience coincide. When these conditions are less than optimal, active representation will not occur.