The representative's problem: how legislators use communication to secure constituent support

In a representative democracy elected officials face what I call the representative's problem. Elected officials work in Washington to provide representation, yet constituents lack the incentive and capacity to track what their representative does in office. Worse yet, challengers and media may portray an elected officials' work negatively to constituents. In this presentation, I show how legislators use communication to overcome the representative's problem, how this affects constituents' evaluations, and how this matters for US politics and political representation. To characterize what legislators say to constituents I apply and develop text as data methods to analyze press releases, floor speeches, newsletters, and media coverage. This reveals the diverse way legislators characterize their work in Washington to constituents and how members of Congress use rhetoric to ensure they receive credit for government actions. Based on this analysis of legislators' rhetoric, I use a series of experiments to analyze how constituents respond to legislators' messages. I show how legislators ensure they receive credit for favorable actions the government does, even when the legislator's actual connection to the expenditure is only indirect. Together, this presentation shows how representation works in American politics and how computational tools can examine previously difficult to study features of politics.