Replication Data for: Collective Representation in Congress

Code and data to replicate Ansolabehere and Kuriwaki, "Collective Representation in Congress" in Perspectives on Politics. Abstract: The aspiration of representative democracy is that the legislature will make decisions that reflect what the majority of people want. The US Constitution, however, created a Congress with both majoritarian and counter-majoritarian forces. We study public opinion on 103 important issues on the congressional agenda from 2006 to 2022 using the Cooperative Congressional Election Study. Congress made decisions that aligned with what the majority wanted on 55 percent of these issues. Analysis of each issue further reveals the circumstances when Congress represents the majority and the many ways that representation fails. The likelihood that the House passes a bill is usually a reflection of public support for that policy, but the ultimate fate of bills depends on partisan control of the two chambers of Congress and the degree of divisiveness between the two party bases in the public. Legislative institutions make it difficult to pass popular issues, but even more difficult to pass unpopular ones. As a result, most representational failure occurs because Congress failed to pass a popular bill rather than because Congress passed a bill that the public did not want.