“Only 49 percent of citizens think their congressional representatives have their constituents’ interests in mind when voting on policies, while over 63 percent of the public thinks their representatives have special interests in mind when casting roll call votes. What is more startling, however, is that one-third of the survey’s respondents strongly disapprove of Congress, while only 17 percent of the public strongly approve of the House and Senate’s handling of the nation’s business.” (Carmines 2004, 2)

 

Introduction

Americans have had for many years a deep and growing sense of disconnection from their representatives in Congress. The public increasingly feels that not only doesn’t Congress look like them demographically but also that their opinions and concerns are also being ignored (King 1998, 32). This disaffection is a result of both a built-in distance between the people’s will and their representative, and powerful effects money, class, race, and gender have within our political institutions.

Many of our founding fathers, in forming the Constitution, imbued it with a combination of Enlightenment Age ideas that government should follow and respect the will of its’ people with Hobbesian worldview that direct democracy would destructively unleash the passions and volatility of the common people and lead to, “…a War of all men, against all men…”, (Hobbes 1651, Chap 1). Thus, we have a democratic republic in which the Congress, in theory, seeks to ‘re’ present the issues and concerns of all Americans by legislation. However, in practice, the Congress neither represents the demography of its’ constituencies nor implements their attitudes and beliefs into legislation. This paper will show that while Congress is representative by design because of it, “…represents another as an agent, deputy, substitute, or delegate and … is invested with the authority of the principal”, (Merriam-Webster 2004). It does not, with respect to most of its constituency, act as, “…an advocate who represents someone else's policy or purpose” (Merriam-Webster 2004), and thus fails to be either descriptively, or substantively representative of the vast majority of Americans. 

 

Theories of Representation

In illustrating the lack of congressional representation of the electorate, one must first dissect the two most common theories of representation, descriptive and substantive. The most visible and intuitive theory is that of descriptive representation. The concept of descriptive representation asserts that the best way for an elective body to reflect the wishes of the public is for its’ members themselves to reflect the visible and experiential differences among the populace. ‘Descriptive’ representation focuses on the similarity or dissimilarity in the physical and cultural attributes of the elected official with his or her constituency in order to determine whether and how effectively the official will vote the interests of their community (Pitkin [l967] 1972, 60-89).

In contrast, ‘substantive’ representation focuses not on the appearance and experiences of the members of Congress, but rather whether, and how well, that member serves his or her constituency. “Representation here means acting in the interest of the represented, in a manner responsive to them. …[a]nd despite the resulting potential for conflict between representative and represented… [he or she]…must act in a way that there is no conflict”(Pitkin [1967] 1972, 209-210). Substantive theorists believe it is not practically possible for all constituencies to directly represent their own concern, or more simply, “…we do not want lunatics to be represented by crazy people”, (Phillips 1995, 39) they argue members of Congress should represent the interests of their constituents from a distance weighing all local, national, and moral concerns. In practice, however, the single-member plurality electoral (SMP) or ‘winner-take-all’ system in the U.S, the effect of moneyed interests on campaigns, and the differing degrees and ability for some groups to monitor their representatives’ actions means the mandate a member of Congress receives is a small portion of his or her district. All these forces collectively skew the substantive representation many of his or her constituencies receive. Conceding this point, Cannon states, “… [some] constituents will have a different representational relationship than those who occupy one of the more distant ‘concentric circles’” (1999, 56).

While critics like Grofman argue disparagingly that descriptive representation, “… assumes that voters are best represented by people who look like or physically “describe” their constituents” (1982, 98). He and others fail to recognize the formidable commonality of experience that ethnic, racial, and gender groups have with each other and the inherent obstacles the American political system has that limit substantive representation among subgroups that do not already wield political power.

For example, a female Senator that is a mother can speak more authoritatively on legislation that has to do with pregnancy and child rearing and more aptly empathize with how it might affect the mothers in her constituency than can a male or female Senator with no children. While this groups’ experiential commonality is not a determiner of a political stance the Senator might take, it certainly can help shape her opinions. Her gender and life experience thus contributes to her worldview and will impact her legislative actions.

 

“Few commentators have noticed that the word "descriptive," modifying representation, can denote not only visible characteristics, such as color of skin or gender but also shared experiences, so that a representative with a background in farming is to that degree a descriptive representative of his or her former constituents” (Mansbridge 1998).

 

We can, therefore, expand descriptive representation from exclusively visible attributes like race, ethnicity, and gender to include experiential commonality like religion, income, education, profession. Given America’s history of racial, ethnic, and gender oppression, the former is often a determiner of the latter. Subsequently, many elected officials use ‘gerrymandering’, the conscious manipulation of district lines to increase one’s congressional seats in order to minimize racial or ethnic groups, maximize seats for your own political party or protect fellow incumbents (Oleszak 2006, 46- 47), to maintain legislative power within Congress. Gerrymandering concedes that one’s group identification is a stronger determiner of political ideology, interests, and legislative preference than is geography. By racial, ethnic, and partisan gerrymandering, those in power often subordinate geographic cohesion in order to minimize the impact of those groups without power.

Two of the most common tools of gerrymandering is ‘cracking’, distributing racial, ethnic, or other sub-groups throughout a state and thus diluting their political power, and ‘packing’ which is grouping those sub-groups together in a bizarre barely contiguous district. While packing produces a majority-minority district and thus greatly increasing the chances for a minority presence in Congress (Oleszak 2006, 47), it ultimately decreases or eliminates the political impact they would have in other parts of the state and guarantees political hegemony of the group in power. Both packing and cracking decrease, in the long term, the level of descriptive representation within the Congress of ethnic and racial groups and, therefore, disenfranchise the interests and experiences of those subjugated subgroups.

In addition, the single-member plurality electoral (SMP) or ‘winner-take-all’ system in the U.S. in which a candidate with 50.1% of the vote represents the other 49.9% and welds all the reins of power, along with gerrymandering assures that not all groups will be descriptively representing in Congress. In contrast to alternative voting systems like proportional representation or choice voting, the U.S. system effectively means the minority interests and groups have wasted their vote.( Rush 2001, 74) “In fact, SMP could produce minority rule…legislators could be elected by the narrowest margins (50 percent +1 in each their districts. The result would be that legislators who represent slightly more than 25 percent (50 percent + 1 of 50 percent +1) of the population would be governing the entire country”. (Rush 2001, 74) Substantive representation fails to account for these tools of power used to effectively ‘stack the deck’ before the member of Congress ever reaches office. They essentially make the issues and concerns of any group without power nonexistent in the minds of legislators. These tools, along with the power that the majority party has within Congress, have created and continues to produce neither a legislative body that looks, nor acts like the majority of Americans.

While ethnicity, party, and especially race are often seen as the only subgroups that suffer under both gerrymandering and SMP, one must not ignore the other frequently unrepresented subgroups of class, gender, and religion that also fall victim to a lack of descriptive representation. However, subgroup identification of a candidate in and of itself neither assures a member of Congress’ popularity and electability within a district where a racial or ethnic subgroup is a majority nor eliminates the ability for those members outside the majority subgroup to advocate on behalf of its’ concerns and interests. “… [W]hite candidates can legitimately represent nonwhite voters if those voters elect them…”, and, “just because a candidate is black does not mean that he or she is the candidate of choice of the black community” (Guiner 1994, 13). Hence, while the physical, cultural, and experiential similarities between members of Congress and their constituents do not assure favorable voting behavior with respect to the legislative interests and concerns of their shared subgroup or substantive representation, they can act to bring better insight, understanding, and empathy to those groups concerns.

‘Essentialism’, an extreme school of thought within the theory of descriptive representation can go too far in its’ attribution of substantive representation to various subgroups. For example, by asserting that a, “[m]an cannot represent women” (Williams 1998, 133), or, “…that any woman representative represents all women (and all women equally), regardless of the women's political beliefs, race, ethnicity or other differences” (Mansbridge 1998). This school of thought would demand that every sliver of an ideological, cultural, racial, and experiential subgroup within the U.S. also be seen in the Congress. Its extreme assertions are disingenuously bandied about those that assert that out present system gives sufficient substantive representation to all Americans, by showing the impracticability of a Congress more descriptive representative.

 

Who We Are Versus Who They Are

Even without ascribing to such radically extreme and impractical thought as essentialism, the following statistics show how the present Congress fails miserably to descriptively represent most Americans. In figure 1 we can see that, racially and ethnically, the Congress has all groups except Whites underrepresented (Amer 2006). In addition, By calculating the difference between the percentages in the general population and those in Congress and expressing this as a percentage, one can see in figure 2 a ‘representation quotient’ (RQ) that ranges from a high of 62% for African Americans and a low of 21% for Native Americans. Put more simply, the number of Native Americans is only 21% of what it should be if the Congress truly descriptively represented them. Similarly, women at 50.9% of the general population in the U.S only constitute 16% of the Congress or have an RQ of 31.4% (see U.S. Census 2001; also About.com 2006) which makes women second only to Native Americans in a lack of descriptive representation. These statistics are the byproduct of centuries of institutional White supremacy and sexist patriarchy and well as illustrations of contemporary patterns of racial and ethnic gerrymandering. Additionally, for those that support descriptive representation as a means of substantive representation, these numbers show just how disenfranchised these groups are and explain the lack of concern within the Congress for legislation that helps these communities and its’ interests.

As previous stated, descriptive representation is not limited to visual differences in constituents but also extends to invisible differences in experience and life choice like religion, income, occupation, and place of birth. These invisible differences among subgroup populations can be major factors in ideology and worldview and, therefore, on what preferable legislative direction the Congress should go and to what degree the subgroups are substantively represented. For example, even within various ethnic groups, income is often a more direct determining factor of partisan membership and ideology than group identity alone. “Affluent Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans are more likely than their poor coethnics to be Republicans. Cubans who reside outside South Florida are more likely to be Democrats than their South Florida co-ethnics”. (DeSipio, 28)

Even among these invisible subgroups, one can see a stark schism between their proportional percentages in the general population versus those within the 109th Congress. While the national average salary is $40,409 (Malachowski 2005), the salary a rank and file member of Congress receives is $167,200(About.com 2006). In addition, while all members have free health care, 45 million Americans are without any health care and millions more are struggling to pay increasingly high healthcare costs while their income barely keeps up with inflation (Griggs 2004). With regard to occupation, even though only 3.4% of the U.S. population is lawyers, the number is 49.5% in Congress (see Amer 2006, also Griggs 2004). This differential produces a remarkable RQ of 1,406%! These stark differences in income and occupation, inevitably affect the perception many members of Congress have about many legislative issues like taxation, healthcare, and criminal justice and invariable produce little if any substantive representation of these groups.

Similarly, education, religion, and place of birth are also experiential characteristics that contribute to one’s ideology and consistently separate the American people from their member of Congress. These experiences strongly influence lawmakers’ attitudes regarding legislative policy priorities. In order to have the Congress descriptively represent the general public with regard to these three crucial forces on one’s identity, there would have to be a close, if not directly proportional, the relationship between the percentages of the U.S. population and the respective percentages in Congress. The greater the variation in these percentages the greater probability there is a dearth of their substantive representation.

In the 109th Congress, 91% of the members hold bachelor’s degrees and higher (Amer 2006), as opposed to only 24.4% of all Americans (Census 2001). Equivalently, the percentage of those foreign-born in the U.S., at 11.1% (Census 2001), is almost seven times greater than the 1.67% in the U.S, Congress (Amer 2006). Since one’s religious identification is similarly a strong influence in one’s decision making and overall moral and political attitude, the starkly dissimilar percentages between the Congress and the American people produce possibly the most descriptively unrepresentative aspect of American politics and have an effect of substantially misrepresenting millions within this country.

 

Figure 3.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 3 shows not only are complete absences of major religions like Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism representing approximately 6 million Americans as well as smaller groups like Native American religions, pagans/Wiccans, and Rastafarians not found among members of Congress, but also an almost non-existent percentage of nonreligious/secular persons in Congress. The percentage of secular members in Congress pales in the face of the over 13% of Americans that self-identify with this group thus producing an RQ of 5.3% (Adherents 2005). All these groups are without any descriptive representation in Congress with only Christians and Jews grossly over-represented with an RQ of 530% and 120% respectively (Adherents 2005), guaranteeing a disproportionate amount of substantive representation for these subgroup within the Congress. Imagine how different Congress debate on issues like physician-assisted suicide, abortion, Mideast relations, and in environmental policy would be if there were 94.7% more secular members in addition to Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and others adding to their individual worldviews to our legislative and policy debates.

There is no doubt this severe lack of descriptive representation among certain visible like race, ethnicity, and gender along with invisible subgroups with respect to education, religion, income, and place of birth produces a Congress that does not look or think like many millions of Americans. Thus it limits the perspectives and outlooks of our legislature toward important policy issues that face this nation and creates disaffection and disillusionment between the population and their representatives.

 

What We Think Versus What They Do

This lack of descriptive representation among members of Congress with respect to both visible and invisible differences within the U.S. population has created many examples of a lack of substantive representation within Congress. Critics of descriptive representation might point to both the Civil Rights Act (1964) and the creations of Medicaid as examples of how substantive representation can be attained despite the absence of Blacks and the poor in Congress at the time they were enacted. The number of issues and instances of a complete divergence of public opinion and Congressional action shows these three examples to be the exception and not the rule with respect to substantive representation flowing from descriptive representation.

Out of numerous incidences, the three clearest legislative issues where this can be illustrated are gun control laws, medical marijuana, and national health care. In contradiction of Congress’ ability to pass stricter gun control laws, when asked, “In general, do you feel that the laws covering the sale of firearms should be made more strict, less strict, or kept as they are now?", 54% of the American people responded more strict (The Gallup Poll 1999). Likewise, despite strong and wide public support for it, Congress has consistently been stern on the so-called ‘War on Drugs’ and laws prohibiting the use of medical marijuana for terminal illness and chronic pain.

 

“According to an October 2002 Time/CNN poll, the vast majority of Americans (80 percent) believe adults should be allowed to use marijuana for medicinal purposes… in response to the question "Regardless of what you think about the personal non-medical use of marijuana, do you think doctors should or should not be allowed to prescribe marijuana for medical purposes to treat their patients?" 73 percent said they should” (Paul 2003).

 

A final and potentially deadly example of the dearth of substantive representation in the Congress is their inability to pass national healthcare in the face great public support for it, the rising cost of private healthcare plans, and the destructive budgetary effect the entitlements like Medicare, Medicaid, and the Prescription Drug Benefit. The failure of the much-maligned Clinton Healthcare Plan of 1993 was blamed, not one the strong influence the big drug companies have, but rather on the lack of public support in direct contradiction to the fact that, “… [t]he public definitely wants the government to play a leading role in providing health care for all by almost a two-to-one margin (62 percent to 33 percent), Americans said that they preferred a universal system that would provide coverage to everyone under a government program” (Teixeira 2005).

In summation, given such large and diverse country as America and the innate tendency for people to operate from their own experiences and understanding of the world, it is impossible to expect a Congress so devoid of many of this countries’ subgroups to substantively represented of them. Such substantive representation can only flow from an increase in Congress’ descriptive representation creating a legislative body that first looks like American and then acts like it. Only then can we accurately and proudly proclaim that we have a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

 

Bibliography

About.com(1): U.S. Government Info/Resources. 2006. Salaries and Benefits of U.S. Congress Members. About, Inc., A part of The New York Times Company. [Internet]. Accessed March 5, 2006. Available from http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/weekly/aa031200a.htm

About.com(2): U.S. Government Info/Resources. 2006. Women in the U.S. Congress. 2006 About, Inc., A part of The New York Times Company [Internet]. Accessed March 5, 2006. Available from http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/weekly/aa121198.htm

Adherents.com(1). 2005. Largest Religious Groups in the United States of America. [Internet]. Updated December 7, 2005. Accessed March 1, 2006. Available from http://www.adherents.com/rel_USA.html#religions.

Adherents.com(2). 2005. Religious Affiliation of U.S. Congress. [Internet]. Updated December 4, 2005. Accessed March 1, 2006. Available from http://www.adherents.com/adh_congress.html#109.

Amer, Mildred. 2006. “CRS Report for Congress Received through the CRS Web: Membership of the 109th Congress: A Profile” Washington, D.C. Congressional Research Service. The Library of Congress. [Internet]. Accessed March 7, 2006. Available from www.senate.gov/reference/resources/pdf/RS22007.pdf.

Canon, David T. 1999. Race, Redistricting, and Representation: The Unintended Consequences of Black Majority Districts. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Carmines, Edward G., Gerrity, Jessica C., Wagner, Michael W. 2004. How the American Public Views Congress: A Report Based on the Center on Congress’ 2004 Public Opinion Survey. [Internet]. Accessed March 1, 2004. Available from http://centeroncongress.org/2004-public-opinion-survey-congress.

DeSipio, Louis. 1996. Counting on the Latino Vote: Latinos as a New Electorate. Charlottesville, Virginia. University Press of Virginia. Ethnic Majority. 2004. African, Hispanic (Latino), and Asian American Members in Congress. Diverse Strategies Inc. [Internet]. Accessed Feb 26, 2006; Available from http://www.ethnicmajority.com/congress.htm.

Griggs, Henry. 2004. Number of Americans without Insurance Reaches Highest Level on Record. Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Washington, D.C. [Internet]. Accessed March 6, 2006. Available from http://www.cbpp.org/8-26-04health.htm.

Grofman, Bernard. 1982. Should Representatives be Typical of their Constituents? In Representation and Redistricting Issues, ed. Bernard Grofman et al. Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath