Representation and Institutional Design examines how variation in the structures and processes of state legislatures affect how legislators represent their constituents. It examines whether electoral laws, term limits, professionalism, and district size and magnitude affect legislators' electoral vulnerability, ambition, and role orientations, as well as their actions involving symbolic, service and policy representation. This book reveals that legislative staff increases legislators' closeness to their constituents, legislative resources tend to increase symbolic and service representation but do little to help policy representation, and term limits tend to weaken relationships between legislators and constituents. These issues address what has been an enduring question for most nations: how to best represent their citizens and their needs.

An enduring question for most nations has been how to best represent their citizens and their needs. This is a complex issue as there is no universally accepted definition of good representation. Representation and Institutional Design addresses the issues of institutions and representation by examining how variation in institutional design can affect many aspects of how legislators represent their constituents. It does so by examining the relationships between legislative design (electoral laws, term limits, professionalism, and district size and magnitude) and many aspects of representation (symbolic, service, and policy representation, as well as legislators' incentives to represent). A key finding is that each aspect of professionalism has a unique set of effects on representation. Legislators with staff have closer relationship with their constituents than others. Legislators with other legislative resources engage in more symbolic and service representation but not policy representation. And legislators in institutions with greater capacity were similar to others in their representative style. Findings also indicate that term limits weaken relationships between legislators and constituents and electoral laws, and district size and magnitude have some but limited effects. This is an important study not only because of the importance of representation but also because of the dearth of research on how institutional design affects representation in state legislatures.

1 Preface
2 Chapter 1: Institutions and Representation
3 Chapter 2: Institutional Effects on the Incumbency Advantage
4 Chapter 3: Institutional Design and Ambition
5 Chapter 4: Institutional Design and Role Orientation
6 Chapter 6: Institutional Designs Effect on Legislators Information and Perceptual Accuracy
7 Chapter 7: Institutional Design Substantive Representation
8 Chapter 8: Conclusion
9 Appendix A: State Legislators and Their Districts
10 Appendix B: Descriptive Statistics of Variables
11 References