David Broockman has an important paper on political representation apparently forthcoming in LSQ.
He notes two ways to study the political representation of issues, policies, and preferences. On the one hand we can examine citizen-elite congruence issue by issue. On the other hand, we can calculate “policy scores” to capture ideal points of overall ideologies and compare these between citizens and the elite. The paper convincingly demonstrates that the latter approach is flawed in the sense that it doesn’t really capture political representation in the way we generally understand it.
Broockman, David E. 2015. “Approaches to Studying Policy Representation.” Legislative Studies Quarterly.
Didier Ruedin 