Length: Length: 6 pages, double-spaced. 12 point font, 1 inch margins.
Due: November 25, 2003. WH210 (my mailbox).  Of course, papers may be turned in early.
 

We began the seminar talking about representation, and the reason for this, of course, is that representation is central to our conceptions of democracy.  But the concept is also ambiguous.  Legislatures can be descriptively representative in the sense of mirroring the socioeconomic characteristics of the citizens; members can act as delegates where they represent the views of their constituents in the legislature.  There are other possibilities beyond these.  Members conceivably could act only on their own values or ideologies, or they may give disproportionate weight to some groups or organized interests.

You can tell the story of representation in your state in any way you like, as long as it is based on research, and not just unsubstantiated assertions.  You can tell the story through a case study of a major issue the legislature is, or has, dealt with.  You wish to focus on the leadership and their powers and behavior to assess representation, or even one or more members' careers.

You may wish to consider the role of party affiliation in your legislature. How would you characterize the influence of legislative parties and does this seem to enhance or undermine representation? Or what can you say about representation through the interest group system?  Are some groups disproportionately powerful, and why is this the case?  What are the effects of this?

These are just suggestions, and you can certainly take a different approach entirely, just as long as your essay systematically develops an evaluation of representation in your state.

You may find it helpful to do some background reading in the state newspapers' coverage of the legislature to see who is winning and losing.  Those can be accessed via Lexis-Nexis on the library home page.  Go to Lexis-Nexis from the library's web site. Then click on news, then on "U.S. News" and select your state from the dropdown box.  From there you can find articles relevant to your state from the states' newspapers.  These may help provide material to illustrate your overall argument about representation in your states.  

 This is a research assignment, but you should also interpret this information and argue whether or not your legislature seems representative of the population and interests of the state, according to your idea of what representation should be.

Please let me know if you would like graphs of the relationship between roll call voting and constituency opinion for your state from the representation project, but this is not mandatory at all.

It will probably help if you have a clear conception of what good representation would look like.  With this standard, you can evaluate the evidence on your legislature to assess how it stands up.

Feel free to email or come and see me to talk about your approach to the assignment, or just to get your questions answered.