Congressional representation and United States trade policy: Understanding the role of diffuse and particular interests

The representative relationship between members of Congress and their districts is of central importance in American politics. Everyday, it affects legislative decisions about policies and institutions; over time it determines whether the government serves a privileged few or a more general public.;The two conventional approaches to representation are not satisfactory. Median voter theory unreasonably assumes perfect information and unidimensional policy space. Interest-group dominance theory implicitly assumes immutable voter ignorance and an unfailing ability of money to win campaigns.;I develop an alternative theory based on more reasonable assumptions. It is a strategic actor model of representation in which politicians compete not only by choosing multi-dimensional policy positions, but also by rationally providing information to voters. This information is rationally processed by the voters. The main result is that even uninformed, unorganized interests influence legislator policy positions. This occurs because, in equilibrium, both candidates represent diffuse interests to avoid giving their opponents an issue with which to mobilize voters.;To test the theory, I develop a random-effects, panel-logit (REPAL) statistical model. In contrast to probit models which waste information contained in multiple votes and fixed-effect models which are statistically suspect without very many votes, this method uses multiple votes to consistently estimate the determinants of legislator positions even when there are few votes.;Trade politics provides an excellent case to test the theory because the conventional interest group dominance paradigm cannot explain congressional support for the remarkable trade liberalization that has occurred over the last sixty years.;I first test for the influence of diffuse economic interests. I find that even though they are relatively poorly organized, exporting and consumer interests have increased legislator trade liberalism over forty years of trade voting in both the House and the Senate.;I then test for the influence of diffuse security preferences. I show that in the early Cold War period the link between trade and internationalist anti-communism increased congressional support for free trade. Without such a link, trade liberalization would have proceeded more slowly, if at all.;The findings have three significant implications: (1) Interest group perspectives on Congress are too restrictive, missing the important influence of diffuse interests. (2) Changes in the U.S. economy that have increased diffuse interests in free trade help explain liberalization of American trade policy in the postwar period. (3) National security concerns have played an important role in American trade policy, explaining many congressional conversions to free trade.