Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 June 2026
The role of constituents has thus far been missing in the book. What does the public think about legislators' reliance on outsiders for information? This chapter brings a survey and survey experiment to bear on these fundamental questions of representation. A survey assesses descriptive questions about where constituents think legislators get their legislation. To explore the causal effect of information provision, the chapter next presents a survey experiment. Does reading a story about the source of legislation alter survey participants' beliefs about the bill's sponsor, legislative legitimacy, or the policy? I find that interest-group authorship reduces perceived legitimacy and evaluations of best interest. The expertise cue does not improve evaluations. While legislators frequently turn to outsiders for bills, the constituents that are charged with representing question this involvement.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.