Too often, scholarly research on campaigns and elections in US politics is disconnected from research on legislative behavior, and vice versa. As a result, there is little knowledge about the legislative follow-through on congressional campaigns, and political scientists and pundits alike often assume that campaigns offer hollow promises. Tracy Sulkin's The Legislative Legacy of Congress Campaigns bridges these two fields and forces us to reconsider many of our assumptions about campaign promise keeping and representation. The data presented in the book illustrate the widespread existence of promise keeping, and also contribute more broadly to our understanding of the relationship between members and their constituents, of reelection strategies, and of sponsorship and cosponsorship in Congress.

Sulkin assesses campaign promise keeping by members of Congress elected or reelected in 1998, 2000, or 2002, looking at the issues raised in their campaigns and then at their subsequent sponsorship and cosponsorship of legislation. She defines “promise keeping as occurring when legislators are active in Congress on the issues they prioritized in their campaigns” (p. 2). This is an agenda-based conception, rather than a policy congruence–based conception of representation, a difference that shifts attention from issue positions (e.g., Warren E. Miller and Donald E. Stokes, “Constituency Influence in Congress,” American Political Science Review 57 [1963]: 45–56) to issue priorities (p. 4). Although Sulkin provides an analysis of the direction of policy positions in her discussion of defense and the environment, there is relatively little integration of the issue and position conceptions of representation. Her analysis of environmental and defense issues focuses on whether the content of legislation aligns with the content of campaign claims (p. 101), but does not focus on constituency positions. More broadly, there is an implicit assumption that if a member follows through on campaign promise keeping, then the member is working in the interests of the district. However, this does not have to be the case, and these other scenarios raise interesting questions. What does it mean to have promise keeping on issues but incongruence in policy positions?

Sulkin is careful in pointing out the differences between her approach and policy-congruence approaches, but could perhaps do more to compare her approach with the broader comparative politics literature on promise keeping by leaders and parties, much of which includes the United States as a case (e.g., Jeff Fishel, Presidents and Promises: From Campaign Pledges to Presidential Performance, 1985; Michael Krukones, Promises and Performance: Presidential Campaigns as Policy Predictors, 1984; Gerald Pomper, Elections in America: Control and Influence in Democratic Politics, 1968). The findings from this line of work, which Sulkin briefly mentions (p. 9), suggest that promise keeping should not be surprising. In addition, this comparative work raises questions concerning why political elites view promise keeping as occurring but average citizens do not (e.g., Elin Naurin, Election Promises, Party Behaviour and Voter Perceptions, 2011). Sulkin cites poll results that the most knowledgeable and engaged citizens are the most likely to judge that members do follow through on promises (p. 22), but additional work further assessing whether the public views promise keeping as she defines it would be illuminating. More generally, her work would be complemented by an analysis of public opinion on promise keeping, issue priorities, and representation.

Turning back to the author's evidence on promise keeping, she finds that members, particularly in the House, do follow through on promise keeping, introducing and cosponsoring legislation on the issues raised in their campaigns. There is less promise keeping in the Senate, where campaigns are noisier signals of the interests of senators. It is interesting to note that she finds no difference in promise keeping between candidates who raised the issue in a vague manner and those who did so in a specific manner. This finding may be surprising to those who are skeptical of campaigns and see vague campaign promises as hollow. However, the finding is consistent with her theory, which argues that members raise issues in their campaigns that are important to them, that they have acted on in the past, and that they plan to follow through on in the future. Thus, we should not necessarily expect differential follow-through on vague versus specific promises, or by safe and vulnerable legislators. In analyzing the data, Sulkin is honest with the reader, presenting multiple ways to cut the data (counts versus percentages of promise keeping, House versus Senate, sponsorship versus cosponsorship versus sponsorship and cosponsorship combined). Although this approach occasionally detracts from the main argument, her candor in presenting the data is appreciated.

Sulkin makes a strong case for the existence of representation via selection. She is careful to point out multiple ways to think about campaigns, all of which result in strong representational linkages but may differ in the level of campaign effects. The first is that campaigns are a signal of legislator priorities, the second is that campaigns are an independent predictor of legislative activity beyond what other factors (e.g., previous activities) would predict, and the third is that campaigns have a causal effect on legislative behavior (pp. 15–6). She argues and finds support for the first view that “representatives' and senators' strategies and choices as candidates are driven by many of the same factors that explain their strategies and choices as legislators” (p. 195).

The author's argument, and the resulting findings, challenge many previous views of the representation between members and their constituents. Arguments that are premised on a principal–agent problem (e.g., John Ferejohn, “Incumbent Performance and Electoral Control,” Public Choice 50 [1986]: 5–25; Jane Mansbridge, “A ‘Selection Model’ of Political Representation,” Journal of Politics 17 [2009]: 369–98) suggest that members would not want to follow through on campaign promises (or engage in representation more broadly) if not for the sanctioning power of constituents in elections (p. 202). Sulkin turns this premise around, suggesting that because candidates raise the issues that they care about in campaigns, they want to follow through on those campaign promises. This finding, while convincingly portrayed in the data analysis, leaves a lingering question about representation. If candidates raise campaign issues, and then focus legislative priorities on those issues they care deeply about, do high levels of representation only occur when constituents select members whose own issue priorities mirror those of the district? More broadly, Sulkin's argument about issue priorities leads to a relatively static view of representation. Although she considers two examples—9/11 and Hurricane Katrina—of how members fit a new issue into preexisting issue priorities, most of the evidence leaves it unclear how members respond to new issues, or, perhaps more importantly, to changes in the issues that are important within the district.

Sulkin includes district characteristics (from the 2000 census) in a few analyses, but does not examine changes in district characteristics and the resulting ability of members to change campaign promises and follow through. When members are in office for many terms, and they continue to focus on the issues that are personally important to them and that they focused on in previous terms, how well to they respond to changing features of their district? If the promises a candidate chooses to make are not a good reflection of the priorities of the district, how much does it matter if members keep those promises?

Although it is not the main argument, one of the important contributions of this work is to illustrate a number of ways in which sponsorship and cosponsorship matter. Some congressional scholars have been skeptical of cosponsorship measures, suggesting that they may be cheap talk or symbolic electoral activities, rather than serious policy-oriented activities. Sulkin (like others, e.g., Richard Hall, Participation in Congress, 1996) suggests that these are not mutually exclusive. The findings in this book should reassure scholars that cosponsorship is meaningful in terms of promise keeping, issue attention, and policymaking, and ultimately for members' electoral fortunes. Sulkin sums up the implication of her results: “Thus, the argument that introductions and cosponsorships are just symbolic or epiphenomenal no longer has much traction” (p. 201).