In his seminal essay on state legislatures (“The State of U.S. State Legislative Research,” Legislative Studies Quarterly 6 [February 1981]: 1–25), Malcolm Jewell seemed puzzled that our knowledge of state legislative representation was so limited. After all, there was a long and productive history of work on representation in Congress, and the states provided variation that could help advance our theoretical understanding of this important topic. Unfortunately, apart from recent work by Alan Rosenthal (The Decline of Representative Democracy, 1998) and a few articles on particular aspects of representation (such as casework), research over the last 20 years has not advanced our knowledge of representation as much as Jewell might have liked.

Michael Smith's recent book answers the challenge of learning more about how state legislators represent their constituents by observing how 12 representatives from the Kansas City area interact with their constituents. The first two chapters discuss the advantages of the “soaking and poking” method and offer his views of how representation should be studied. Smith posits that his approach is to ask “how can we discover what representation is?” and then to “focus on its actual practice” (p. 1). The next four chapters present observational data about each legislator, organized by his typology of representation—Burkeans, in-district advocates, advocates beyond the district, and ombudspersons. Some might quibble with his categorizations (for instance, one of the in-district advocates focused on “issues that did not have a large impact on the district,” p. 81), but most of his decisions seem appropriate.

According to Smith, the role that a particular legislator displays is a function of his or her own beliefs about representation, as well as ideas about which style of representation best “fits” that district. A good example of this tension can be found in the discussion of one legislator who “seemed to have a strong, personal inclination towards a Burkean approach. But electoral realities pushed him to be an ombudsperson” (p. 140). Of particular importance in this section is Smith's notion that for many state legislators, representation may extend into other parts of the state. This hypothesis is both intuitive and novel and deserves to be revisited in future work. Chapters 3 to 6 each end with useful discussions of how legislators with a particular role might approach Jewell's components of representation—communication with constituents, policy responsiveness, allocation of resources, and constituent service.

Consistent with grounded theory, the final chapter presents the hypotheses that stem from the study. While most of this discussion flows naturally from the rest of the book, two things seem puzzling. First, Smith does not present any hypotheses related to advocates beyond their district. On page 187, he argues that legislators who have ambition for a state senate seat are likely to be in-district advocates, but it could easily be argued that advocates beyond their district share this political ambition. Because they are considering running for office in a district with a larger geographic reach, politically ambitious legislators might focus some of their attention on the constituency outside of their current district, but within the boundaries of the district they wish to represent in the future. Second, the final pages present a discussion of term limits that seems out of place in the context of the rest of the book. Although the Missouri legislature passed term limits, they did not take effect until three years after Smith finished data collection. He himself grants that “on balance, this study provides only limited evidence for any change in the average legislator's progressive ambitions due to term limits…. [C]learly that particular conclusion would be more meaningful if tested with a larger dataset” (p. 199).

Smith's approach borrows heavily from past scholarship, but there are two shortcomings that differentiate his approach from that of Richard Fenno, Malcolm Jewell, and others. First, Smith confines his study to state legislators in two states—Kansas and Missouri. By focusing on two states, he is unable to capitalize on one of the major advantages of studying state legislatures—variation. Throughout the book, he mentions the potential effects of different structures, such as multimember districts, district population size, and the physical size of the district. Unfortunately, his research design does not allow us to adequately evaluate these effects. Second, he examines only 12 legislators. There is no “magic number” of subjects for this type of work, but when 12 subjects are placed into four categories of representation, the result raises a few questions about external validity.

In the end, Bringing Representation Home is a thoughtful book filled with rich observational and interview data that will be useful for anyone interested in state legislative representation. Rather than merely presenting a typology of representation, Smith attempts to identify the causes and consequences of these roles. His hypotheses about these relationships could also provide research questions on state legislative representation.