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How do representatives adjust their behavior in the face of a changed constituency? Constituency composition can vary through natural and migratory demographic change or more immediately through redistricting (in the case of sub-state electoral units such as U.S. House districts). A voluminous body of political science research addresses the relationship between constituency characteristics and the behavior of legislators. Yet, with few exceptions, scholars have not directly examined how a representative changes (or does not change) in light of a marked change in the constituency. What happens when a district changes its ethnic profile, its partisan composition, or its mix of urban, suburban, and rural residents? Do these representatives adjust their roll call behavior or modify their policy agenda priorities in ways more consistent with the new constituency? Or do they largely remain steadfast in their previous behavior? Or do they tend to strategically retire?In this paper we take advantage of a natural experiment brought about by the one person, one vote reapportionments required of the U.S. House by Wesberry v. Sanders (1964). We find that incumbents with redistricted constituencies did not alter their overall voting patterns any more than incumbents whose districts were left untouched. We go on to discuss other areas of representative behavior, aside from voting scores, that are potentially more likely to exhibit change. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy study visits - formal visits or tours made by participants to a specific site or sites outside of their own jurisdiction to observe and gather information about a policy or policies in place at the site(s) ? are a form of policy learning through the processes of policy transfer. In this paper we review the research literature in the fields of organizational and policy learning and in policy transfer in order to generate hypotheses about policy study visits and their potential effectiveness. We then set forth a tentative typology of policy study visits and discuss various functions they might serve. We discuss the probable roles played by the visit participants, host, and organizers in affecting the effectiveness of the visit. We define effectiveness to include not only the communication of policy ideas to participants, but also that these ideas are adequately assessed and that conclusions derived from that assessment are utilized in policy making. Finally we describe research we are undertaking to better understand policy study visits and to test the hypotheses we generate in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many evaluations of government programs carried out by state audit bodies or government institutions are now generating what is termed "good practice" advice. Whether developing new policies or managing existing programs, there is a wide variety of printed and online guides offering suggestions to public officials about how to do things properly. While there has been some recent research on the use of "good practice", the foundation question of how such practices are identified and whether they are in fact "good" practices has been ignored. This paper examines how producers of such advice in the United Kingdom identify and evaluate practices to be "good" and develops a typology of different bases on which such evaluations are formed. It goes on to set out how disseminators of such advice conceive of their audiences, and sheds light on the receptivity to, as well as effects of, such advice. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]