Can state politicians be held accountable to the public?

The Science of Politics

Most people don’t know who their state legislators are, much less what they are up to. So how do voters hold them accountable to public views? Steven Rogers finds that voters don’t know enough about state politicians and most legislators are not facing competitive elections. Electoral mechanisms are not enough to keep them from diverging from the people they represent. But Chris Warshaw finds that state policy has grown more representative of state publics and more responsive to changes in opinion, only partly because elections change who is in power. State officials also follow public opinion in between elections and out of fear of electoral threat.