Inter-Constituency Movement of British Parliamentary Candidates, 1951–1959*

Austin Ranney

American Political Science Review, 1964, vol. 58, issue 1, 36-45

Abstract: The legal or customary requirement that legislators reside in the districts they represent is one of the principal structural respects in which American legislatures differ from those of most other democracies. Our legislators and party leaders commonly defend the local residence rule by claiming that it ensures that each legislator will know the special problems and desires of his constituents and thus be equipped to represent them faithfully.Some academic commentators, on the other hand, have argued that the rule is a prime cause of the parochialism which, they say, prevents Congress and state legislatures from formulating consistent and purposive general programs. These critics customarily contrast American practice unfavorably with that in Great Britain, where the last local residence rule for M.P.s was repealed in 1774. In Britain, the argument runs, the absence of the rule not only minimizes localism but, even more, it enables the national party leaders to allocate their personnel resources in the most effective way.

Date: 1964
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:58:y:1964:i:01:p:36-45_08

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in American Political Science Review from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().