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him, the nomination system, the electoral system (e.g. independent execut ive or not), the needs , ideologies, and party loyaltie s of constituents --to name but a few of the more obvious ones. Thus, the gap between individual and collective interests may be large in some systems (eg, the American) and virtual ly non-exi stent in others (eg .the textbook British portrait), The incentive still exi sts, however, and fragment s of the exi sting literature gave us reason to be l ieve that it operates even in Great Britain, though with effect s much 4 weaker than tho se observed in the United States,To put some flesh on this abstract di scussion, consider the preliminary statistical analysis presented in Table 1 Thus , it appears that incumbent MPs are le ss likely to get an electoral free ride than are incumbent MC s, given that ambitious challengers in Britain can not hope to impress future selection committees by merely "going through the motions ."All in all, one is pushed to the conclusion that the personal has entered the popular literature on voting (Hartley-Brewer, 1976) , and the Liberal-pioneered strategy of "grass-rooting" has received academic notice (Barker and Rush, 1967; King , 1974; King and Sloman , 1973) , There is little relevant , data, however, In an older contribution Dowse (1963) conducted a study of an important aspect of consti tuency relations --surgeries via a mail survey of 100 MPs, Analysis of 69 responses revealed that only one-f if th of the MPs held no surgery whatsoever , and that those with les s than nine year's service tended to hold them more frequently than more senior members.But Dowse found no relation between electoral margins and frequency of surgeries, and on that basis concluded that constituency work stems 10 from the "genuine desire to win public esteem and to be of service" (1963 , p. 336 held surgeries at least every two weeks , whereas our survey produced a figure well over one-half, In the space of two decades surgery has apparently become a standard aspect of an MP's life,[ Table 3 here]Surgeries produce contact with const ituent s, generally those having some request, grievance or whatever vis-a-vis the government .Our interviews explored the topic of casework at length, and a few of the salient features of the responses will be of interest before proceeding to the statistical analyses [9], As government has grown one would naturally expect that demands in the form of casework would grow commensurately . But some authors (Fiorina , 1977) have hypothesized that electoral incentives lead legislators to stimula te constituent demands, To be sure, there is a broad range of possibilities , from a simple invitation in a new sletter for constituents to write to a given address to passing out stamped, pre addressed postcards in nursing homes . At any rate, the interviews revealed that at least some level of solicitation is the rule (85%) in the U. S. The figure is considerably lower (64%) in Britain, though a 11 clear majori ty indicates some degree of initiative. In c...

The purpose of this article is to assess the reality behind the politician's perception that redistricting matters. There are, of course, many dimensions to that perception, because redistricting has many effects. This articles focuses on the impact of boundary changes on the partisan composition of seats. In order to do this, it will be necessary to specify what the expected partisan effects of redistricting are and how they can be measured. Thus, I first explain how the impact of redistricting will vary with the strategy of particular plans and then explore some techniques for measuring the partisan impact of boundary changes. I conclude with a detailed analysis of the most important congressional redistricting in 1982—the Burton plan in California.