Constituents: The Advantages Of The Delegate Model

In order for our democracy to function effectively citizens of the United States should be informed to a moderate degree as towho is representing them and what level of representation they wish to receive. Constituents should be aware of whether they would prefer to trust their representative to make the best decisions for them and the country, or if they would prefer to elect a more disciplined representative to vote strictly based on their needs. Shortcuts used by the constituents to arrive at conclusions about their representatives are called heuristics. There are advantages of citizen’s using heuristics as well as disadvantages.
Constituents should foremost be familiar with who represents their district, and more importantly figure out
The benefit of the delegate model is that the representative is firmly up to date with the interests of his constituents and votes according to their wishes, however the disadvantage of this model is that a particular district or state could be out of touch with the rest of the country in their views and vote for legislation that only benefits them while not taking into consideration the interests of the whole country. This is where the trustee model achieves more range in their decision making that can both work in the interests of the electorate as well as the country as a whole. The flaw in the trustee model is however is that representatives cannot always be trusted to make the best decisions. As a means to hold them accountable elections exist in order to bring in more trust worthy
“Voters will rely on information shortcuts because they do not have much incentive to gather information about politics solely in order to improve their voting choices” (Popkin, 1994, p. 13). Heuristics allow the less politically informed to learn to read politicians better in the manner of the following shortcuts: Party affiliation, endorsements, ideology, polls, and appearance. “Party and ideological stereotypes or schemata are among the richest and most widely shared in American politics” (Lau & Redlawsk, 2001, p. 5). This means that the less informed voters, as well as the more politically sophisticated, both attribute the most of their attention to this heuristic. “Heuristic use at least partially compensates for a lack of knowledge about and attention to politics, so that citizens who are largely unaware of events in Washington nonetheless can make reasonably accurate political judgments” (Lau &Redlawsk, 2001, p. 3). Ironically it often allows the less informed voters to arrive at the same conclusions as the individual with high levels of political knowledge. The more politically sophisticated will use a combination of the heuristics or will choose a combination of them and apply it in