you never know, one may find someone. who's to say to two years to across something. but as soon as somebody brings the book. but sometimes something pops out of the woodwork that will excite you or provoke you and you'll feel there is a story here that i might want to tell. but for the moment, i am loving working on 1914 and i'm thrilled that the receptionist and so terrific for readers. ..

>> and now on your screen is professor kristina miler of the university of maryland. she is a professor of american politics and she's also the author of this book, "constituency represntation in congress: the view from capitol hill," thank you from capitol hill. professor miller, you write an introduction to your book, or before the introduction, that overall legislators use constituents are limited and flawed. and even well-meaning legislators cannot represent their constituents if they do

not accurately see who is in the district. what does that mean? >> i think much of our attention has focused on a possibly that legislators are being actively corrupted or making decisions to vote against their constituents. but what we've neglected as a whole part of the baxter, kind of what happens before they get to the decisions. what i'm not interested in in this book is the role that cognitive psychology can put in informing our understand of elected officials. psychologists have had this sense that we have limitations of humans. mental limitations but we don't use all the information possible. we don't conduct information searches every time someone asks us to question. so there's this vast literature on kind of our cognitive limits and shortcuts we make to make sense of the world to make decisions. that has some of them applied in foreign policy but not within american politics. what i'm interested in is how to legislators perceive their constituents? when we say what do your

constituents want, who are they thinking of? they represent 700,000 people and there's no way you are thinking of all of them. what does the district look like in your mind, then that first question. they when you figure out we can figure out how does that affect how they behave. that's what this book takes off. >> when you ask a legislator, a member of the house of representatives, what do your constituents want, what is his or her thought process? >> that's exactly what i get out of the book. i conducted a bunch of interviews, over 80 on the with legislators and their staff and asked is who in the district this important to. just to doesn't even matter to. what i was struck by is they are anywhere some relevant numbers of constituents and legislators don't see all of them. they don't come to mind. so in the day-to-day business of congress when there's meetings, with our committee hearings and if you go in the cares about this, they are not seeing everybody in the district that does care about the issue.

so for instance, something like a patient bill of right because a focus on health issues, you would think everybody would think patients but they don't. a sizable minority, almost 40%, legislators are not thinking about patience when they were think about that type of legislation that they're thinking about hospitals, thinking about physicians, thinking about ensures that they weren't always thinking about patients. this is replayed on issue after issue. so they are the food is in the district relevant to the issue is quite limited. >> thinking that patient's bill of rights, and thus, if a legislator gets 100 letters, et cetera, on that issue from people who have been in hospital, do those matter? >> absolutely. one of the things in trying to understand, first there was a question of who do they see, a very descriptive a surprisingly neglected, so i find it's limited. why is it that some legislators see some groups and some see

other constituents, what explains that? i look at things like contact from constituents, i look at financial contributions. other things like party ties. what what i find is that really what matters is contributions and contact. one of those is a slightly happier story for democracy. that's the story about contact, which is what we are all taught in elementary school and high school that write your congressperson, actually matters. a way that i would argue it gives who they think is in the district. head shakes their perception of his constituency is. and then they can use that later on as a go into later on in the book to shape their conscious deliberate decisions like how to participate on how to vote, what goes to sponsor. but first it has to have this subtle affect the article mental access, shaping their worldview. that's one way that writing to your congressperson does seem to matter. >> was the step? >> we should all write your congressperson is wednesday. certainly there are issues you

care about and i think in this day and age is easy to feel cynical but those letters get answered by some staffer and are not important to they are having this effect of how they shape the district. that makes a big difference. in terms of financial contribution, that is a slightly less positive spin. one of the struggles are academic political scientist is we long for that money matters in congressional politics, but there's next evidence. what i find is the money matters in this very subtle way again by shaping how they do the district. i think that kind of helps to bridge the lack of a smoking gun so to speak of kind of evidence of money buying politics. with that get feeling that money and politics is doing something what i think here it's doing is it shaping have a your district. so if your constituents compensation to group is getting more money, you're more likely to be seen and have your voice heard by your member of

congress. >> professor miler, lets you represent detroit, representing car companies, auto workers et cetera. you're doing what you think is right for the auto workers and for the car companies, in turn they're giving you donations because they support your work. isn't that how it is supposed to work, representing your constituents? >> it is supposed to work that way. in some sense. i think the concern is that one of the bars that democratic there is have talked about setting for representation is a very low bar i would argue and so that an elected representative is aware of the distribution of the different constituents in the district. just a war of them. then have alleged searches to act on it as a whole host of other factors. party, ideology, their own beliefs about what is best or what's best for the country. that low bar of just being aware of constituents isn't even being met in the modern. so there's a lot of constituents that are unseen.

they will be tough choices, so the book isn't saying the standard is acting for every constituents interest because of course that's impossible. but at least be aware that there's interest out there seems to be pretty important. >> in your research do you find a congressional districts are too big? >> that is one of the implications that i think can be drawn out of this. so these limited and biased perceptions end up shaping the behavior. and i trace this am i looking at participation in committee. on to asking questions, what type of comment on to making? i look at the voting record and i find that legislators who see a more complete, more balanced district actually tend to vote more moderately. they tend to sponsor more bills but it does have a real impact. the reason i think congressional districts may be too big is representation is a tough job. i think that's one of the things to emerge out of this book. psychologists have been telling

us kind of all these limitations that humans have, legislators and staff are humans so they're subject to the same limitation. we are asking them to do a different -- difficult job. and so i think that if the size of the district was made smaller it would totally eliminate the shortcuts that are necessary, the need to just go with the information that's most accessible, because that's the mechanism here that's at work. is you or i, someone asked a question, we answer based on the the information that comes to mind. legislators and their staff to sing. the information is limited and is biased. if you or i is not that big of deal but if it's a politician making decisions, it can matter a lot. >> mentally, what information are relating out of our decisions are not aware that we're making a decision based on? >> so in the context of legislative decision-makin