This study draws together theories of women’s substantive representation and research on politicians’ knowledge of constituent preferences. We ask whether politicians are better at predicting their constituents’ policy preferences when they share the same gender. In doing so, we contribute to knowledge about the mechanisms underlying substantive representation. Using original surveys of 3,750 Canadians and 867 elected politicians, we test whether politicians correctly perceive gender gaps in their constituents’ policy preferences and whether women politicians are better at correctly identifying the policy preferences of women constituents. Contrary to expectations from previous research, we do not find elected women to be better at predicting the preferences of women constituents. Instead, we find that all politicians — regardless of their gender — perform better when predicting women’s policy preferences and worse when predicting men’s preferences. The gender of the constituent matters more than the gender of the politician.

We argue that policy expertise constrains the ability of politicians to act on voter preferences. Representatives with more knowledge and experience in a given domain have more confidence in their own issue-specific positions. Enhanced confidence, in turn, may lead politicians to discount opinions they disagree with, producing a distorted image of the electorate. Two experiments with Swedish politicians support this argument. First, officials are more likely to dismiss appeals from voters in their areas of expertise and less likely to accept that opposing views may represent the majority opinion. Consistent with the proposed mechanism, in a second experiment we show that inducing perceptions of expertise increases self-confidence. The results suggest that representatives with more specialized knowledge in a given area may be less capable of acting as delegates in that domain. The study provides a novel explanation for variations in policy responsiveness.

A large body of literature in political science documents differences between elected men and women in their substantive policy preferences, representation styles, and effectiveness as legislators. We know far less about whether female and male representatives respond differently to being held politically accountable for their decisions. Although it is a difficult concept to evaluate empirically with incumbents, this absence of research is nevertheless surprising considering the central role of accountability in legislative behavior and the nonelite evidence that women and men respond differently to attributions of accountability. I provide evidence for the existence of such an accountability gender gap in an experiment with 377 incumbent legislators in three countries, in which they were asked to choose between economic policy plans alternately presented as the status quo, with varying levels of implied task accountability. Elected women and men reacted significantly differently when the political accountability levels of the task increased: female politicians exhibited a stronger preference for policies presented as the status quo, whereas male politicians were more likely to abandon the status quo and favor change. This pattern is unique to politicians and is not observed in nonelites. I discuss processes that motivate this divergence and the implications for research on gender and political representation.

Blame avoidance behavior (BAB) encompasses all kinds of integrity-protecting activities by officeholders in the face of potentially blame-attracting events. Although considered essential for a realistic understanding of politics and policymaking, a general understanding of this multi-faceted behavioral phenomenon and its implications has been lacking to date. We argue that this is due to the lack of careful conceptualization of various forms of BAB. Crucially, the difference between anticipatory and reactive forms of BAB is largely neglected in the literature. This paper links anticipatory and reactive forms of BAB as two consecutive decision situations. It exposes dependence relationships between the situations that trigger BAB, the rationalities at work, the resources and strategies applied by blame-avoiding actors, and the various consequences thereof. The paper concludes that anticipatory and reactive BAB are distinct phenomena that require specific research approaches to assess their relevance for the workings of polities.