Multidimensional Responsiveness: The Determinants of Legislators' Representational Priorities

American politics scholars typically conceptualize representation narrowly as mass‐elite policy responsiveness, with many studies identifying factors that hinder that relationship. These findings contrast with the high reelection rates in American legislatures. I show that policy is only one of several dimensions through which legislators provide representation. I unify policy, service, allocation, and descriptive representation in a model of legislators' priorities and then test it with survey experiments administered to 1,175 state legislators. I posit that legislators systematically emphasize different dimensions to further the goal of reelection. Results show that legislative institutions, district demand, and individual traits structure legislators' strategic representational priorities.