I'm aware that in each house of the US congress there is a majority and minority whip tasked with, as far as I can tell from Wikipedia, voting as they are told rather than how they would choose to vote according to their own conscience or in accordance with or in the best interest of those who elected them.
In politico's House approves Jan. 6 riot probe as Dems fret over pro-Trump chaos agents just ran across the following sentence:
House GOP leaders did not formally whip against the select committee but recommended their members vote “no."
Apparently there is formal whipping and informal whipping.
Question: Are voters in the US generally aware of how and when their congressional representatives are being whipped? As an example only, one way they might become aware is if a politician were to make it known that they would have voted a certain way but they weren't allowed to, but that doesn't seem likely.
Answers would: ideally come from scholarly work in political science or related research or writings that have looked into this. I'm not asking for opinions or anecdotes here; presumably political scientists would have looked into this as it at least superficially seems to subvert the whole idea of elected representatives voting for their constituents and therefore might be said to be undemocratic in nature. I'm not saying that's necessarily so, but it begs the question of what a vote means if you vote how your told to vote or under duress. From the same Wikipedia article:
Because members of Congress cannot serve simultaneously in Executive Branch positions, a whip in the United States cannot bargain for votes by using potential promotion or demotion in a sitting administration as an inducement. There is, however, a highly structured committee system in both houses of Congress, and a whip may be able to offer promotion or threaten demotion within that system instead. In the House of Representatives, the influence of a single member individually is relatively small and therefore depends a great deal on the representative's seniority (i.e., in most cases, on the length of time they have held office).