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The Modern United States Senate: What is Accorded Respect
Abstract
The modern U.S. Senate is often seen as being hopelessly personalistic and little concerned with such quaint standards as party discipline, loyalty to the institution, and improving public policy. In this paper, by determining the specific behaviors and traits that are associated with respect, we attempt to test the veracity of these widely-held beliefs. Our measure of respect was obtained from a survey of top-level staffers, and our efforts to explain variations in respect for senators were based on such variables as use of the frank, number of trips home, support for the president, support for the party, ideology (as displayed in roll call behavior), legislative specialization, success in moving legislation, seniority, and presidential ambitions. The results support the notion that respect, for the most part, is accorded to senators who are involved with substantive legislative activities and who are not overly preoccupied with external actors such as constituents and the president. More surprisingly, perhaps, rather than being viewed with suspicion, senators who are media-savvy and interested in seeking the presidency are accorded additional respect in the modern Senate.
... Among congressional observers, conventional wisdom holds that work horse members are respected by their peers and congressional staff, while show horse behavior is frowned upon in Congress (Matthews 1960;Mayhew 1974). Recent evidence suggests, however, that members who receive excessive media attention are actually accorded greater respect by denizens of Congress (Hibbing and Thomas 1990). ...
... However, most of the previous studies rely on the number of mentions a representative receives in television or print news reports as a measure of show horse behavior (for exceptions, see Langbein andSigelman 1989, andThomas 1990). News coverage, however, may reflect the preferences of the media, rather than the publicity-seeking behavior of the legislators. ...
How one is represented should shape one's opinion about the incumbent's performance in office, one's opinion about Congress as an institution, and ultimately, one's underlying attitude toward democratic practices. In this paper, we develop and test a model in which voters evaluate members of Congress on the basis of their performance in office in addition to other factors. Adding contextual data to the 1994 National Election Study, we analyzed the effects of legislative activity, descriptive characteristics, legislative positions, and constituency variables on constituency recognition of the incumbent and vote choice. We found that the activities of legislators, such as speech making and bill sponsorship, committees membership, and campaign spending, have a significant impact on the attitudes of constituents toward their representatives. We also found party affiliation of House members as well as their gender and race to be important cues that influence their constituents' evaluations....
... Senate leadership (Canon 1989; Patterson 1989; Sinclair 1989), committees (Collie Flathman 1989), public opinion (Hibbing and Thomas 1990), political careers (Canon 1990) and various issues concerning institutional change (Hibbing 1990). 1 However, research on the institutional development of the Senate is far more limited. There is some work that either touches on Senate committees (Swift 1997; Rothman 1966) or examines a specific historical period or a specific committee (McConachie 1898; Gould 1959, Robinson 1954), but there is no systematic analysis of the evolution of the committee system in the Senate. ...
... 107-108). Indeed, in a world where legislative (or, more generally, policy) accomplishments are associated with institutional power and political prestige, public officials may very well feel the need to avoid devoting " too much " time to their constituency (Caldeira and Patterson 1988; Hibbing and Thomas 1990; Caldeira, Clark, and Patterson 1993; Reingold 2000, 105-106). ...
This chapter reviews the wealth of research on the behavior, experiences, and accomplishments of women in elective office in the United States to assess what we have learned and to identify some of the most promising avenues for future research. Motivated in large part by questions and concerns about women's political representation, this research has established a clear, empirical link between women's descriptive and substantive representation. Throughout the policy-making process – and beyond – female officeholders are often more likely than their male colleagues to act for women or women's interests. A closer look at this research also reveals that these links are by no means guaranteed or universal; descriptive representation is neither absolutely necessary nor entirely sufficient for substantive representation to occur. Some female officeholders are more likely than others to act for women; some male politicians are more likely than others to do so; some governing institutions are more likely than others to do so. Although few, if any, researchers would deny the imperfect nature of the relationship between women's descriptive and substantive representation, few (Dodson 2006; Dolan and Ford 1998; Reingold 2000) have made it their central focus.Future research, I argue, needs to recognize and explore the complex, contingent, and gendered processes by which the linkages between the descriptive and substantive representation of women are strengthened or weakened.
Using survey data from more than 2400 members of the lower houses of 49 state legislatures, this article examines the influence of a set of variables on the amount of time that state legislators spent on the service activities of casework and public resource allocations (“pork”). This research finds that state legislators distinguish between casework and pork activities, rank casework ahead of pork, and that the only common variable predicting both types of service activities is members' perceptions of their constituents' preferences; otherwise, a different set of variables predicts each type of service activity
In this article, several heretofore little used indicators of legislative activity by senators are described and demonstrated. The purpose of this exercise is to generate debate about how Congress and its members are assessed, and the effects new methods of assessment can have on scholarly research, citizen judgments and vote choices, and even member behavior.
Service representation—the extent to which elected officials act as ombudsmen and engage in casework to assist their constituents with problems—is a crucial aspect of contemporary democratic representation. The local level of government is a potentially fruitful location in which to explore the practice of service representation. Despite this, service representation in local governments is understudied. Using data from interviews with 52 sitting councillors and a survey of 589 sitting councillors in Canadian cities, this article explores both the commitment of councillors to service and influences on time committed to service. This research finds that service representation is an important but secondary role of Canadian councillors. Furthermore, councillors elected in wards commit more time to service than councillors elected at-large, and councillors with strong service role perceptions also commit more time to service.
The interaction of individual legislators with their institutional environment is explored in a study of how and why United States senators use bill sponsorship to help construct their legislative agendas. A senator's use of bill sponsorship is a function of institutional and political variables including seniority, proximity of reelection, size of state economy, staff size, committee membership and committee positions. Regression analysis and interviews with Senate legislative staff are used to predict and explain the number of bills senators introduce. Senators are constrained in their use of bill sponsorship by a combination of institutional and political forces. This research suggests that current views of the Senate as a place that lacks structure and predictability in its operations may be overstated.
Using survey data from more than 2400 members of the lower houses of 49 state legislatures, this article examines the influence of a set of variables on the amount of time that state legislators spent on the service activities of casework and public resource allocations (“pork”). This research finds that state legislators distinguish between casework and pork activities, rank casework ahead of pork, and that the only common variable predicting both types of service activities is members' perceptions of their constituents' preferences; otherwise, a different set of variables predicts each type of service activity
This paper investigates the factors correlated with individual members' success in passing legislation. Variables such as a senator's level of legislative activity, extent of specialization, number of trips home, frank usage, verbosity, seniority, and ideological position are analyzed. Additionally, the effects of membership in the minority and majority parties are investigated. Results generally indicate that those senators who meet with success in the legislative labyrinth are ideologically moderate, highly specialized, senior members of the majority party who spend little time courting their constituency. These findings suggest that the debate about Senate norms must be pursued through a wide array of indicators, both aggregate and individual, and must consider the importance of majority or minority party status.
This article examines the process of roll call voting when constituency pressures run counter to the desires of legislators. Previous research has emphasized concerns about reelection. Using votes on the congressional pay raise of 1989, I demonstrate that a variety of legislative goals are useful for explaining the roll call decisions made by members of the House of Representatives. Members turned to reelection, policy, power, and economic self-interest in deciding how to vote on the pay raise issue. Importantly, the contexts of the voting decisions help to explain both the behavior of individual legislators and the ultimate outcome of the legislative process.
This article examines the legislative effectiveness of gay and lesbian state legislators. Legislative effectiveness is measured by legislators' perceptions of their effectiveness, their ability to block legislation, and their ability to see the bills they introduce pass. Although the number of openly gay and lesbian legislators is small, making this study exploratory, the findings are illuminating. Without controlling for legislators' relationships with colleagues or their ideology, lesbians, but not gay men, were less effective than other legislators, but after controlling for these factors lesbians were not significantly less effective than others.
In this paper we ask why members of Congress chair the committees they do. While the answer is related to the norm of seniority, we argue that it additionally involves strategic considerations that have not been considered in prior research. Our analysis examines the choices of senators 1950–1986 who have had the opportunity to chair two or more committees. Because senators are allowed to chair only one committee in any given Congress, these legislators must decide which committee to chair. Empirical analysis indicates that the choice of committee chairs involves a strategy that extends the influence of senators in a position to make such decisions and effectively reduces the variance of policy preferences in the set of committee leadership positions.
This article is based on a mail questionnaire sent to members of the Swedish parliament (the Riksdag) in 1988. To increase our understanding of how the institution works, an analysis of members' perceptions of the distribution of power within the Riksdag is undertaken. Members were asked (1) how influential various groups and bodies are, and (2) how influential these groups and bodies should be. The results show that members want more power to be given to parliamentary party groups, committees and MPs as individuals, and less power to the party leaders and the chiefs of staff, Differences in perceptions along partisan lines are small. However, members of the Greens - an anti-establishment party - are more oriented toward strengthening the influence of individual MPs and toward weakening the power of party leaders than are members of the established parties.
We developed a causal model depicting personal and institutional pathways to political respect and tested it with data drawn from a nationwide survey of over 2,400 state legislators. Working from the premise that respected legislators are those most often approached by colleagues for legislative information and advice, we observe that direct paths to political respect include networking, leadership position, seniority, parliamentary expertise, legislative obstructionism, and ambition for higher political office. Institutional factors have the strongest impact on political respect, while personal attributes have the weakest impact. Leadership position serves an important intervening role regarding respect for legislators as all exogenous variables influence political respect indirectly through their effects on leadership position.
Paper prepared for delivery at the 1996 annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, April 18-20, 1996, Chicago, Illinois. We thank Laura Arnold for her helpful suggestions. We also thank Laura Arnold, Lori Hausseger and Roy Wolf for their assistance in data collection. ABSTRACT Of the thousands of bills sponsored in any given Congress, only a small percentage actually become public law. Despite this fact, members of Congress continue to enter the legislative battlefield, some better prepared for battle than others. We examine what distinguishes House members who are most active in bill sponsorship from those who are least active. Furthermore, we investigate why some members are successful in pursuing their legislative agendas when others' initiatives fall by the wayside. Much of the literature points to the importance of institutional factors, such as party affiliation, leadership, and seniority in determining a member's degree of legislative effectiveness. Extending this primarily institutional focus, we investigate the determinants of House members' activity and the effect that their individual strategic choices have on improving the probability of their bills surviving as they wind through the legislative maze. Using data collected from the 103rd Congress (1993-1994), we construct a multivariate model estimating the impact of House members' decisions about a number of strategic issues including legislative specialization in the multiple referral environment of today s Congress, floor speaking, networking, geographical focus, and timing, on the number of bills they sponsor and the success of their legislative agendas.
This dissertation demonstrates that the presence of the initiative process alters voting behavior in the selection of candidates. By allowing constituents to bypass their elected officials to directly select policy, the availability of the initiative leads to substitution between voters' concern over substantive versus symbolic representation. In states with heavy use of the initiative, votes for candidates depend less on the policy positions of the candidates but more on personal characteristics like integrity, attractiveness and descriptive representation. Predictions are derived from a formalization of the theory and are empirically tested using diverse types of data. I demonstrate diminished concern over policy positions through survey data. As use of the initiative increases, a multi-level model demonstrates that votes in that state are less dependent upon the similarity between respondent and candidate policy positions. Increased concern over the integrity of candidates demonstrated through decreased conviction rates for political corruption by the Department of Justice, and increased concern for descriptive representation is demonstrated by a greater balance in the gender of legislators in initiative states. Finally, I find that the personal attractiveness of legislators has a greater effect on votes in initiative states. This theory of substitution depends upon direct democracy leading to more representative policy which is a highly contested claim. This dissertation supports the substitution claim by demonstrating that the initiative does improve representation. I demonstrate how representation should be measured conceptually and statistically, replicate previous models, and then test the theory on an extensive new dataset.
Party leadership in Congress has been one focal point for the sustained attack on the structure and performance of the American party system that has gone on for a decade and a half. Academic critics and members of Congress, individually and in committees, supplemented by a wide array of interested citizens and groups, have laid out blueprints for institutional reorganization. While there is some variety in their prescriptions, it is not hard to construct a composite model of party leadership in legislation on which there has been a fairly wide consensus among the reformers.
The fount of party policy would be a reformed national convention, meeting biennially at the least. The obligation of the majority party in Congress, spurred by the president if he were of the same party, would be to carry out the platform put together by the convention. For this purpose frequent party conferences would be held in each house to consider specific measures. Some would be for the purpose of discussion and education, but on important party measures the members could be bound by a conference vote and penalized in committee assignments and other party perquisites for disregarding the will of the conference. Party strategy, legislative scheduling, and continuous leadership would be entrusted to a policy committee made up, in most schemes, of the elective officers of the house and the chairmen of the standing committees. Some have suggested a joint policy committee, made up of the policy committees of the respective houses, which might then meet with the president as a kind of legislative cabinet. The committee chairmen would not be exclusively, and perhaps not at all, the products of seniority.
Interpersonal relations—patterns of friendship and respect—exemplify the informal organization of legislative institutions and provide the basis for legislative action. Who are the representatives who garner friendship and respect in the legislature? How widely are friendship and respect allocated among legislators? What characteristics and attitudes compel nominations of a friend or respected colleague? We address these questions using data from personal interviews with 119 Iowa state legislators. Members were asked to nominate (1) their five closest friends in the legislature, and (2) five members they respected. A multivariate analysis of nominations of friends and respected colleagues yields their major correlates, and shows intriguing differences between the sources of friendship and respect.