Congress: The Electoral Connection

Congress: The Electoral Connection was written by David R. Mayhew in 1974. A second edition was published in 2004 (ISBN: 9780300105872).

Congresspeople are modeled as actors seeking re-election. They are expected to behave correspondingly, especially in three categories of initiatives: advertising, credit claiming, and position taking. Structural incentives control the efficacy of these categories and congresspeople are expected to adjust their behavior in response. This model's interpretation leads to several key conclusions about the design of Congress.

• Congress is very well designed for actors seeking re-election.
• Congresspeople service their constituents, which includes both the voters of their constituents and influential interest groups, but they especially service their constituents.

• Congress is not a competitive and representative arena for deciding from policy options. There are no minimum winning coalitions.

Part 1

The first part of the book establishes the theoretic model.

The author first interrogates the underlying assumption: congresspeople want to be reelected.

• Some discussion of volunteerism, voluntary turnover rates, and term limit reforms.
• Mostly in the context of state and city legislatures.

The author sidesteps the question by focusing on the U.S. House and Senate, which is widely accepted as being in a swing of career politicians, and the basis of such a career is reelection.

Next the author compares their model to contemporary researchers.

Fenno argues that congresspeople have three goals:

• reelection
• accumulating influence within Congress
• producing good policy

Restricting the goals to re-election provides an accountability mechanism that is fundamental to the interpretation. So for the author's model, congresspeople are "single minded reelection seekers" (p.17). Important to note that congresspeople optimize, not maximize. Diminishing returns on re-election initiatives when you are already 'sure' to win. Very little value on them when you are 'sure' to lose.

Downs constructs a model with parties as the analytic unit. (Parties put forward a platform and voters respond rationally. Congresspeople are just an intermediary.) The author argues that this model misses the reality of Congress. Policy is produced not by cohesive teams but by rivalry and bargaining. Voters cannot form expectations to inform decisions. The author argues that this model is best applied to executive elections (presidents, governors, mayors). These offices produce policy firmly aligned by a single platform. Especially given an incumbent, voters can clearly form expectations.

Specific example the author cites is UK coalition governments. Author argues parties are only coherent there because electoral resources are controlled by party elite...

• Local committees pick candidates based on who will be a loyal party member
• Advertisement and communicative resources (e.g. screen time) are allocated to parties not individuals
• Political posts are given by party leaders to loyal party members

In contrast, congresspeople are selected by direct primary. In order to win the primary, individuals have to mobilize their own resources.

Another specific example is Connecticut. TODO: read...

• Duane Lockard New England State Politics
• Lieberman The Power Broker
• James Barber Leadership Strategies for Legislative Party Cohesion

Author has no expectation of differential behavior in 'marginal seats'. Rather, it's a misnomer. Looking at party swings between elections in individual congressional seats, about a third of variance is explained by national effects. The remainder is local effects. 'All politics is local'. "When we say 'Congressman Smith is unbeatable,' we do not mean that there is nothing he could do that would lose him his seat. Rather we mean, 'Congressman Smith is unbeatable as long as he continues to do the things he is doing.' (p.37).

A major point is that voters don't have solid knowledge or expectations about legislation. They rely on proxies to determine if a legislator supports what they support. And because congresspeople use their own resources to win support

Congresspeople also have a confirmation bias about what 'works'. To face re-election, each has already won a primary and congressional election.

The author describes three categories of re-election activities or assets:

• advertising, which is meant to cover anything from visits, radio time, screen time, to mail (esp. use of franking privilege)
• credit claiming, mainly casework and pork barrel
  • Goes back to prior of voters not having knowledge of legislation.
  • Author does argue that members of committees can credibly claim credit for pushing or killing specific bills.
• position taking
  • Congresspeople can take any number of positions. It isn't limited to actual substantive actions. Just as people are uncertain of legislation, they are uncertain of positions. So positions matter more-so in telling people what they want to hear, rather than what you have done.
  • Also an element of issue invention.

Some immediate consequences:

• Senators place relatively more emphasis on credit claiming, as compared to representatives, because they are more credible (i.e., hold greater prestige), have more advertising assets, and have a larger direct constituency that can form more salient interests.
• Also notable that many senators aim to be president, which shapes their long term strategy. TODO: read Perry The New Politics for application to NY assembly and senate.
• Similar trend in old machine cities. TODO: read Snowiss Congressional Recruitment and Representation for application to Chicago.

Part 2

The second part of the book interprets the model, especially with regard to how cooperation and competition is expected to look at the Congressional level.

Congress is well designed for re-election seeking congresspeople.

• Congressional office salaries are designed to service advertisement and credit claiming.
• Committees are designed to service credit and position claiming. Some seem to just be cause committees with no intent of legislation.Others seem to be universal committees, seeking to structure all pork barrel requests into bills that can all pass a vote. Public Works especially. Because there is no limit to their creation, every congressperson can find a minute policy space to claim credit over.
• Congressional parties are designed to service position claiming. Congresspeople are coordinated to produce a meaningful position that all members claim. They can also deviate from the party to whatever degree they want; their membership is earned by primary election rather than selection.
• The Congressional Record, over which they have full editorial control, is designed to service position claiming.
• Franking privileges are designed to service advertisement.

Most importantly: these services and functions are non-rivalrous. Not a zero sum game. It actually looks like a "cross-party conspiracy among incumbents" (p.105).

Consequences:

• Congress is "noisy, versatile, and effective" (p.108). It operates as an opposition. All congresspeople, esp. senators, have an incentive to claim a position in comparison to the current president's policy.
  • Party does not matter.
• Congress does not operate as a competitive and representative arena for policy options.
  • Some models of legislatures imagine the institution to be a proxy for ad hoc referenda among the population.
  • Congresspeople distort that model.
    • Bargaining and trading votes
    • Selection-out of disfavorable policy options
    • Several implements of soft power (e.g., hearings, committees, threats of further legislation) to influence the actual implementation of legislation, beyond the literal terms of it
• No minimum winning coalitions.
  • There isn't significant evidence of 'close votes' in the first place.
  • Congresspeople default to a 'universal approach'; service own constituents while letting other congresspeople service their constituents.
  • When an issue is salient to a congresspersons's constituents, they care only about claiming credit for the 'right side'. Does not matter if their amendment carries, if the bill passes, if the bill is signed, or if the law is good policy; constituents generally only understand the voting record.
  • When an issue is salient to organized and informed interest groups, they do start to care about mobilizing and bargaining for votes.
  • Parties do not constrain how congresspeople vote.
• Congress will effectively prioritize pork barrel bills, interest group politics, and symbolic votes. Policy bills, especially national programs like welfare and entitlements, have more costs than benefits and will be deprioritized. This will necessarily look like delays and stalling.
  • "If it is believed that spending money will 'solve social problems,' then Congress will spend money." (p.139)

There is a tragedy of the commons; congresspeople want pork barrel bills and the ability to push more pork barrel bills next year. The whole body self-regulates to ensure that the 'commons' is maintained. The leaders (speaker, majority leader) and control committees (Rules; Appropriations; Ways and Means) are the maintainers.

• Of these, only Appropriations and Ways and Means offer a conventional re-election asset. But all of these are evidently desirable positions.

The closest Senate equivalent is the Finance committee, doesn't regulate spending in the same way, reflecting the different interests of senators. TODO: read: Manley The Politics of Finance.

Reading Notes

The author makes suggestions for congressional reforms, to disincentivize pork barrel bills and incentivize good policy bills. These come across as naive.

There's substantial reference to city government, especially when suggesting reforms. Setting city legislatures aside as being different in part 1, then suggesting an adoption of their structure in part 2, seems like a fallacy at best and abandonment of the model (from legislator agents to an institution as the agent) at worst.

I think the author is a bit too dismissive of the idea that marginal congresspeople either tie their re-election aspirations to the president's popularity, or try to push bad policy in order to sabotage the president's popularity.

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