How do constituents influence congress

Whether legislators positively respond to these preferences is the purpose of my study. Before launching into the analysis and findings, Figure 1 offers a visual look at the distribution of the direct measure.

Note that Midwest and northeast states were hit hardest by the Great Recession, while southwestern and border states were hit much less hard by comparison. And further, in larger metropolitan areas with greater concentrations of residents and businesses, the effects of an economic downturn are felt most intensely.

With the two constituent preference measures in hand, I look to bill sponsorship as my key measure of elite policy work to address the other side of the equation. This form of behavior was selected over other forms e. Thus, it is helpful in our quest for responsiveness in that it allows for an understanding of whether legislators are influenced by their constituents as they focus on a given issue over many others as they decide to sponsor individual bills on individual topics.

In sum, the first stage of my analysis pairs employment patterns with bill sponsorship on related issues to look for responsiveness, and the second phase pairs the direct measure of preferences with bill sponsorship on related issues to look for policy responsiveness. For the first stage looking to proxies, I uncovered some evidence of employment patterns influencing increased bill sponsorship attention on related issues.

In districts with higher levels of employment in agriculture, defense, and transportation, rates of related bill sponsorship were similarly and significantly higher, compared to other districts with lower rates of employment in these industries.

The building blocks of congressional organization include the political parties, the committee system, congressional staff, the caucuses, and the rules of the House and Senate. Every two years, the members of each party gather in conference to elect their leaders The elected leaders of the majority party include the Speaker of the House, a majority leader, and party whips. The elected leaders of the minority party include a minority leader and party whips. Informal leadership in the Senate rests in the positions of majority and minority leaders.

The committee structure in the House and Senate include standing committees and their subcommittees , joint committees, select committees, and conference committees. Congress is supported by a large staff system as well as support agencies, including the General Accounting Office and the Congressional Budget Office.

Members of Congress also form informal caucuses to pursue common interests. Rules of Lawmaking: How a Bill Becomes a Law How do the rules of congressional procedure influence the fate of legislation and determine the distribution of power in Congress?

Legislation is influenced by institutional structure and the procedural requirements of the legislative process. The rules make it much more likely that a bill will never become a law. Thus, constituents do not need to monitor their representatives too closely.

Representation According to the theory of agency representation, the people choose a representative to carry out their wishes in Congress. Those who view their representatives as agents tend to closely monitor their representatives because they must know what the representative does in order to keep him or her accountable. This theory is also known as the instructed-delegate representation. SparkTeach Teacher's Handbook. Summary The Functions of Congress. With such approaches, the result is the researcher placing constituents in ideological space.

Note the variance in responses across geographic pockets in line with what we know about these regions. For example, regarding the economy lower right map , is when the Great Recession began, and was felt most by the Midwest and Northeast darker shades of gray.

Returning to the question of constituent representation, my approach was twofold. First, I used rates of employment in every congressional district in specific industries as proxies for preferences of constituents. The idea here is that employment should reflect a prioritization of that same issue e.

In this first stage, I find mostly strong results, suggesting legislators are aware of the employment patterns in their districts, and they too make the same assumption of employment in a specific industry reflecting the preferences of their constituents.

The problem with this approach, though, is that employment patterns are mere proxies for preferences.