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The Overlapping Worlds of American Federal Executives and Congressmen

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Joel D. Aberbach  and
Bert A. Rockman
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Extract

Along with other American public institutions, Congress and the federal bureaucracy have fallen upon hard times. Each has been the target of much public scorn. Among academic theorists who have compared the contemporary roles of the bureaucracy and Congress, however, Congress has received the worst evaluation by far. It has often been treated as a more or less quaintly archaic institution, structurally unable to cope with the complexities of national issues. Samuel Huntington delineates several factors which he thinks tend to insulate Congress from an effective national policy-making role. Internally, the institutionalization of Congress has created a system of leadership selection which fragments authority and rewards and reinforces provincial perspectives. Externally, with rare exceptions, electoral turn-over is limited. Thus, the intake of new blood, especially in the House, is mostly dependent upon voluntary departures or biological processes. Equally important in Huntington's view are the characteristics of the congressmen themselves. They are, as many have pointed out, essentially local politicians oriented to local rather than national problems. Their incentives lie in looking ‘homeward’ to local constituencies rather than outward to the nation. Edward Shils has described their orientations as ‘those of the small town society’, suspicious of large organization and wary of complexity. Responsiveness to local interests, not comprehension of complex national policy problems, is the sine qua non of the congressman's political survival.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , January 1977 , pp. 23 - 47
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1977

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References

1 See, especially, Huntington, Samuel P., ‘Congressional Responses to the Twentieth Century’, in Truman, David B., ed., The Congress and America's Future (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1965), pp. 5–31Google Scholar, and Shils, Edward A., ‘Resentments and Hostilities of Legislators: Sources, Objects, Consequences’, in Eulau, Heinz and Wahlke, John, eds., Legislative Behavior: A Reader in Theory and Research (Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1959), pp. 347–54Google Scholar, originally under the title ‘The Legislator and His Environment’, in University of Chicago Law Review, XVIII (1950–1951), 571–84.Google Scholar

2 Huntington, , ‘Congressional Responses’.Google Scholar

3 Recent changes in the congressional pension system in 1973 may be among the most important factors in speeding the departure of senior members.

4 See Huntington, , ‘Congressional Responses’Google Scholar; Shils, , ‘Resentments and Hostilities’;Google ScholarRieselbach, Leroy N., ‘Congressmen as “Small Town Boys”: A Research Note’, Midwest Journal of Political Science, xiv (1970), 321–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Davidson, Roger H., The Role of the Congressman (New York: Pegasus, 1969), especially pp. 34–71Google Scholar; and Price, H. Douglas, ‘The Electoral Arena’Google Scholar, in Truman, , Congress and America's Future, pp. 32–51.Google Scholar

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6 See Mayhew, David R., Congress: The Electoral Connection (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1974)Google Scholar; Fenno, Richard F. Jr., ‘If, as Ralph Nader says, Congress is “The Broken Branch”, How Come We Love Our Congressmen So Much?’ in Ornstein, Norman J., ed., Congress in Change: Evolution and Reform (New York: Praeger, 1975), pp. 277–94Google Scholar; and Price, , ‘The Electoral Arena’, especially pp. 50–1.Google Scholar

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8 Huntington, , ‘Congressional Responses’, p. 17Google Scholar; see also Long, Norton, ‘Bureaucracy and Constitutionalism’, American Political Science Review, XLVI (1952), 808–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Long argues that a wide range of interests is represented through the bureaucracy.

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10 Such an analysis of European politicians and bureaucrats has been undertaken by Putnam, Robert D.. See his ‘Bureaucrats and Politicians: Contending Elites in the Policy Process’, in Gwyn, William B. and Edwards, George C. III, Perspectives on Public Policy Making, Tulane Studies in Political Science, Vol. 15 (New Orleans, La.: Tulane University Press, 1975), pp. 179–202.Google Scholar

11 There is, of course, a cadre of high level staff people in the federal bureaucracy. It is possible that their backgrounds and outlooks may differ from those of the program administrators in our sample.

12 Agencies from which administrators were sampled include: Agriculture, Commerce, HEW, HUD, Justice, Interior, Labor, Transportation, Treasury, GSA, OEO, FCC, FPC, FTC, ICC, SEC, SBA and the VA.

13 An excellent summary of this evidence on American legislative elites can be found in Keefe, William J. and Ogul, Morris S., The American Legislative Process, 3rd edn. (Englewood-Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1973), pp. 113–50.Google Scholar More generally see Matthews, Donald R., The Social Background of Political Decision-Makers (New York: Random House, 1954)Google Scholar, and Putnam, Robert D., The Comparative Study of Political Elites (Englewood-Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1976), especially, pp. 20–44.Google Scholar

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15 In this regard, it should be noted that only 12 per cent of our sample was retired by electoral defeat in the two elections (1972 and 1974) which have transpired since this was written. Of the nine members of our sample who were defeated, two have been returned and two lost in primaries contested by another incumbent as a result of redistricting.

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29 The liberal-conservative attitude scale was designed to measure a respondent's policy preferences across a diverse set of topics throughout the entire interview. The liberal-conservative roll call scale was composed of eleven major issues in the second session (1970) of the 91st Congress. These issues were taken from among those cited by Congressional Quarterly as key votes. They include social spending and social welfare measures, civil rights issues, and foreign policy and international trade issues. Despite the fact that the coders had no knowledge of the congressmen's votes on these issues, the Kendall's T b coefficient between the attitude scale and the roll call scale is ·48.

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33 Similar points are made by Shils. See his ‘Resentments and Hostilities’.

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35 Huntington, Samuel P., Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1968), p. 109.Google Scholar

36 See, for instance, Richard Neustadt's speculations about such trends in his ‘Politicians and Bureaucrats’, in Truman, , ed., The Congress and America's Future, pp. 102–20Google Scholar, see especially p. 119. The growth of public policy institutes in the late 1960s and 1970s indirectly could generate stronger unifying forces among federal executives in the future.

37 See Davidson, Roger H., ‘Breaking Up Those “Cozy Triangles”: An Impossible Dream?’ (paper prepared for the Symposium on Legislative Reform and Public Policy, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska, 1976).Google Scholar See also Freeman, J. Leiper, The Political Process Bureau-Legislative Committee Relations (New York: Random House, 1955).Google Scholar

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39 For example, 43 per cent of the congressmen gave more weight to the constituency service function then to the legislative function in describing the most important aspects of their jobs. Only 26 per cent gave greater weight to the legislative function than to constituency service.

40 See for example Long, Norton, ‘Power and Administration’, Public Administration Review, ix (1949), 257–64, especially p. 262CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Long, Norton, ‘Public Policy and Administration: The Goals of Rationality and Responsibility’, Public Administration Review, xiv (1954), 23–31.Google Scholar

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