Below is a transcription of a video for Political Science 1 – American Government under Dr. Misty Knight-Finley

CONGRESSIONAL DECISIONS

There are 3 main factors or agents that influence Congressmen in making decisions:

1. Constituency
2. Interest Groups
3. Political Party

CONSTITUENCY

Our basic understanding: Constituents will matter most to representatives and senators. Unfortunately, this is sometimes the case. Unfortunately, this is sometimes the case. If a congress person ignores what the voters in his/her district want, they will probably not be in office for a very long time. Representatives pay their most attention to their constituents when they’re voting on bills because votes are records that constituents can easily check. If this is the case, then the relative lack of important congressional votes on recent years tells us something. Now, these congressmen are more likely to depend on direct service to constituents (case work) to build up their record. This is the more likely reason why congressmen tend to spend more time in their home states and districts than in Washington.

Constituent views can influence congressmen even without the threat of unseating them in election though, because congressmen can anticipate what the voters will want and respond to this. They managed this through public opinion polling, the more sophisticated polling is, the better the representatives are crafting their message and maybe even their votes to what their constituents want.

INTEREST GROUPS

The main thing that interest groups provide to congressmen is information that they can use in writing a bill or making a policy case to their constituents.

Information is very important and very valuable. On the other hand, interest groups do give an a lot of money to the campaign; they also provide a lot of research and assistance in writing the bills.

Interest groups are most influential at the committee stage of legislation rather than when congressmen are casting floor votes and their influence tends to be mostly negative. This means that rather than inserting items in the legislation, it’s much easier and more effective to exclude potential provisions from law.

POLITICAL PARTIES

A discipline party leadership can put pressure on a congressman to vote on a certain way. They call it ‘Whips’ for a reason. But this only works when the party is unified and strong. The weaker the party, the more freedom the representatives has to go rogue on some issues and votes. If there are many different factions in a party, there’s less of a consequence for not voting on the party line. The clearest example of this is the so-called ‘Hastert Rule’ named after Dennis Hastert who would only bring a bill to the floor for a vote if the majority of the majority party (in his case, Republicans) supported it.

Parties also help to organize log-rolling which is relatively straightforward, quid pro quo bargaining. Log-rolling occurs most obviously at the voting stage but can also occur during the writing of the legislation committees.

The President is the de facto leader of his party and its most influential member. The President has the most power when his party and the majority party in congress are the same. When this happens, congress usually follows the president’s lead and allows him to set the policy agenda, that way he can get some credit if the policies win and avoid some blame if it turns out not so great.

Divided parties also work well for congress it makes it easy to set a policy agenda, suppose whatever the president wants.

Political parties are most influential in congress when a single party controls both houses and the presidency and the leadership is strong enough to exert discipline and a degree of uniformity in policy.