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The Case of the Vanishing Marginals: The Bureaucracy Did It*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Morris P. Fiorina
Morris P. Fiorina*
Affiliation:
California Institute of Technology
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Abstract

Several authors have addressed the postwar decline of electoral competition on the congressional level. Some have attributed the decline to institutional change such as the redistrictings of the 1960s. Others have remarked on the growing use of the growing resources of incumbency. Still others, like Ferejohn, have focused on behavioral change in the larger electoral system, such as the erosion of party identification. In this comment I suggest that while electoral behavior has changed, the change is at least in part a response to changing congressional behavior, which in turn is a reaction to institutional change for which Congress is partly responsible. Specifically, over time congressmen have placed increasing emphasis on district services: more and more they operate as and are perceived as ombudsmen rather than as national policymakers. This behavioral change is an understandable response to an expanding federal role and an increasing involvement of the federal bureaucracy in the lives of ordinary citizens, an institutional change Congress has helped to bring about.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 71 , Issue 1 , March 1977 , pp. 177 - 181
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1977

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Footnotes

*

Without implicating any of them, I wish to thank Richard Fenno, John Kingdon, Charles Bullock, David Mayhew, Douglas Price, and Glenn Parker for their thoughtful comments and criticisms.

References

1 Asher, Herbert and Weisberg, Herbert, “Congressional Voting Change: A Longitudinal Study of Voting on Selected Issues,” paper presented at the American Political Science Association Meeting, San Francisco, 1975 Google Scholar.

2 Bullock, Charles S. III, “Redistricting and Congressional Stability, 1962–1972,” Journal of Politics 37 (May, 1975), 569–575 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Miller, Arthur H., “Political Issues and Trust in Government: 1964–1970,” American Political Science Review, 68 (September, 1974), 951–972 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Burnham, Walter D., “Party Systems and the Political Process,” in The American Party Systems, ed. Chambers, William and Burnham, Walter, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford, 1975), pp. 308–357 Google Scholar.

5 The expansion of the congressional office cries out for further study. At the beginning of the 90th Congress in which the last major expansion took place Congressional Staff Directory listed 3,276 individuals of whom 26 per cent were in the districts. In 1974, 34 per cent of 5,109 were in the districts. What are these people doing?

6 Cf. Burnham, , “Party Systems,” p. 335 Google Scholar. Burnham believes that the decline of party identification as an influence on congressional voting has increased the attractiveness of the ombudsman role. I am arguing that the causal influence is reciprocal if not the reverse.

7 Fenno, Richard, “Congressmen in their Constituencies: An Exploration,” forthcoming, American Political Science Review Google Scholar.

8 I should point out that the Democrat who won district A in 1964 and lost it in 1966 did not adopt an errand boy homestyle. According to local supporters he became totally engrossed in his Washington affairs.

9 Obviously, my argument suggests a variety of implications for the future operation of the American government. Space precludes me from entering upon such a discussion here. The interested reader should refer to my Congress–Keystone of the Washington Establishment (New Haven: Yale, 1977)Google Scholar.