The Dysfunctional Congress?

The Individual Roots Of An Institutional Dilemma

Kenneth R Mayer, David T Canon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9780367306885
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000316070
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book introduces students to an argument using rational choice theories to explain what happens when individuals come together to make collective decisions, emphasising on the collective dilemma concept that provides a framework for thinking about how reform proposals would affect Congress.

1
Why Don’t We Like Congress?

The Collective Dilemma Defined

One of the long-standing puzzles concerning the U. S. Congress is why Americans seem to love their own representatives while at the same time detesting the institution of Congress (Fenno 1975). In this chapter we outline the contours of this odd disparity in attitudes and explain it in terms of the collective dilemma that was briefly defined in the introduction. This collective dilemma can be understood in terms of other collective action problems, such as the prisoner's dilemma and the tragedy of the commons, which we explain more fully below. In each of these cases, individuals acting in their own self-interest produce collective outcomes that are preferred by nobody. This, we argue, explains in part why Congress is held in such low esteem.

Public Attitudes Toward Congress

It is no exaggeration to say unequivocally that the public does not like Congress. Public approval of Congress has rarely risen above 50 percent in the last sixty years, which is as long as it has been possible to measure public opinion with any accuracy, averaging about 48 percent approval between 1939 and 1977 (Parker 1981, 32) and less than 40 percent since then (see Figure 1.1). More ominously, Congress's approval rating often dips to what would be considered a dismal level for any other public figure or institution. The lowest approval rating ever recorded for a president was Richard Nixon's 23 percent approval, in an August 1974 Gallup Poll taken just after he resigned. Jimmy Carter's approval rating never dipped below 28 percent, even in the midst of the Iranian hostage crisis and the economic hardships of 1979-1980. Even more astounding was Bill Clinton's approval rating, which remained in the low- to mid–60 percent range early in 1999, even after the impeachment process drew to a close. Congress, in contrast, has routinely enjoyed approval ratings in the mid- to low–20 percent range, with an ABC/Washington Post poll recording only 17 percent approval in April 1992.

Although it is commonly argued that Congress is less popular than ever, recent data and scholarship show that this is not necessarily so (indeed, we argue inChapter 2 that Congress has always been unpopular). In Figure 1.1, we plot the

FIGURE 1.1
Public Approval of Congress
Source: Thomas (1992); Ne7wYorkTimes Poll; Rothenberg (1998).

results of various public opinion polls since 1974 that have asked people whether they approve or disapprove of how Congress is handling its job. Most of the time, public approval ranges between 20 and 40 percent, and breaks 50 percent only a few times during this twenty-four-year period. It is clear that approval ratings have not dropped significantly during this time. This conclusion is also consistent with the results of a recent comprehensive investigation into why the public dislikes Congress, in which the authors disputed the notion that Congress was ever popular. "The evidence that Congress was once liked is weak ... approval of Congress has never been consistently high, occasionally blipping up but never remaining there for anything approaching a sustained period" (Hibbing and Thiess-Morse 1995, 149).

Why is Congress so unpopular? Many contemporary accounts argue that it is because Congress is fundamentally corrupt and inefficient, and that legislators as a group are dishonest, incompetent, quarrelsome, and more interested in self-aggrandizement than solving problems. A more charitable explanation is that members want to do the right thing but are handcuffed in their efforts by archaic procedures, an entrenched and ossified congressional elite, and partisan wrangling. Tim Penny, a former Democratic representative from Minnesota, lamented the difficulties he faced while in Congress: "I can't tell you how many times in twelve years of Congress, I sat awake at night wondering to myself, Why are we doing these things? Why are so many decent and honorable public servants so incapable of acting responsibly on the central issues of our day?" (Penny and Garrett 1995, 15).

Hibbing and Thiess-Morse argue that the public dislikes Congress because of an aversion to the nuts-and-bolts of the legislative process: "Congress, embodies practically everything Americans dislike about politics. It is large and therefore ponderous; it operates in a presidential system and is therefore independent and powerful; it is open and therefore disputes are played out for all to see; it is based on compromise and therefore reminds people of the disturbing fact that most issues do not have right answers. Much of what the public dislikes about Congress is endemic to what a legislature is. Its perceived inefficiencies and inequities are there for all to see" (1995, 60).

Political scientists have long noted a peculiar characteristic of public attitudes toward Congress, and it is this feature that makes the collective dilemma framework a useful strategy for studying the institution: even though the public may hate Congress, most people are quite fond of their own legislator. This dichotomy is at the heart of the collective dilemma concept because it gives legislators a strong incentive to dissociate themselves from the institution of which they are a part.

Figure 1.2 graphs the percentage of the public that approves of Congress along with the percentage of these same respondents who approve of the job their own representative is doing. These data are from the National Election Study, a long-running survey of voters conducted every two years. Two patterns stand out. First, individual legislators are far more popular in their constituencies than Congress is as a whole. Over the 1980-1996 period, the average approval rating for Congress was 45 percent, while the average approval rating for legislators was 86 percent. This is continuing affirmation of what Fenno found several decades ago (1975).

The second notable feature of Figure 1.2 is that public ratings of Congress vary more widely than constituency ratings of incumbents. Approval ratings for individual incumbents are steady, ranging between 81 and 91 percent. Approval ratings for Congress are much more variable, moving between a low of 33 percent in 1992 to highs of over 60 percent in 1984 and 1988. Something, obviously, is affecting public attitudes toward the institution, but not attitudes toward incumbents.

This discrepancy between attitudes toward Congress as an institution and toward one's own representative arises because respondents apply different standards when they are evaluating Congress versus individual legislators. When people assess their representative's performance, they consider district interests, the level of contact they may have had with the person, district service (including casework), and the incumbent's personal characteristics (Parker 1981). Members work particularly hard on their "home style" (Fenno 1978) to cultivate a personal connection to constituents.

While constituents, therefore, tend to have some sort of personal affection for their own representatives, Congress as an institution is more removed and abstract (Hibbing and Thiess-Morse 1995). Fenno argues that most people simply "find it hard or impossible to think about Congress as an institution" (1978, 245). When people evaluate Congress's performance, they are more likely to think in terms of how well it appears to be meeting public challenges, or the collective performance of all of the legislature's members acting together (Hibbing and Thiess-Morse 1995).

Charles O. Jones, a highly regarded scholar of the presidency, argues that when people are asked about whether they approve or disapprove of the president's performance, what they hear is "How are things going?" (Jones 1994, 118). When the economy is growing, and inflation and unemployment are low, crime is low, and so forth, presidents are more likely to be popular than during wars or recessions. Public evaluations of the president are, in part, based on how things are going in the country as a whole.

FIGURE 1.2
Institutional Versus Individual Evaluations of Congress
Source: National Election Study data, 1980-1996.

Figure 1.3 provides evidence that the same holds true for Congress, and that people evaluate the institution based in part on how the country is faring. In this figure, we plot survey data on public approval of Congress, along with the results of another survey question asking people whether they think the country is on the right track or headed in the wrong direction; the series we plot is the percentage of the public that says the country is on the right track. The similarities between the series are striking: on the whole, when the public judges the country to be going in the right direction—a measure of public attitudes toward a collective evaluation—Congress enjoys higher approval ratings. One of the highest congressional approval ratings in the past twenty-five years, 55 percent, was measured in January 1998, in the same poll in which 61 percent of the public said the country was generally going in the right direction (itself the highest level on this index in twenty-five years). Similarly, the lowest public approval of Congress occurred in April 1992, at the same time that only 16 percent of the public said things were going in the right direction. The correlation between the two variables over this period is .81.¹

The evidence we have presented so far suggests that public evaluations of Congress are affected by broader assessments of how the country is doing and (by inference) a sense of how well Congress as a whole is addressing the country's problems, Evaluations of individual legislators, however, are more affected by the personal relationship between the representative and his or her constituents. As former Senator Fred Harris (D–N. Mex.) put it:

People expect their own representative to be their advocate, to speak for them, to represent their interests. This representation function of Congress is performed by and large through individual members. Constituents believe that their own member of Congress does a pretty good job at this (perhaps the representatives do a pretty good job of convincing constituents that they are doing a pretty good job). On the other hand, people expect Congress to solve national problems. Solving national problems is the lawmaking function of Congress, and most people do not think Congress does very well at it (Harris 1995, 8).

This is not to say that the one has nothing to do with the other. If there were no relationship at all between institutional evaluations and individual ones, then members would have nothing to fear from bashing Congress without mercy because doing so would have no impact at all on their personal political fortunes. But the two are in fact related. Even though people who disapprove of Congress are more likely than not to approve of their own representative, they are less likely to view him or her positively than those who approve of Congress. In 1996, as Table 1.1 shows, the National Election Study found an overall congressional approval of only 33 percent, and an 81 percent approval of one's own representative.

FIGURE 1.3
Congressional Approval and Direction of Country
Source: Washington Post/ABC News poll data, April 5, 1998.

TABLE 1.1
Approval of Congress, 1996

% of Public Approving of Congress	33%
% Approving of Own Representative	81%
	Approve of Congress	Disapprove of Congress
Approve of Member	91%	76%
Disapprove of Member	9%	24%

Source: 1996 National Election Study data.

At the same time, those who approved of Congress were more likely to approve of their own representative (91 percent approval) than those who disliked Congress (76 percent approval).

Finally, members of Congress must face explicitly contradictory public attitudes about how legislators should act. Hibbing and Thiess-Morse reported the following survey responses about whether members should pursue the national interest or follow district opinion (Table 1.2). Eighty-five percent of the respondents agreed that members of Congress should act in the country's best interest, not just the district's. Fewer than one in ten said that legislators should always act based on district interests. Yet half of the same respondents simultaneously agreed

TABLE 1.2
Delegates Versus Trustees

	Percent of Public
	Agree	Disagree	Neutral
Members of Congress should do what is best for the entire country, not just their district	85%	9%	6%
Members of Congress should do what their district wants them to do even...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Dedication
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables and Illustrations
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 Why Don't We Like Congress? The Collective Dilemma Defined
• 2 The Collective Dilemma Through History
• 3 The Collective Dilemma in the Modern Context
• 4 The Collective Dilemma and Congressional Reform
• 5 An Agenda for Reform: Coming to Terms with the Collective Dilemma
• Discussion Questions
• Glossary
• Notes
• References
• Index