Congress at the Grassroots

Representational Change in the South, 1970-1998

Richard F. Fenno Jr.

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2003
• Print ISBN: 9780807848555, 9780807825426
• eBook ISBN: 9780807860632
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Historia de Norteamérica

However much politicians are demeaned and denounced in modern American society, our democracy could not work without them. For this reason, says Richard Fenno, their activities warrant our attention. In his pioneering book, Home Style, Fenno demonstrated that a close look at politicians at work in their districts can tell us a great deal about the process of representation. Here, Fenno employs a similarly revealing grassroots approach to explore how patterns of representation have changed in recent decades.

Fenno focuses on two members of the U.S. House of Representatives who represented the same west-central Georgia district at different times: Jack Flynt, who served from the 1950s to the 1970s, and Mac Collins, who has held the seat in the 1990s. His on-the-scene observation of their differing representational styles — Flynt focuses on people, Collins on policy — reveals the ways in which social and demographic changes inspire shifts in representational strategies.

More than a study of representational change in one district, Congress at the Grassroots also helps illuminate the larger subject of political change in the South and in the nation as a whole.

CHAPTER ONE

Political Representation

Background

When Newt Gingrich emerged full-blown onto the American political stage in the 1990s, he carried with him into public view a little-known political figure named John J. Flynt Jr.—not into the bright lights of center stage, to be sure, but into the dim background, as a bit player to be hustled onto the stage, briefly noted, and hustled off again. Flynt was the incumbent Georgia congressman who twice defeated the aspiring young Gingrich—first in 1974 and again in 1976—and whose retirement in 1978 propelled the Republican college professor into Congress.

Reporters who inquired into Gingrich’s early career, therefore, discovered Jack Flynt. They characterized him succinctly as a “longtime conservative Democratic congressman,” “an ageing incumbent Dixiecrat,” “a standard bearer of the old courthouse crowds.”¹ The reporters contented themselves with these thumbnail characterizations and moved on. They knew nothing about Flynt; he was not their story. I do know something about him, and I want to make him the centerpiece of my story—a story about changing patterns of representation in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Three times in the 1970s (1970, 1972, and 1976), I went to Georgia to follow Jack Flynt as he worked in his district. Eventually he became a leading character in my study, Home Style.² In the twenty years since that study was published, however, much has changed in American politics. As I thought about that change, it occurred to me that my constituency-level explorations in the 1970s had given me some unique baselines from which to begin to explore changes in the relationships between House members and their constituencies. It seemed to me, further, that such an exploration might profitably begin in a constituency where some easily recognizable macro-level political changes had occurred—and that one obvious place was the South. These reflections led me to think about revisiting my travels with southerner Jack Flynt, and to think about using that experience to construct a baseline from which to explore micro-level political change in the region.

When I dug out my notes, I found two baselines. The first allowed me to explore changing representational relationships over the course of Flynt’s own twenty-year incumbency, during which his small-town, rural district changed into a suburban district. There the question was, How might a House member with well-established constituency connections react to the challenge of contextual changes over which the member has no control? The second baseline encouraged me to explore the change in representational relationships between Flynt’s incumbency in the 1970s and the incumbency of a successor in the 1990s. And so, four times in the 1990s (twice in 1996 and twice in 1998), I returned to the old Flynt district—that is, to the remaining three-quarters to two-thirds of it—to travel with its current representative, Mac Collins. Here the question was, In what ways, and why, might the representational relationships of two different House members in the same district have changed from the 1970s to the 1990s?

This book, therefore, tells two stories about representation. Both stories involve a single district in the South, and each one covers nearly a quarter of a century. They are liable to all the sampling infirmities and scientific inadequacies of a case study. They are a firstcut, narrative account of one instance of representational change. Whether or not the narrative has anything to say about representational change in general, or about representational change in the South, or representational change in a suburbanizing type of district, I cannot say. But it might. At the least, it will put a human face on one of the most profound changes in recent American politics. And it will provide some individual-level support for larger generalizations about political change in the South. At the most, it might stimulate further micro-level examination of the larger subject of political representation.

Conceptualization

Representation is surely one of the most multifaceted ideas in political science. Not surprisingly, therefore, the study of political representation has been as multifaceted as the idea itself. Students of electoral systems, legislative institutions, public opinion-legislator linkages, identity politics, redistricting problems, and principal-agent relations continue to work at it. Agreements are hard to come by, progress is piecemeal, and closure is nowhere in sight.

Hannah Pitkin, who has given us the most familiar working definition of representation—“acting in the interest of the represented, in a manner responsive to them”³—has despaired of reaching philosophical agreement on the subject: “There does not seem to be any remotely satisfactory agreement on what representation is or means.”⁴ From an empirical perspective, Heinz Eulau, who has helped to probe “the components of responsiveness,” agrees: “The puzzle of representation . . . [is] that we have representative institutions, but like the Greeks, we do not know what they are about.”⁵ In a recent review of several studies of representation and responsiveness, James Kuklinski and Gary Segura conclude similarly that “the more complex becomes a definition of representation, the more elusive becomes a definition of responsiveness that will accommodate them.”⁶ Research on representation seems destined to encompass many perspectives and to cumulate in an exceedingly incremental fashion. This study is a tiny increment in a very large and thriving enterprise.

As a contribution to the study of political representation, the FlyntCollins case has several characteristics. First, the research takes as given the single-member-district, plurality-takes-all electoral system that governs elections to the House of Representatives.

It deliberately sidesteps macro-level questions concerning the fairness or the proportionality or the “representativeness” of the American electoral system, or of the outcomes produced by that system.⁷ It assumes a structure of 435 congressional districts, one member to a district, each member representing a separate and distinguishable set of constituents. Representation, here, is a set of relationships between a House member and that member’s constituents. It is also an activity. The assumption is that any activity engaged in by the representative relating to his or her constituents involves the activity of representation.

Second, the research effort centers on the individual representative and is conducted in the constituency from which that representative has been elected.

For most empirically oriented political scientists most of the time, the study of political representation focuses on voting in the legislature—on how best to explain vote patterns, both individual and collective. Representation is treated largely as a relationship between the policy preferences of a constituency and the roll-call votes of the elected legislator.⁸ Typically, investigation centers on the vote choice, and the legislator’s vote choice is interpreted as a representational choice. That is, it is a choice that can be studied as a response to constituency preferences.

Legislators also make another representational choice, one that is focused not on their behavior in the legislature, but on their behavior in the constituency. There the representational choice for the legislator is not “How should I vote?” but “How should I connect?” As we shall see, these two choices, when made by the same person, will impact one another and will produce behavior patterns that are related to one another. But this study is premised on the idea that making connection decisions at home can be separated analytically from making vote decisions in the legislature—and on the idea that home connections are important in their own right to the study of political representation.

The study of choices about connections is less a matter of constituency influence on the legislator—as emphasized in our empirical literature—and more a matter of the legislator’s immersion in the constituency, of the legislator as part of the constituency. Home connections involve continuous interaction, and all connections count. They are more about “keeping in touch” than they are about “voting right”—though the two are related. It is harder, therefore, to isolate discrete connection choices for causal analysis than it is to separate discrete vote choices for such analysis. If it were easy, perhaps more scholars would have done it.

Since the study of home connections remains in an exploratory stage, participant observation in the constituency would seem to be an appropriate approach. And, since representing a constituency takes a lot of hard work in the constituency, it seems sensible for political scientists to take a look at representatives while they are actually working there. This study has been conducted largely by observing representational activity from over the shoulder of the representative and by talking with the representative about it. The study, therefore, depends one-sidedly upon the representative’s words, deeds, perceptions, and interpretations. The research offers no independent account of constituency viewpoints.

Finally, this study will argue that the observable connection choices made by a representative can be summarized as the choice of a strategy of representation.

It is a constrained choice. And in order to make sense of that choice, three factors are most relevant. One is the predispositions and goals of the individual representative. Another is the context—primarily the constituency—in which the representative pursues those goals. And the third is a sequencing or developmental factor whereby prior actions may constrain choice in the present and whereby present choices may constrain future possibilities. It is expected that each of these factors can, where relevant, be found and fathomed by an observer on the scene.

The working assumption is that the choice of a strategy will produce observable patterns of representation. Conversely, the patterns observed by the researcher are assumed to be the result of a fairly deliberate strategy. The concepts of “home style” and “home strategy” are variants of the same idea. Both formulations direct research to the same place and to the same set of activities. The idea of home strategy, however, encourages us to think more directly about representation. It encourages us to separate out goals, contexts, and prior negotiations and to examine them, both separately and together, as they have shaped observable patterns of representation at home.

Goals and Contexts

All representatives are goal seekers. They have ambitions; they want to accomplish things. They make choices and work actively in pursuit of such goals as getting reelected, making good public policy, accumulating power in the legislature, and winning higher office. Representational strategies will center on such goals—playing up some, playing down others. We shall focus on each member’s dominant goals. But we shall not assume that the dominance of one goal drives out all consideration of other goals. We assume, to the contrary, that all representational strategies are, of necessity, mixed strategies.

Political ambition may take root at different points in an individual’s life. The earliest touches of political ambition are quite likely to occur in the context of a person’s district-level relationships—and are likely to surface when an observer is immersed in the home constituency. Goals may take shape during an individual’s initial decision to go into politics, as answers to the questions “Why go into politics anyway?” and “What do I want to get out of politics?” Such precongressional goals might develop from a motivation to fulfill a civic duty, to meet a self-imposed personal challenge, to savor the sociability of political involvement, to build party strength locally, or to become an ombudsman for individuals. Institutionally oriented conceptualizations may not, therefore, be sufficient for an exploration of representational activity in the political world beyond the legislature.

All representatives are context interpreters. They will make choices and take actions not in the abstract, but according to what they believe to be rational and/or appropriate in the circumstances or context in which they find themselves. And it is the goal seekers themselves who must interpret the opportunities and constraints present in that context. For members of Congress, the two most important contexts are the constituency back home and the legislative institution in Washington—along with, to a lesser extent, the political parties as they exist in both places.

Each constituency context, we assume, contains some fixed elements—such as geography, demography, the economy, and a few unshakeable issue preferences—that do not allow for interpretive latitude on the part of the representative. We also assume that the constituency context contains some variable elements—such as constituency expectations, preferences, practices, and habits—that do allow for such interpretive latitude. Therefore, we assume, each member’s relationship to his or her constituents will be partly the member’s responsiveness to expectations generated by the constituents and partly constituent responsiveness to expectations generated by the individual representative. The working out, over time, of a mutually satisfactory and durable fit is the object of each legislator’s continuous interaction with his or her constituency.

With respect to constituency context, we assume, as discussed in Home Style, that each representative perceives not a single home constituency, but a set of constituencies that nest, like a series of concentric circles, within one another. The largest circle contains all the residents of the legally prescribed geographical constituency; the next smaller, the reelection constituency, contains their weak but supportive voters; and the smallest, the primary constituency, consists of their most active and most reliable supporters. Our assumption is that the constituency each member responds to is the one in his or her mind’s eye. We also assume that members do not represent or connect with each of these perceived constituencies in the same way or to the same degree.

Members also cultivate supportive constituencies beyond their geographical constituency—to raise money and/or to seek higher office—to which they can be expected to respond. But, unless specifically noted, the representation of which we speak involves the home constituency.

With respect to both goal-seeking and context-interpreting, it would be unrealistic to expect a politician to lay out neatly for inspection by a visitor all the elements and interrelationships of a decision calculus or an interpretive calculus. An observer’s description and analysis will, of necessity, depend heavily on retroduction—that is, treating observed comments and activities as if they were grounded in the pursuit of certain goals and in the interpretation of certain contexts. Throughout, an effort will be made to present evidence that gives some support to these “as if” conjectures—and, at the same time, enables other scholars to pose other possibilities.

Careers and Negotiation

Because time and sequence are such fundamental variables in this chronological study, it will be useful to think of each representative in terms of his or her career and in terms of his or her continuous negotiations with constituents. Careers and negotiations are the most important of the sequencing or developmental factors mentioned earlier, and they are crucial to the conception of representation as a long-run, over-time activity.

Out in the district, the sense of a career in progress is overwhelming. And the obligatory recitation of a representative’s career milestones reveals the existence of two such careers—jointly pursued, but analytically separable. There is the career in the constituency, and there is the career in the legislative institution—and each affects the other. Our observational perch in the constituency reflects a primary interest in the career in that context. The distinction in Home Style between the protectionist and expansionist stages of the constituency career will be helpful in understanding each member’s representational activities. The career stage at the time of observation and the story of the career to that point are among the possible constraints on present choices.

What all House members want from their constituents is support. In the short run, they want the support of a voting majority at the next election. For some members, that is all they want, or all they are free to contemplate. Others, however, may take a longer view of constituent support. For those members, reelection is a necessary, but not a sufficient, support goal. They seek a degree of constituent support that they can call upon and rely upon between elections. Their goal is what we might call durable interelection support.

These members want more from their constituents than a “yes” or “no” verdict on election day. Their calculation is not just how to win next time, but how to win consistently. They seek a support relationship that is reliable enough to guarantee them behavioral leeway between elections to pursue other goals, such as good policy or institutional power. They want a level of support that manifests itself either subjectively, in a comfortable sense of “fit,” or objectively, in a stable “equilibrium” between their performance and the expectations of their constituents, especially their primary constituents.

The covering word that House members use ...

Table of contents

• Table of Contents
• List of Tables
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Preface
• CHAPTER ONE - Political Representation
• CHAPTER TWO - Jack Flynt, 1970-1972
• CHAPTER THREE - Jack Flynt, 1972-1976
• CHAPTER FOUR - Mac Collins, 1996-1998
• CHAPTER FIVE - Mac Collins and Connections
• Conclusion
• Notes