Glenn R. Parker

The Advantage of Incumbency in House Elections

This article offers another perspective on the electoral advantage of incumbents in House elections. The explanation (or theory) builds on the contributions of Richard Fenno, Morris Fiorina, David Mayhew, and Anthony Downs. The basic premise is that the electoral advantage enjoyed by House incumbents is a function of their ability to focus constituent attention on aspects of their job performance, or characteristics related to job performance, that produce favorable impressions of their overall performance. Incumbents are able to focus constituent attention, because they exercise a great deal of control over the dissemination of information about themselves. Since congressional elections are low information contests, the voting decision is reduced to a vote for, or against, change. Voters are likely to vote against change-electoral support for incumbents—because the information they receive about (and from) the incumbent convinces them that their congressman is doing a good job in looking after the interests of the district; they also fear that the challenger might do a worse, rather than a better, job than the incumbent in looking after the district.

The distribution of honoraria income in the U.S. Congress: Who gets rents in legislatures and why?

ConclusionThe major conclusion to be drawn from this analysis is that low-cost suppliers of political favors receive the highest honoraria incomes. There is no evidence that being a lawyer, acquiring a large number of committee assignments, receiving high ratings by labor unions, representing a safe district, or introducing numerous legislative bills, increases ones honoraria income in any significant way. The wider dispersal of power reduces the effects of seniority, and membership on the Finance Committee, in determining institutional power in the Senate; hence, these variables are only significantly related to honoraria income in the House. The smaller the number of suppliers in the Senate, relative to the House, means that senators obtain higher prices for their services. As a result, business groups are more willing to pay extra — a price premium — to assure that no shirking occurs.While the distribution of honoraria has caused considerable concern and given rise to cynical explanations as to who gets them and why (see, for example, McChesney, 1987), this analysis suggests a less pejorative but empirically valid conclusion: business, and therefore honoraria, gravitate to those who can supply political favors at a lower cost than other legislators, just as low-cost suppliers gain a greater proportion of the sales in the market than those who supply the same service but at a higher price.

Looking beyond reelection: Revising assumptions about the factors motivating congressional behavior

This paper challenges the assumption inherent in most models of legislative behavior — namely that congressmen are driven by the desire for reelection. I offer an alternative perspective: incumbents seek to maximize their discretionary investments and the income generated by the job. The only constraint on this behavior is that legislators provide a satisfactory level of constituency service — a product that I suggest entails slight opportunity, and few manufacturing, costs for congressmen, and one that is unlikely to lose its value with increased production. I also demonstrate that increases in salary and discretionary investments have lengthened congressional careers.

Factions in Committees: The U.S. House of Representatives*

This study undertakes a major reanalysis of the decision-making processes in eight committees of the U.S. House of Representatives-Agriculture, Education and Labor, Interior and Insular Affairs, International Relations, Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Post Office and Civil Service, Public Works and Ways and Means. While past studies have relied mainly on interviews, this study uses a data base composed of recorded committee roll-call votes. The analysis consists of a Q-component analysis to determine voting blocs or factions; an R-component analysis to discover issue dimensions; and step-wise regression and correlation utilizing demographic, political and electoral characteristics to define the nature of the voting blocs. The results are then compared with previous analyses of the same eight committees to determine what changes, if any, have occurred since the committees were last analyzed. The findings suggest that partisanship and ideology have become stronger influences on committee decision making than previously noted.

The Labor Market for Politicians Why Ex-Legislators Gravitate to Lobbying

The so-called revolving door between employment in government and industry is especially relevant to the U.S. Congress because ex-legislators are notorious for taking jobs as lobbyists. There are two prominent explanations for why they do so: Lobbying either matches the talents of former legislators due to their specialized congressional training or it represents customary ex-post payments for ex-ante legislative assistance to special interests. This article explores the former dynamic, focusing on how specialized training impacts occupational outcomes of legislators and finds strong evidence to support the notion that former legislators become lobbyists due to unique human capital. This finding somewhat qualifies the notion that possible ex-post payments are a main driver for the postelective employment choices of ex-legislators.

Committees in legislatures: A property rights perspective

ConclusionWithout the imposition of some institutional structure, a legislature is a non-exclusive resource, and legislators will have a tendency to overuse the resource and reduce its productivity. The committee system is a method for granting property rights over the legislatures agenda by subdividing the agenda and assigning each committee rights over a portion of the agenda. Just as common grazing ground could be more productive if it were subdivided and assigned to individual owners, the legislature is more productive if access to the agenda is subdivided and assigned to committees.Ownership rights to committee assignments are allocated based on seniority because this makes the rights more secure and therefore more valuable to their owners. In the United States Congress, the seniority rule replaced a system in which assignments were made at the discretion of party leaders. In the former system, legislators needed to expend effort to retain their assignments, which diminished their ability to use their assignments productively. Because individuals can use resources more productively if they do not have to be concerned about protecting their ownership interest, the seniority system enables the legislature to be more productive in producing legislation.Viewing the legislature in this property rights framework sheds some light on two controversial issues in public choice. The question about legislators voting based on ideology rather than constituent interests is an example of discretionary behavior on the part of a legislator who is spending political capital. A legislator engaged in a very competitive battle for reelection will have little room for discretion, but surely the candidate is motivated by more than just the selfless desire to further constituent interests. Where there are barriers to entry, legislators build majorities capable of producing political capital. This political capital can be spent through discretionary behavior — including ideological voting — by the legislator (Parker, 1989). The other issue is stability under majority rule. By observing that the legislature is a valuable resource that can be used by legislators to further their own interests, it is clear that they have an incentive to manage the resource to be as productive as possible, which produces institutions that generate output valuable to the legislators rather than cycles.Economic theory suggests that when a small number of individuals are sharing a non-exclusive resource, they should be able to negotiate a rights structure that maximizes the value of the resource to those individuals. The committee system, with assignments protected by the seniority system, assigns rights to produce legislation in such a way as to maximize the value of the legislature to the legislators.

The Economic Organization of Legislatures and How It Affects Congressional Voting

Congress confronts two major organizational problems that affect the behavior of legislators, party leaders, and groups doing business with congressional committees: The costly nature of monitoring and the absence of explicit mechanisms for upholding agreements. The problem of monitoring implies that party leaders will have a difficult time influencing decisions made in decision-making arenas where the actions of legislators are less visible, as in congressional committees. While legislators can evade leadership monitoring of their actions within committees, once an issue leaves a committee, the costs of monitoring decline, and leadership influence increases. The absence of mechanisms for assuring that legislators keep their bargains means that groups will place an emphasis on dealing with reliable legislators — those who can be counted upon to uphold their end of a bargain. Thus, party leaders are more effective in influencing floor voting because of their better ability to monitor legislator behavior; however, obligations to important interest groups will be more immune to leadership influence because of the incentives for committee members to adhere to their bargains.

The Selection of Committee Leaders in the House of Representatives

This paper examines the procedure for selecting committee leaders in the House of Representatives. Since this procedure provides for the election of committee leaders each Congress, membership evaluations of committee chairpersons have become critical in determining committee leadership. Leadership evaluation involves performance and personal appraisal. Performance appraisal reflects membership concern with the func tioning of the committees, whereas personal appraisal entails the application of a more personal set of criteria to the evaluation of committee leaders. The analysis uses two independent data sources: interviews with a random sample of 40 congressional Demo crats during the second session of the Ninety-Fourth Congress, and aggregate data relating to the characteristics of the incumbent committee leaders and the performance of their committees. These data sources complement one another and provide the opportunity for multiple confirmation of the conclusions reached in the analysis. Both the interview and aggregate data establish the centrality of performance concerns, especially leadership fairness, to the evaluation and selection of committee leaders.

The Question of Committee Bias Revisited

This study revisits the question of whether committees are biased in their policy outputs—pursuing policies at odds with noncommittee members. We find evidence that committees in the House are biased: Most committees are either more divided than the larger membership in the House, or there is a greater consensus within the committee than among noncommittee members. These patterns extend across all types of committees.

Stylistic Change in the U.S. Senate: 1959-1980

This paper provides evidence of stylistic changes in the constituency orientations of U.S. Senators during the last two decades. The analysis suggests that the increased perquisites of office have facilitated stylistic changes in the constituency orientations of senators: Increases in the travel allowance have generated greater state attention on the part of senators.