The Battle for Congress: Consultants, Candidates, and Voters

Commissioned Ridings: Designing Canada's Electoral Districts

Congressional Primaries and the Politics of Representation

Disjointed Pluralism: Institutional Innovation and the Development of the U.S. Congress

Eye of the Storm: The South and Congress in an Era of Change

Legislative Institutions and Ideology in Chile

The Politics of Institutional Choice: The Formation of the Russian State Duma

Southern Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives

The Uneasy Relationship Between Parliamentary Members and Leaders

 
The Battle for Congress: Consultants, Candidates, and Voters. James A. Thurber, editor. Brookings Institution Press, 2000. ISBN 0815784635, $17.95, paper, 200 pages.

The Battle for Congress uses a case study approach to examine and discuss current trends in congressional campaigns. These trends are the increased use of campaign consultants and the continued reliance upon interest groups. The authors identify and study six congressional races of the 1998 election cycle. These particular campaigns were chosen because they were considered competitive, a rare occurrence in congressional elections, and would therefore be evident of the characteristics they seek to examine. These six campaigns present a variety of campaign circumstances: two of the races were for open seats, two involved strong Democratic challengers, and two involved strong Republican challengers. The methodology utilized was participant observation. The authors, most of whom resided in the districts they studied, became intimately familiar with the district and the campaign process and staff. These observational insights represent original data regarding congressional candidates, campaigns, and campaign consultants. Case studies offer qualitatively valuable insights, and it is nice to see this method of study used. While it makes for very easy reading for congressional scholars, there are also substantive generalizations that this work is able to offer.

The increased reliance upon consultants and interest groups does affect the electoral process, and that which affects the electoral process then affects the quality of our democratic process. Thurber concludes that political parties have lost power over the campaign process while campaign consultants and interest groups have gained considerable influence. Of the six races studied, all of the winners relied upon highly professionalized consultants, often brought in from outside the candidate's district and/or state, and huge campaign coffers supplemented in part, if not in significant majority, by monies from PACs and interest groups. This makes it so that candidates are able to run highly personalized campaigns because they are not beholden to political party ties. In fact, these candidates often "ran away from, or against, their party positions." As a result, candidates are indebted to themselves, their contributors, and their constituents and not to political parties, their president, or some greater national interest. "Our case studies show that individualism is a necessity for getting elected and that this learned behavior creates a real impediment to forging commonalities among legislators once elected," Thurber surmises. This study indicates that what the nation requires of congressional representatives once elected, to work together for the public good, is not a vital component of the campaign process. These six races show that the presence of campaign consultants and interests from outside the political parties does not create an environment by which candidates come to Congress ready to work together for the public good. This is exactly why studies like this are a necessary component for understanding the actual quality of our democracy.

Commissioned Ridings: Designing Canada's Electoral Districts. John C. Courtney. McGill-Queen's University Press, 2001. ISBN 0773522263, $75.00, cloth, 259 pages.

In Commissioned Ridings, Courtney demonstrates the role of federalism, the courts, parliament, and representation principles in the creation of electoral systems. The focus is on Canada and the methods utilized by a nonpartisan commission to determine the shape and character of the single member districts. Courtney compares U.S. and Australian traditions to those of Canada to demonstrate where the formation of electoral laws in these nations diverged. Canada, unlike the United States and Australia, does not concentrate primarily on representation by population, a one person, one vote standard. Rather, other considerations, such as territorial representation and the representation of groups, has traditionally played a much larger role in Canadian electoral structuring.

The book is divided into eleven chapters and provides an index. The introduction explains the role of electoral districts as representational building blocks in a modern state. Chapter two sets the comparative stage, comparing the size of Canada's assemblies to other states and Canada's historical, constitutional, and political factors that have resulted in the determination of parliamentary seats. In Chapters three and four, Courtney examines the development of the policy process, the influence of Australia, and the role of federalism in Manitoba, Quebec, and at the federal level. The following four chapters outline the guidelines for the commissions, and the role of the commissions, the parliament, and the courts in the final product. Chapter nine addresses the impact of the Supreme Court ruling in Carter on commissions in the 1990s. The Carter decision, that "the right to vote . . . was not equality of voting power per se, but rather relative parity of voting power and the right to effective representation [and deviations from that parity] could be justified on grounds of minority representation and cultural and group identity"(172), presented the possibility of substantive change in the process of riding readjustment. Courtney finds that Carter is but one part of the set of principles available to decision-makers, which is used at the commission's discretion. The ninth chapter outlines the roles of effective representation and community of interest in electoral politics. He finds that it is the principle of effective representation which is most resonant in the popular tradition and is most salient in decision-making. The final chapter is a look at the output of these commissions and the likely future of electoral districts in Canada.

Courtney demonstrates that the underlying principle for representation in Canada is "effective representation," a distinctly different concept from the American and Australian guiding principle of electoral equality. By examining the case of reform in a single representative institution, Courtney is able to cut to the core principles of representation and its building blocks. This work is a useful tool for scholars of electoral systems and representation in many contexts.

Congressional Primaries and the Politics of Representation. Peter F. Galderisi, Marni Ezra, and Michael Lyons, editors. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2001. ISBN: 074250767X, $24.95, paper, 188 pages.

This is a fascinating set of brief essays that focus upon the ways congressional primary elections have changed electoral and congressional politics. Specifically, the essays address the types of candidates who run, the kind of support they receive, the various positions they take, the amount of resources they spend, the array of media coverage they receive, and the characteristics of the party nominees that prevail. Increasing the intellectual and pedagogical value of this book, the authors highlight the implications of their findings upon the assortment of actors involved in electoral politics.

The book is divided into three parts answering three questions: (1) why should we study and what are congressional primaries, (2) how do primaries influence general elections, (3) how do primaries influence the ideology of representatives. The first essay, co-authored by the editors Galderisi, Ezra, and Lyons, argues that regardless of whether primaries are competitive or not, their very existence justifies the need for credible and accurate scholarship for all students and teachers of political science. In addition, the authors believe that the presence of congressional primary elections and their effect on incumbents, potential candidates, political parties, interest groups, and constituents must be understood. The second and last essay in the first section briefly describes the historical development of congressional primaries. Galderisi and Ezra show that the history of congressional primaries has not been uniform and diverges widely across time and region. Nonetheless, the congressional primary is the gateway to office; as such, it plays an important role in electoral politics.

The essays that comprise part two of the book generally focus upon how primaries influence general elections. For example, Sandy Maisel and Walter Stone, in the third essay, use data from the Candidate Emergence Study to argue that the existence of a primary election has a negative impact upon a potential candidate's decision to run for the House of Representatives. In chapter four, Marni Ezra challenges orthodox literature that had found primary competition to be a hindrance to general election success. Rather, Ezra finds that challengers and incumbents alike can actually be helped by primary competitiveness in some situations. Moving away from the subject of candidates and primaries, Jay Goodliffe and David Magleby concentrate on spending patterns in primary elections. The authors find that spending patterns in House primaries generally resemble the same spending patterns observed in House general elections. Finally, John C. Green explores the role of the Christian Right in the 1998 campaigns. His evidence suggests that amateur activists in some instance can use the nomination process to further their agenda; however, this type of involvement is often risky and fails.

The essays of the third part address the impact of congressional primaries on representation. Barry Burden, in his essay "The Polarizing Effects of Congressional Primaries," argues that primary winners do no not converge in the general elections. Thus, primary elections have a polarizing effect and tend to produce extremists. The next essay, by Kristin Kanthak and Rebecca Morton, shows that subtle differences in the rules and structure alter the nature of House general elections. Specifically, they demonstrate that an open primary system appears to benefit the moderate candidate, but too much openness can inadvertently result in more extreme candidate positions. Focusing upon the Senate, Bernard Grofman and Thomas Brunell similarly seek to discover whether subtle differences in the rules influence Senate elections. They conclude that the type of primary can explain ideological differences. The last essay in this section is a case study of California's experience with the blanket primary. Elisabeth Gerber finds that blanket primaries produced higher levels of crossover voting, increased participation, and more moderate candidates.

This book successfully demonstrates that the existence of congressional primaries simply cannot be ignored. Despite the fact that primaries are generally non-competitive and receive little attention, they undoubtedly play an instrumental role in the American electoral process. While comparative congressional scholars will be disappointed by the absence of any cross-national or explicit cross-state studies, the absence of these studies should serve as an excellent point of departure for future research. At the very least, students and instructors of Congress have at their disposal a brief and simple collection of essays covering an important, yet obscure, facet of electoral politics.
 

Disjointed Pluralism: Institutional Innovation and the Development of the U.S. Congress. Eric Schickler. Princeton University Press, 2001. ISBN 0691049262, $22.95, paper, 350 pages.

Disjointed Pluralism offers an explanation of institutional innovation in the Congress based on the premise that none among prevalent theoretical explanations of congressional change is able to capture its complexity. Instead, Schickler argues, innovation takes place when members pursuing disparate goals coalesce around reform strategies. Reform is thus "disjointed" because no single theoretical explanation suffices.

In effect, Schickler's strategy is to disaggregate the concept of interest. Instead of assuming that members are motivated by an overarching interest in reelection, chamber control, policy, or career advancement (to mention several usual suspects), it makes more sense to suggest that there are a variety of self-interested motivations at play and that what happens will depend upon how the varying interests come together in a particular historical period to shape incentives for institutional change.

To examine this premise, Schickler traces congressional innovation during four periods: 1890-1910, 1919-1932, 1937-1952, and 1970-1989. Each of these periods is given a distinct characterization based on an analysis of the configuration of interests that predominated and the nature of the innovations that were produced. In developing his case, Schickler appeals to a wide variety of evidence that includes the identification of key innovations, the arraying of parties at interest, narratives explaining their motivations and actions, and statistical analysis of votes.

Schickler's aim is to forge a synthesis of the rational choice approach, with its emphasis on generalizations derived from assumptions about human motivation, and historical-institutional approaches, which emphasize narrative interpretation. To an extent he succeeds. That is, we find here an analytic structure that is an elaboration upon (or perhaps a synthesis of) prevailing rational choice theories, as well as a set of rich narratives offering interpretation of historical events. Schickler demonstrates that the simplifying assumptions of rational choice theory can distort our understanding unless set within a more comprehensive framework, and that historical narratives may lead nowhere unless guided by theory.

Schickler's search is for an overarching theory. He rejects other rational choice theories as too limited in scope. His solution is a "meta" theory that would integrate them all. The search for a comprehensive theory of social institutions is, like Einstein's search for a unified field theory, a quest for the philosopher's stone. Its conclusion might be that "everything counts." It is not Congress alone that is disjointed; so too is our effort to explain it.

Eye of the Storm: The South and Congress in an Era of Change. John C. Kuzenski, Laurence W. Moreland, and Robert P Steed, editors. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001. ISBN 0275971147, $59.95, cloth, 232 pages.

V.O. Key was one of the first scholars to note how pivotal the southern region of the United States is to American politics. Since Key, many students of the Congress have made the case that the South is unique in its congressional politics and warrants study as a unique region. In this edited volume, many of the authors challenge such an assumption. The South has undergone many changes since Key's seminal 1949 book, and Eye of the Storm suggests it is time we reexamine whether or not the South should be treated as a unique region in congressional politics.

Every chapter in this book adds to our knowledge of southern politics, but a few warrant specific mention. Ronald Keith Gaddie and Donna R. Hoffman start the book off with an affirmation of what scholars have been long awaiting: news of a realignment. They note that the realignment, though unique in the sense that it did not hinge upon a single critical event, has been concentrated in the southern region and has been secular in nature. This slow-moving partisan shift culminated in the 1994 mid-term election, when the Republicans gained control of Congress. Nicol C. Rae observes how the relatively cohesive message of the 1994 election changed both the way the Republicans operate and the Democratic agenda. Having to account for the perceived shift in the electorate, President Clinton likewise shifted rhetorically away from "big government" liberalism. Looking at party defectors in the South, James M. Glaser finds further evidence of a secular realignment. Newly converted Republicans vote much more conservatively than they did as Democrats, not surprisingly, perhaps due to their new election constituency, the influence of their colleagues, or because they had conservative tendencies all along but felt pressure from other Democrats to moderate their views.

In an interesting turn on conventional assumptions, Ronald M. Peters, Jr. looks at the disproportionate number of party leaders from the South since congressional reforms. He suggests that this might be due to the fact that southern Republicans tend to represent mainstream Republicanism more so than any partisans from any other region. Since the conservative Democrats in the South have realigned with the Republican party, what have been left behind are the more liberal Democrats, a group more ideologically synchronized with northeastern Democrats than at any other point in history. This evidence implies that what separates the South from the rest of the country politically is not geography, but rather ideology. Southern leaders are selected because they are the quintessence of the Republican credo, not because geography matters in a way that it has in the past.

While there may be some differences of opinion regarding the exact impact the South has on politics today, every chapter in this volume confirms the general proposition that the metamorphosis of the Congress over the past fifty years would be inadequately explained without a comprehensive look at changes in southern politics. This volume's merit lies in the authors' attempts to reexamine conventional thought on the South while probing below the surface level to understand the sources of change in American politics.
 

Legislative Institutions and Ideology in Chile. John B. Londregan. Cambridge University Press, 2000. ISBN 052177084X, $60.00, cloth, 280 pages.

Londregan examines the effect of the Chilean constitution on the legislature's ability to enact law. He uses the Chilean example to demonstrate both the twists of the negotiation process and its outcome. He explores the strengths and weaknesses of the constitutions left by outgoing military governments. He finds that the Pinochet constitution restricts the ability of the electorate to enact laws in keeping with their preferences. The powerful presidency reduces the amount of flexibility legislative leaders have to adapt, but Londregan finds that in the Chilean context, the powerful presidency offers the appropriate flexibility for a controlled transition back to democracy. The Chilean example is not universally applicable as Londregan notes: "Countries with deep and persistent ethnic, religious, or regional conflicts should be cautious about adopting the Chilean model" (11). The restrictive nature of this system would prevent strife-torn nations from achieving successful transition to democracy.

The book is divided into ten chapters and provides an index. The introduction provides a plan of the book and an introduction to the Chilean case. In chapter one, Londregan explains his policy model and the role of valence. This model measures the ability of legislatures and executives to formulate high valence proposals within constitutional restrictions. Chapter two addresses the "ideological legacy of Allende and Pinochet"(51) and the effect of that legacy on constitution building. Chapter three outlines the institutional structures created by the 1980 Constitution, with particular emphasis on the Senate's status as a House divided, comprised of both "institutional" Senators and elected Senators. In the next four chapters Londregan uses his model to measure preferences in Senate roll call votes in three Senate committees across the four issue areas of labor, education, morality, and human rights. Chapter eight addresses the interaction of social, moral, and human rights issues in a multi-dimensional preference model and the prospects for Chile's complete democratic transition. In the final chapter, Londregan discusses how his model may be applied to other constitutional systems in transition.

This study presents useful lessons for democracies in transition. John B. Londregan applies sophisticated statistical methods to demonstrate how the Chilean constitution of 1980 continues to constrain the legislative process. He shows that the legacy of dictatorship extends beyond the scars of human rights abuses to impinge the processes of democracy.
 

The Politics of Institutional Choice: The Formation of the Russian State Duma. Steven S. Smith and Thomas F. Remington. Princeton University Press, 2001. ISBN: 0691057362, $42.50, cloth, 160 pages.

Smith and Remington examine the degree to which re-election, policy, and partisan goals account for institutional design choices. In particular, they examine the electoral system, the leadership structure within the legislature, the committee behavior, and floor voting in order to determine whether these goals are relevant. The authors find that no overarching goal accounts for legislative behavior, rather, legislatures have multiple goals, and each of these goals vary in importance systematically and predictably.

The book is divided into seven chapters. The first chapter provides a brief history of the Duma as it has developed and an introduction to the institutional theories that provide a basis for this work. In the next five chapters the authors demonstrate how legislators' articulated and assumed goals corresponded with actual votes regarding institutional choice. In the final chapter, Smith and Remington show that the institutional choices made in the 1993 Duma were continued by the two successive Dumas. An index and an appendix which describes the data used in the study are also included in the book.

Smith and Remington hypothesize that the "policy, electoral, and partisan differences among parliamentarians structured their preferences ... about the internal organization of the Duma" (21). Their analysis indicates that the legislators exhibit each of these goals, but the weight and relevance of these goals vary according to the particular political context and the certainty of the consequences of the legislators' actions. When deciding upon a course of action, the legislator will prioritize the goal which is more immediately and more clearly affected, and so as certainty and temporal consequence become more distant in the context of one goal, a goal will be favored whose consequences are more locally rational.

Smith and Remington have presented a study that is relevant for scholars of institutional choice in legislative bodies and for scholars of legislative behavior. The Russian case seems to demonstrate that legislators have multiple goals whose importance varies predictably according to the political context. The authors demonstrate that these multiple goals are not merely influenced by institutional structures, but are instrumental in the choice of institutional structures.

Southern Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives. Stanley P. Berard. University of Oklahoma Press, 2001. ISBN 0806133058, $22.95, paper, 272 pages.

In this work, Berard seeks to provide some explanation for the rise in party voting in the House of Representatives in the late 1980s. Finding this party cohesion primarily in the Democratic party, Berard looks to the southern Democratic representatives as a means of explanation for this partisan change.

Building on the commonly held assumption that members will vote in accordance with constituent views in most cases, Berard examines the voting behavior of southern Democratic members and the preferences and attitudes of the districts from which they were elected.

Through this examination, Berard finds that, indeed, the voting patterns of southern Democrats are more in line with those of their northern Democratic colleagues. Berard attributes this change to a "northernization" of southern Democratic constituencies. Urbanization and the mobilization of black voters have served to make the Democratic party in the South more liberal. At the same time, a rise in credible Republican electoral competition has pulled the most conservative Southerners to the Republican party, leaving a more moderate to liberal base in the Democratic party. Berard concludes from these findings that the rise in party line voting among Democrats is due in large part to a change in the constituencies that elect southern Democrats. Southern Democratic constituencies are becoming more like northern Democratic constituencies. Berard does point out that these "northernizing" factors do not account for all of the rise in party voting, but they do provide a solid starting point from which to conduct further analysis.

For the student of southern politics, this book is a worthwhile undertaking. Berard's conceptualization of the new South raises some interesting questions, and provides several avenues for future research.

The Uneasy Relationship Between Parliamentary Members and Leaders. Lawrence D. Longley and Reuven Y. Hazan, editors. Frank Cass & Co. Ltd., 2000. ISBN 0714650595, $57.50, cloth, 344 pages.

Longley and Hazan present a collection of articles examining the impact of institutional features on the delicate balance between parliamentary leaders and members. The scope of articles encompasses the range of Western democratic states, including case studies on Great Britain, Israel, New Zealand, Germany, and the United States as well as broader comparative studies encompassing most advanced democracies. These studies shed light on the distinctions between institutions and political cultures that result in a diversity of power relationships between members and leaders in parliaments. The book is divided into ten chapters. In the first chapter, Longley and Hazan provide an overview of the roles and tools of parliamentary leaders and members, and comment on the impact of differing institutions on the utility and balance of these roles and tools. The remaining nine chapters, written by a number of authors, examine these relationships in particular institutional settings. An index and abstracts describing each of the articles are also included in the text.

Each chapter offers insight into aspects of the relationship between leaders and members. In chapter two, "What Can an Individual MP Do in German Parliamentary Politics?," Werner J. Patzelt finds that the particular institutional features of the German political system shape the deputies' rational choices. Philip Norton, in "The Individual Member in the British House of Commons: Facing both Ways and Marching Forward," shows that individual Members of Parliament increased their institutional power during the twentieth century, but not proportionately to the degree to which they increased their constituency service. In the fourth chapter, "From Committee Government to Party Government," John E. Owens demonstrates that the norms of apprenticeship in the United States House of Representatives have not declined in floor behaviors, but these norms now conform to the change from committee government (pre-1970s) to party government. In "The Individual Parliamentary Member and Institutional Change: The Changing Role of the New Zealand Member of Parliament," Fiona Barker and Stephen Levine demonstrate that the recently enacted electoral reforms have not yet increased the power of individual Members of Parliament, rather, the political culture of New Zealand, which favors collective decision-making, appears to be the persistent factor in the balance of power between the cabinet and individual members.

The next three chapters are broader comparative studies. In chapter six, "Parliamentary Members and Leaders as Agents of Reform: Parliamentary and Regime Change Revisited," Longley and Taylor M. Hoffman demonstrate that institutional change in parliament results in regime change. In "The Office of the Speaker in Comparative Perspective," Stanley Bach compares the basic functions of Speakers across several democratic assemblies and finds that differences in these functions impact the distribution of power within the assembly and the capacity of the majority to control the proceedings. In chapter eight, "Coalition Agreements in Parliamentary Democracies," Kaare Strøm and Wolfgang C. Müller assess the choices of agreements and governance institutions in the thirteen European democracies which most often require coalition government and find that both the number of parties and the length of time determine those choices.

Chapters nine and ten address particular cases. Barbara Sinclair examines the "Dilemmas and Opportunities of Legislative Leadership in a Non-Parliamentary System: The U.S. Case," and finds that there has been an increase in leadership power since the change from committee government to party government in the 1970s. In the final chapter, "Yes, Institutions Matter: The Impact of Institutional Reform on Parliamentary Members and Leaders in Israel," Reuven Y. Hazan finds that the electoral changes in Israel dramatically increase both the autonomy of individual Members of Parliament and the independence of the Prime Minister, making legislative agenda-setting and output very difficult. The exploration of different institutional aspects of parliaments makes this work an invaluable addition to the field of comparative legislative studies.