The Logic of Congressional Action [Hardcover]

R. Douglas Arnold (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 26, 1990

Congress regularly enacts laws that benefit particular groups or localities while imposing costs on everyone else. Sometimes, however, Congress breaks free of such parochial concerns and enacts bills that serve the general public, not just special interest groups. In this book, the author offers a theory that explains not only why special interest frequently triumph but also why the general public sometimes wins. By showing how legislative leaders build coalitions for both types of programs, he illuminates recent legislative decisions in such areas as economic, tax, and energy policy. The author's theory of policy making rests on a reinterpretation of the relationship between legislators' actions and their constituents' policy preferences. Most scholars explore the impact that citizens' existing policy preferences have on legislators' decisions. They ignore citizens who have no opinions because they assume that uninformed citizens cannot possibly affect legislators' choices. Arnold examines the influence of citizens' potential preferences, however, and argues that legislators also respond to these preferences in order to avoid future electoral problems. He shows how legislators estimate the political consequences of their voting decisions, taking into account both the existing preferences of attentive citizens and the potential preferences of inattentive citizens. He then analyzes how coalition leaders manipulate the legislative situation in order to make it attractive for legislators to support a general interest bill

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (September 26, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300048343
• ISBN-13: 978-0300048346
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,715,316 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a book which questions democratic accountability in congress, February 23, 1999

By 

"knudy" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Logic of Congressional Action (Paperback)

According to John G. Geer, a textbook account of a representative democracy is that representatives attempt to translate the public's view into governmental action. Legislators are supposed to represent and act on the interests of the electorate. Gere cites Edmund Burke's distinction between `trustee' democracy, in which politicians lead public opinion, and `delegate' democracy, in which politicians follow the public's will. Jean-Jacaques Rousseau believed that, ''the deputies of the people are not representatives; they are merely its agents". He expressed extreme cynicism regarding the British system of representation: "The English people believes itself to be free. It is greatly mistaken; it is free only during the election of the members of parliament, Once they are elected, the populace is enslaved; it is nothing." To the extent that Arnold's theory of Congressional behavior suggests that it is more necessary for legislators to identify issues that could make them vulnerable to challengers and to find the safe margin of decision making than for them to strictly adhere to the constituency opinion in roll-call voting, the US representative system seems to fall under `trustee' democracy, and is antidemocratic in the Rousseauian sense.

0 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Boring, Pointless and Long, August 27, 2009

By 

Katie - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Logic of Congressional Action (Paperback)

I would not recommend this book to anyone based on the writing style or conclusions drawn (I disagree with the author on many points). However, there is a lot of research that goes into this book, and it has some value because of that.