Lecture Notes

Since I did not get through everything I wanted to talk about I am posting my lecture notes. If they don't make sense in this form feel free to ask me about them in class or in an email.

Congress:

What we want you to do is learn to ask questions like a political scientist. To do that you have to first decide that something is worth explaining.

In the case of the revolution and constitution chapter we had the fact that the richest and lowest taxed people in the world revolted over taxes so they could increase taxes on themselves. Notice that the RA model that the authors push does not do that great a job explaining it. Maybe we need another model.

We looked at the courts. The thing that needed to be explained there was the power of the courts. Why? Because the courts seem to defy the logic of a majoritarian system that would vest power in the median voter and instead gives power to a particular institution. Because it had no precedent in the British system or the world. Because it wasn’t written in the text of the constitution or envisioned by its authors. Because it seems to defy our normal understanding of R/D power in that the courts don’t have an army or anything they can take away from the political branches unless the political branches agree to it. The RA explanation model offered a good story of the short-sightedness of Madison in taking Marshall’s offer of letting him make appointments in exchange for letting Marshall interpret the constitution. But Tocqueville offers a different explanation.

Now we are at the Center of American government, the Congress. What needs to be explained here? What is different or odd about it? Well, the question can be posed as a number of comparisons, a number of things that one might reasonably expect the Congress to be similar to but in fact is not similar to.

Britain. Our Congress was designed by Englishmen who were almost all members of congresses that were patterned on the British Parliament. They have the same culture, language and legal tradition.

Other former colonies (Australia, Canada, New Zeland) are basically like the Mother country instead of us.

Other Congress/President (as opposed to Parliamentary systems) such as in most of Latin America and, well, not that many other places. The Countries of South America have Congresses but they are much weaker than ours; most of the power lies with the President. Other places that have Presidents are really parliamentary systems with a ceremonial head of state, just as the Queen of England is now mainly ceremonial (though she in fact has a lot of powers if she ever feels like using them).

The ideals of Classical Republicanism. The debate, deliberation and group decision making that one might have expected from people that patterned themselves after the ancients. Moreover, the equality that one would have expected has been replaced by hierarchical bureaucracy, that has no place in the Greek ideal or the text of the Constitution. There is little of the open debate that actually determined events in Greece (Themestocles and the Spartan Admiral).

The formal document: the powers given the Congress in the Constitution seem to be much more formidable than the body we see today. Externally it seems to have less power. At the same time, the formal document gives no hint of the internal hierarchy that determines most decision making in Congress.

The founders’ (Federalists) scheme: they thought that the house would be the most vulnerable to popular pressure and therefore closest to the median voter and the quickest to respond to changes in popular opinion. Accordingly they expected it to be the Congress to have the highest turnover and the most popularity. In fact, it has the lowest turnover and is profoundly unpopular.


History: at one time the Congress was what the Founders expected. It ran the country, it declared war and actually conducted them (though not very well—ask Jimmy Madison). It governed, making appointments. Lincoln’s speeches.

The expectations of resource dependency power theory (or, ‘the golden rule’): you would expect the institution that has discretion over almost all key resources would be the most powerful (which it may be) and seen as such (which it almost never is). This is the key question in American Government. Congress is filled with people that point the finger and run the investigations, but is it the real power? Does it just pretend to be powerless so it can do a Claude Raines? (I’m shocked! Shocked to find construction money not being spent on levees, torture, NSA spying). Is it just maintaining plausible deniability?

What causes all this? Demands of information? Demands of decision theory? Collective action’s effects on interest group politics? Human psychology? Institutional Competition in the face of historical contingency? (growth, war).


Do interest groups buy votes?

Why do House members have higher re-election rates than Senators? Why is Barak Obama different from Cynthia McKinney?

Why do Americans love to hate Congress? Tocqueville’s answer (Hibbing and These-Morris)?

Why is the Congress more afraid of used car sales men and funeral directors than millionaires?