Congressional Communication: Content and Consequences

by Daniel William Lipinski

Overview

"Lipinski's impressive analysis of members' communications with constituents yields major insights about partisanship, effects on reelection prospects, and constituent evaluations."
—Bruce Oppenheimer, Vanderbilt University

"The communication between representatives and their constituents is where election strategy and policy explanations are merged and, until now, we have had only anecdotal evidence. Lipinski's book sheds light on this important part of American political life."
—David Brady, Stanford University


Congressional Communication challenges the notion that legislators "run against Congress" by routinely denigrating the institution. Using a unique, systematic analysis of the communication from members of Congress to their constituents over a five-year period, Daniel Lipinski challenges this notion, demonstrating key partisan differences in representatives' portrayals of congressional activities. While members of the majority party tend to report that the institution-and, hence, their party-is performing well, members of the minority party are more likely to accuse Congress of doing a poor job.

The findings in Congressional Communication offer the first strong empirical evidence from the electoral arena in support of controversial party government theories. Moving beyond previous studies that look only at legislators' messages, Lipinski's research also reveals the effects of these politically strategic claims on voters, whose interpretations don't necessarily bear out the legislators' intended effects.

Daniel Lipinski is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Tennessee.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780472030194
Publisher:	University of Michigan Press
Publication date:	09/09/2004
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Daniel Lipinski is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Tennessee.

Read an Excerpt

Congressional Communication
Content & Consequences

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By Daniel Lipinski
The University of Michigan Press
Copyright © 2004
University of Michigan
All right reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-472-03019-4

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Chapter One STUDYING CONGRESSIONAL COMMUNICATION

When communicating with constituents, every politician is thinking strategically; if he says he's not he is lying. -Veteran Capitol Hill staff member

THE IMPORTANCE OF CONGRESSIONAL COMMUNICATION

In recent decades congressional scholars have developed a much better understanding of the representative-constituent connection by taking a broader view of representation. Instead of focusing strictly on the congruence of representatives' roll call votes with the preferences of their constituents, attention has been given to the wide variety of activities engaged in by members that both reflect and affect their bonds with constituents (for examples, see Mayhew 1974a; Fiorina, esp. 1979; Fenno, esp. 1978; Parker 1986). In the move away from studying representation in terms of specific votes, the shift in focus to members' communication with constituents was critical. If the representational relationship is significantly affected by public perceptions, we must know what legislators are doing strategically to shape constituents' views and the impact that these actions are having. In this book I provide rich, systematic measures of the content of the messages sent by members of the U.S. House of Representatives to their constituents and then demonstrate the consequences of this communication, focusing specifically on evaluations of congressional performance. My findings challenge the conventional wisdom that members "run against Congress" and provide valuable support for theories claiming the importance of congressional parties.

While congressional scholars have only recently given more attention to communication from representatives to constituents, democratic theorists have long recognized it as an important component of representation. Thomas Jefferson professed that members had both a right and a duty to communicate with constituents. When a grand jury in Virginia charged that one congressman's correspondence with his constituents was a threat to the government, Jefferson defended him "as a good and dutiful representative, [who] was in the habit of corresponding with many of his constituents and communicating to us ... information of the public proceedings" (1955, 164). Permeating democratic theory is the idea that the people, through frequent elections, are the source of authority for government and the primary safeguard against its abuses. Constituents need information to fulfill their responsibilities in the system and to protect their own interests; therefore they need sources of such data.

Surveys indicate the importance that the public places on members providing them with information. In the 1978 American National Election Study (ANES) respondents said that the number one job of House members should be "keeping in touch with the people about what government is doing." The potential impact of members' direct communication is especially significant because the news media do not provide a large amount of information about Congress or individual representatives. Congress and its members garner little attention on either the national (Davis 1987; Cook 1989) or local levels (Vinson 2002). Since constituents are often left with little information, they have to rely on the communication that comes directly from their representatives.

"RUNNING AGAINST CONGRESS"

But members' communication cannot be understood as motivated purely by a desire to serve their duty. As Madison stated in Federalist 52, the House of Representatives was designed to "have an immediate dependence on, and an intimate sympathy with, the people" (1987, 323-24). The fact that elections take place every two years provides representatives with a strong incentive to send self-interested messages designed to build the support of constituents. Mayhew (1974a) posited members as single-minded seekers of reelection and claimed that this goal leads them to communicate messages that serve three purposes: advertising, credit claiming, and position taking. All of these messages are strategically designed to be self-promotional. Many of our perceptions of congressional communication come from Richard Fenno's observational study of eighteen representatives described in Home Style (1978). Fenno assumed that members have three goals: reelection, good public policy, and power (1973). However, "for most members of Congress most of the time, [the] electoral goal is primary" (1978, 31). In pursuit of reelection a member develops a "home style" chosen to build the trust of constituents. Two of the three activities that compose a "home style" directly involve communication: "presentation of self" and "explanation of Washington activities."

Fenno's unique research in Home Style revealed many different aspects of representatives' relationships with their constituents. But while following representatives as they interacted with constituents in their districts he was particularly surprised by one consistent message he heard. Fenno summarized this discovery with a statement that has become one of the most frequently quoted dicta in congressional studies: "members of Congress run for Congress by running against Congress" (1978, 168). A representative was said to do this by "differentiating himself or herself from the others in Congress, attacking Congress as an institution, and portraying himself or herself as a fighter against its manifest shortcomings" (168). Although Fenno did not explicitly state the claim, he implied that all members had the same incentives to make this behavior a part of their home style.

Nothing ... had prepared me to discover that each member of Congress polishes his or her individual reputation at the expense of the institutional reputation of Congress.... [T]he members' process of differentiating themselves from the Congress as a whole only served, directly or indirectly, to downgrade the Congress. (164)

Soon thereafter, Cook's (1979) analysis of survey data led him to conclude that he had found "some empirical corroboration for Fenno's suggestions that members of Congress win reelection by running against the institution of Congress" (48). Thus the evidence suggested that this was a common, dominant strategy that produced the intended positive electoral results for members.

The belief that members "run against Congress" was quickly embraced and is now considered conventional wisdom. The widespread acceptance and impact can be seen in various types of work, from articles exploring public attitudes toward Congress (for example, see Patterson and Caldeira 1990), to popular textbooks about the institution (see Davidson and Oleszek 2003), to introductory American government course books (see Fiorina and Peterson 2003). This notion has a number of implications for our understanding of Congress. In regard to members' behavioral motivations, it suggests that all representatives-no matter their personal partisanship, constituents' partisanship, electoral context, or other environmental factors-have incentives that motivate them to send messages denigrating the institution. One of the most important implications relates to the controversial congressional party government theories that suggest that members will rhetorically support and run with their parties when seeking reelection (see esp. Cox and McCubbins 1993). If partisanship is not important in shaping the messages legislators send, then the theories purporting the importance of parties are undermined.

IMPLICATIONS OF "RUNNING AGAINST CONGRESS"

This belief concerning what members communicate about the institution also has significant ramifications for the representative-constituent relationship. If "running against Congress" is an ongoing electoral strategy, members must believe that this is an effective method of building constituents' trust. We have some limited evidence suggesting that this has been true (Cook 1979), but if it is such a prevalent strategy it is certainly worth more careful empirical study. After all, in order to be an effective strategy, members must be communicating this message, constituents must be receiving it and accepting it as intended by legislators, and the information must be persuasive in shaping votes. While most literature examining the content of members' communication at least implicitly assumes that this behavior accomplishes its goals, there is little empirical evidence demonstrating any impact, much less a significant effect on elections.

There is one more widely believed (though not necessary) implication of the "running against Congress" dictum in regard to the effect on public views of the institution. If members are continually denigrating Congress when they communicate with their constituents they could be influencing public views of the institution. One of the best-known and enduring aspects of the public's relationship with Congress is the low approval rating that the institution historically receives in opinion polls (Durr, Gilmour, and Wolbrecht 1997; Parker 1981; Patterson and Magleby 1992). The assumption that members' consistently negative messages concerning Congress were at least partially responsible for the institution's low approval ratings also became accepted in congressional studies (see Fenno 1975; Cook 1979). Thus the reputation of the institution (and perhaps its legitimacy), at least in the eyes of congressional scholars, is impacted when members send these negative messages.

Despite the critical implications of this belief for our understanding of many different aspects of Congress, congressional scholars have failed to take a second look at whether members are "running against Congress." While Home Style will always remain one of the most important works on the representative-constituent relationship (and probably the most significant work), we must take into account that the findings were based on limited observations made more than twenty-five years ago. But the need for a new examination of congressional communication, especially members' messages regarding the performance of the institution, goes beyond these reasons. Recent claims in congressional literature prompt us to question whether all members have incentives for "running against Congress." Most significantly, party government theories say that majority party representatives grant their leadership important powers that can be used to encourage and discipline reluctant members to act in ways that promote the passage of partisan legislation (Rohde 1991; Cox and McCubbins 1993; Sinclair 1995, 1999; Aldrich and Rohde 1998). The purpose is both to pass a legislative agenda favored by most party members and to build the party's reputation with the public. But reputations are not shaped only by actions; they can be influenced by the messages received by the public. This suggests that members in the majority have an incentive to praise their party when they communicate with the public in order to build favorable perceptions of the way the institution is being managed. Thus these theories suggest that majority party members actually have an electoral incentive to be positive about institutional performance in order to build their party's record. "Running against Congress" would serve to harm public perceptions of the party that controls the institution.

A new examination of representatives' messages about Congress would not only test the conventional wisdom and all its implications, but it also would be a unique check of the predictions of party government theories in the electoral arena. If this study confirmed Fenno's finding we could confidently continue to hold and work with the belief that members "run against Congress" and all that this suggests about congressional representation. In addition, we would have even stronger evidence corroborating Krehbiel's anecdotal data from 1994 and 1996 rejecting the party government prediction (1998). However, if we find that members are not all running against Congress, and further that members' messages are significantly impacted by partisanship, we have evidence supporting party government theories in the arena of electoral campaigning.

STUDYING THE IMPACT OF COMMUNICATION

Studying the messages sent by representatives even without any evidence that they have an impact would still be worthwhile for improving our understanding of members' behavior. But by testing the impact we will better understand the consequences of this communication. In order to have any effect messages first have to be received and remembered by the intended recipient. There is only scant empirical evidence that members have the ability to communicate successfully with constituents. Jacobson (2001) demonstrated that various forms of contact that members make with constituents can affect general public perceptions. Cover and Brumberg (1982) found that mailing nonpolitical, practical information to constituents can cause at least a short-term improvement in a representative's evaluations. But no studies have examined the extent to which members can successfully communicate specific pieces of information or the impact that certain messages have on reelection.

Ideally we could measure whether or not constituents have received and accepted their representative's messages about congressional performance and then test the impact that this has on voting. Unfortunately this is not possible with the available data and methods. Therefore I devised two separate tests of members' communication capabilities. First, I tested whether members can successfully communicate a particular piece of information crucial to the representative-constituent connection-the position they have taken on specific votes. Because votes are discrete pieces of information rather than opinions shaped by countless sources over a boundless time period, it is easier to measure members' impact on their constituents' knowledge of these. Using individual-level data and a previously formulated model controlling for other factors affecting the likelihood of knowing a representative's vote, we can measure the degree to which members can successfully communicate chosen information to their constituents.

Next, I studied whether members' messages about congressional performance could have an effect on their electoral chances. No matter what messages are being sent, congressional scholars would agree that the main purpose of this communication is to increase the likelihood of winning reelection. In order to test the success of this strategy I looked at macrolevel data from the 1994 elections to see whether members' messages evaluating congressional performance had a significant impact on whether they won or lost reelection.

One reason that the content of members' communication with their constituents has been largely ignored since Home Style is the difficulty of either reproducing Fenno's demanding observational study or developing an alternative method for examining members' messages. Each member of Congress has his own style in regard to not only his message content but also his communication methods. Since members face different constraints and opportunities they utilize varying methods that make it difficult to find a common measure of content that is realistically available for analysis. In order to overcome this obstacle I conducted a content analysis on all the official mass mailings sent by representatives to their constituents in 100 randomly selected districts between 1991 and 1995. The most common form of this type of mail is the newsletter, sent either to all constituents or to targeted groups based on issue interest or geography. The messages contained in mailings provide a good proxy for those sent by members in all forms of communication.

PLAN OF THE BOOK

The next chapter continues the discussion of mass mailings and the other data that were used for this study. I define what mass mailings are and how they were gathered for this study and I explain why mail content serves as an excellent proxy for the messages members send through all methods of communication. Then I discuss how representatives utilize these as an integral part of their communication strategies. I also describe how the surveys and interviews of representatives and their staffs were conducted in order to add depth to the empirical data.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Congressional Communication by Daniel Lipinski
Copyright © 2004 by University of Michigan . Excerpted by permission.
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Table of Contents

	List of Tables	xi
Chapter 1	Studying Congressional Communication	1
Chapter 2	Measuring Members' Messages with Mail	9
I	Content
Chapter 3	Members' Messages Regarding Congress	19
Chapter 4	Running with the Party	47
II	Consequences
Chapter 5	Members' Success in Communicating Information to Constituents	73
Chapter 6	The Electoral Impact of Members' Messages	89
Chapter 7	A New View of Members' Behavior and the Representative-Constituent Connection	101
	Appendixes	111
	Notes	125
	Bibliography	135
	Index	141