Americans, Congress, and Democratic Responsiveness: Public Evaluations of Congress and Electoral Consequences

2. Responding to Congressional Policy

18 ] CHAPTER 2 Responding to Congressional Policy One of our main arguments in this book is that the public responds to congressional policy behavior when evaluating the performance of Congress. As we discussed in the introduction, this argument is consistent with the thinking of many political commentators and members of Congress themselves, but key elements of the argument may raise some eyebrows in the scholarly community. The first such element is our argument that Americans desire policy representation from Congress. The second is our argument that Americans are able to obtain reasonable information regarding Congress’s general policy leanings. The final element is our contention that Americans are capable of processing this information and using it in a reasonable way to judge Congress. To demonstrate that our overall argument regarding policy concerns is valid, we need to provide evidence in support of each of these particular points. In this chapter, we momentarily put aside questions of Americans’ informational capabilities (addressed in chap. 3) and precisely how Americans process policy information (addressed in chap. 4). We here focus specific attention on the first question: do Americans care about policy representation by Congress? We review existing evidence and discuss some of the difficulties past studies have had in attempting to address this particular issue. We then introduce our own methodological approach : a controlled survey experiment. By specifically providing individuals with select policy information about Congress, we are able to isolate the question of whether or not they choose to use that policy information when evaluating Congress. After presenting the results, we conclude with a discussion of what we have (and have not) learned from this exercise , placing it in the larger context of our overall argument and our pluralistic research strategy. Responding to Congressional Policy [ 19 existing studies Existing research demonstrates that Americans use multiple criteria to evaluate the job performance of Congress. In particular, many studies find that citizens consider the state of the national economy when making their judgments about how well Congress is doing its job (Durr, Gilmour, and Wolbrecht 1997; Parker 1977; Patterson and Caldeira 1990; Rudolph 2003; Stimson 2004). Positive perceptions of the national economy can help to boost approval of Congress, while negative perceptions can lead to disapproval. At the same time, many studies find that citizens also at least partly base their evaluations of Congress on the way in which Congress does its job (Hibbing and Theiss-Morse 1995, 2002; see also Fenno 1975; Parker and Davidson 1979). If people perceive congressional processes to be too inefficient or too unfair (biased toward special interests), they are less likely to approve of Congress’s job performance. Overall, there is strong evidence that both of these factors—economic concerns and process concerns—contribute to Americans’ evaluations of Congress. While we do not dispute the significant role played by economic and process concerns, we believe that there is another important factor contributing to Americans’ judgments of Congress: a desire for policy representation . The idea that Americans might want their policy views to be represented in government is not new to scholars. As discussed in chapter 1, it is featured prominently in classic theoretical treatments of politics , such as in the work of Anthony Downs (1957). Empirical studies have confirmed that policy compatibility significantly affects public evaluations of the job performance of other political actors, including the president (Ragsdale 1991) and individual members of Congress (Binder, Maltzman, Sigelman 1998). Similarly, we believe that a desire for policy compatibility also contributes to public attitudes toward the collective Congress. The more information a citizen receives indicating that Congress is acting contrary to his or her own policy preferences, the less likely that citizen will be to approve of Congress, all else being equal. The feature of our theory that distinguishes it from other theories of congressional evaluation is its focus on policy content. The idea is somewhat analogous to Mayhew’s (1974) discussion of the public’s interest in position taking on the part of their own individual member of Congress. Mayhew says that the most important aspect of position taking is that a member takes policy positions that align with the positions of his or her constituents, not that a member’s positions necessarily carry the day or 20 ] americans, congress, and democratic responsiveness that a member devotes a great deal of effort during the legislative process: “The position itself is...