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CHAPTER 7 Beliefs and the Influences on Legislative Behavior People are motivated to go [to the senate] for a variety of reasons. There are crusaders, there are people who want to have their influence on public policy in terms of that. And there are those who are caught by the whole political bug.... And then there are others who want personal gain. And everybody's in it because they've got an ego, and they like the system and the politics of it. There are those who utilize it to improve their own lot. There's a lot of all of that in the senate. I don't want to name names but there are those who really want the public office, there are those who want to make some money, and utilize contacts they make, get themselves on committees to get some work that they happen to be in, to help their firms. There are those who want to be perceived as very influential, and a leader, and therefore they try to pull everybody together to do certain things, right or wrong. There's a lot of pack mentality in there, which is unfortunate .... You're perceived as the leader: "boy, this guy can pull it together ; therefore, he deserves three more credits towards being governor," or whatever. And to disagree, you don't do that. ... I'm not one who hesitates to vote against the party if I think they're going in the wrong direction, or what's in the best interests ofmy constituency . But you can't always do that, because then you have no influence at all yourself. You're no longer part of it; you're just an outsider.... If you're not part of the club, then you don't have any influence... . It's not like people think, that you just go up there and vote on all these issues, and you vote what you think on the issues, because in order to get one piece through that you want, you've got to give over here.... There's no doubt at all about [a time problem], and that's why you really depend on [others], especially in the senate, because things really move quickly there.... In the senate, unless somebody has been alerted to a problem, or unless they've really done their homework fairly well, and want to pick this kind ofissue to deal with, you just sort ofgo along. I guess my discussions of philosophy and policy are really on more of the major bills. But the time frame is a real problem, real problem. Most senators don't know what's in most of the bills. They know their own committee work. 1 203 204 Narratives of Justice In this chapter, I will consider the connections between beliefs and behavior in the senate from a more general perspective. I will examine the relations between the senators' beliefs and three elements ofthe policy process: the setting of legislative agendas, the specification of legislative alternatives within those agendas, and the ultimate decisions on those alternatives (Kingdon 1984). I will pay the closest attention to the second and third elements ofthis process. I will not, however, examine the fourth and final element in the policy process, the implementation of selected alternatives. In the course of these examinations, I will also attempt to answer a question that I originally posed in chapter 3: Why does the critic's narrative not show up more prominently in the senate's legislative product? This question is my own, narrower version of Werner Sombart's question: Why is there no socialism in the United States? Although the critics are clearly a minority within the entire senate, they do constitute a quarter ofthe senate and more than a third of the majority party. We might thus expect to see some items emerge from the policy process bearing their distinctive mark. Although Connecticut's policies do appear to be fairly liberal, relative to the rest ofthe nation, the state is not known for policies that approach what the critics apparently endorse, even given the contradictions between their diagnosis and treatment ofjustice problems.2 One might also pose the same question regarding the supporter's narrative, but since the supporters are located within the minority party, it is not as surprising that we do not find more supporter-oriented policies emerging from the policy process. For the most part, the capitol provides the locus for the behavior I will...

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