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6 - Socioeconomic and Political Forces
- W.E. Upjohn Institute
- Chapter
- Additional Information
125 6 Socioeconomic and Political Forces The issues that defined the debate on the full employment bill are clear. The positions of most key leaders are also apparent. Indeed, the outcome of the legislative action on the full employment bill is now well known. The question that remains is whether legislators who favored a redefinition of the government’s role and responsibility for maintaining economic well-being differed, in systematic and meaningful ways, from their colleagues who did not. We know that why a member of Congress votes a certain way extends beyond how he or she assesses the merits of the issue. Members are influenced by the needs of their constituents, the priorities of their party, and their sense of what may be in the best interests of the nation. The field of legislative behavior has a rich literature on the factors that relate to congressional decision making.1 This chapter builds on this scholarly research to explore a subset of socioeconomic and political factors that are measurable and analyzes the degree to which these variables are linked to support for full employment. The resulting statistical analysis sheds further light on the dynamics that shaped the enactment of the Employment Act of 1946. MEASURING SUPPORT FOR FULL EMPLOYMENT At the heart of this analysis is crafting an unambiguous measure of support for full employment. In this instance, there is a very limited set of observed behaviors on which to operationalize support for the full employment bill, and these behaviors form the basis of the full employment score. It is interesting to compare the House’s distribution on the full employment score with the Senate’s distribution, as Figure 6.1 presents. In contrast to the Senate, where 55 percent of the members consistently supported the bill, only 21 percent of the House members had perfect support scores. In order to view this proof accurately, the Overprint Preview Option must be checked in Acrobat Professional or Adobe Reader. Please contact your Customer Service Representative if you have questions about finding the option. Job Name: -- /347091t 126 Wasem The full employment score is actually two different measures—a score for the Senate and a score for the House.2 In the Senate, the score comprises three roll call votes on S. 380, two that amended it and one that passed it. In the House, the three components consist of sponsorship of H.R. 2202, a roll call to recommit the compromise bill, and a roll call on its final passage. That a member had to be a sponsor of H.R. 2202 in the House to obtain a perfect score, while sponsorship of S. 380 in the Senate was not used in the score, may account for the lower percentage of perfect scores in the House. Conversely, the Senate score is based on votes that were taken on legislation much closer to the original full employment proposal than the version of H.R. 2202 that came to the House floor. Figure 6.1 Legislative Support for Full Employment: Comparison of Senate and House Scores 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1.00 0.67 0.33 0.00 −0.33 −0.67 −1.00 House Senate Percentage NOTE: There were zero members of the House at the −0.67 level of support for full employment and zero members of the Senate at the −0.33 level of support for full employment. In order to view this proof accurately, the Overprint Preview Option must be checked in Acrobat Professional or Adobe Reader. Please contact your Customer Service Representative if you have questions about finding the option. Job Name: -- /347091t [44.200.26.112] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 08:39 GMT) Socioeconomic and Political Forces 127 CORRELATES OF SUPPORT FOR THE FULL EMPLOYMENT BILL The full employment bill was preceded by more than a decade of economic upheaval, social change, and political realignment. The existing research leads us to expect that the forces of constituency, economics , electoral security, ideology, and party all were potentially influential in the legislative action on the full employment bill. The challenge is in drawing on data from the 1940s to measure these concepts of constituency , economics, electoral security, ideology, and party in order to clarify our understanding of the dynamics that led to the passage of the compromise version of the full employment bill. Despite the various problems inherent in operationalizing these concepts, the variables do offer a basis for exploring statistical...