Citations Cooper, Joseph, and David W. Fenno, Richard F. Boston: Little, Brown, Rohde, David W. Parties and Leaders in the Postreform House. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, First Name:. Please enter your first name. Last Name:. Please enter your last name. Your Email Address:. Please enter your email address. In reality, incumbents leave office with fair amount of regularity. Each election year, a handful of House members and Senators retire for a variety of reasons—sometimes because they are not confident they could keep their seat if they ran again.
And there are a handful of members that are defeated by challengers each campaign cycle. In any given election the number may seem small, but some elections produce relatively large numbers of new members. Over the course of three or four elections a large portion of the Congress may turn-over in spite of high incumbent success rates in particular election years.
Ultimately, the degree to which the people are effectively represented by their members of Congress must be determined at the individual-level. Note: The content of this web page is republished on the Internet by kind permission of Common Cause , March , and is not a copyright of Citizens for United States Direct Initiatives. Your email address will not be published. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam.
Learn how your comment data is processed. Copyright Initiatives v Oligarchy Toggle navigation Menu. Finally, major political tidal waves occasionally roll across the country, leaving defeated incumbents in their wake. This is especially likely when national issues dominate the elections, as occurred in and The high reelection rate of incumbents brings stability and policy expertise to Congress.
At the same time, it also may insulate them from the winds of political change. A bicameral legislature is a legislature divided into two houses. The U. Making policy is the toughest of all the legislative roles.
Congress is a collection of generalists trying to make policy on specialized topics. Congress tries to cope with these demands through its elaborate committee system. The House and Senate each set their own agenda. Both use committees to narrow down the thousands of bills introduced. The House is much larger and more institutionalized than the Senate. Party loyalty to leadership and party-line voting are more common than in the Senate. One institution unique to the House is the House Rules Committee, which reviews most bills coming from a House committee before they go to the full House.
The Senate is less disciplined and less centralized than the House. Party leaders do for Senate scheduling what the Rules Committee does in the House. One activity unique to the Senate is the filibuster. This is a tactic by which opponents of a bill use their right to unlimited debate as a way to prevent the Senate from ever voting on a bill.
Much of the leadership in Congress is really party leadership. Those who have the real power in the congressional hierarchy are those whose party put them there. Power is no longer in the hands of a few key members of Congress who are insulated from the public. Instead, power is widely dispersed, requiring leaders to appeal broadly for support. Chief among leadership positions in the House of Representatives is the Speaker of the House.
This is the only legislative office mandated by the Constitution. The majority leader is responsible for scheduling bills in the House.
The minority party, led by the minority leader, is also organized, poised to take over the Speakership and other key posts if it should win a majority in the House. The structure of Congress is so complex that it seems remarkable that legislation gets passed at all. Its bicameral division means that bills have two sets of committee hurdles to clear.
Recent reforms have decentralized power, and so the job of leading Congress is more difficult than ever. Congressional leaders are not in the strong positions they occupied in the past. Leaders are elected by their fellow party members and must remain responsive to them. Most of the real work of Congress goes on in committees and subcommittees.
Committees dominate congressional policymaking at all stages. They regularly hold hearings to investigate problems and possible wrongdoing, and to investigate the executive branch. Committees can be grouped into four types: standing committees by far the most important , joint committees, conference committees, and select committees. More than 11, bills are submitted by members every two years, all of which must be sifted through and narrowed down by the committee process. Every bill goes to a standing committee; usually only bills receiving a favorable committee report are considered by the whole House or Senate.
New bills sent to a committee typically go directly to subcommittee, which can hold hearings on the bill. They will also be cue-givers to whom other members turn for advice. When the two chambers pass different versions of the same bill, some committee members will be appointed to the conference committee. Legislative oversight —the process of monitoring the bureaucracy and its administration of policy —is one of the checks Congress can exercise on the executive branch. Oversight is handled primarily through hearings.
Members of committees constantly monitor how a bill is implemented. While some Members receive feedback on the success of public policies through constituency service and the experiences of constituents who seek casework assistance, most of the oversight and investigation duties of Members are carried out through committees.
Committees and Members can review the actions taken and regulations formulated by departments and agencies through hearings, studies, and informal communication with agencies and those affected by a program or policy. Oversight and investigation can take several forms. In addition to casework activity, the process of authorizing and appropriating funds for executive branch departments and agencies in committee hearings also affords Members and committees the opportunity to review the adequacy of those agencies' organization, operations, and programs.
Investigatory hearings are often conducted in response to an emerging crisis or scandal. At various points in the oversight and investigative process of Congress, individual Members can participate in the proceedings, for example, by questioning executive branch leaders, or reporting the experiences constituents have had with particular programs or agencies.
The Constitution places upon the Senate, but not the House, the responsibility for confirming nominations of individuals for appointive federal office, federal judicial nominations, and to ratify treaties negotiated by the executive branch with foreign nations.
Individual Senators typically participate in hearings to determine the suitability of candidates nominated for executive office and the adequacy of the provisions of treaties. Some Members of Congress hold leadership positions within their chamber.
Leadership responsibilities include leading negotiations within the party to formulate party positions on legislative issues, mediating political conflicts among Members of the same party, persuading Members to join in voting coalitions, keeping count as voting blocs form, participating in decisions to set the legislative agenda for the chamber, and negotiating agreements on when to schedule, and how to consider, specific bills on the floor.
Representatives and Senators may also hold the position of chairman or ranking minority Member on a committee or subcommittee, and have responsibility, or participate in the process of, scheduling of that committee's business and selecting the issues that will compose the committee or subcommittee's agenda. Some Representatives and Senators also participate in a leadership capacity in their respective party caucus or conferences.
Leadership duties may be carried out both by Members who hold formal leadership positions and those who do not. Issues on which individual Members have recently taken informal leadership roles include campaign finance reform, planning for the continuity of Congress, and lobbying and ethics reform.
Members of Congress are supported by a personal office in which staff perform legislative research, prepare materials for the Member to study, provide constituency service, manage constituency correspondence, handle media relations, and perform administrative and clerical functions. Staff and office facilities are provided through funds appropriated annually, and allocated to Members according to the procedures of each chamber.
Each Member is allocated public funds to maintain office payroll and expense accounts, and typically supervises work carried out in Washington, DC, and state or district offices. In the Senate, the number of authorized staff varies according to the population of the state a Senator represents. An integral part of the work of Members of Congress, their reelection plans, is separate from their official congressional duties.
For those Members of Congress running for reelection, activities may include organizing and maintaining a personal campaign staff, campaigning, and raising funds for reelection or election to another office. Members may also be significant political leaders of their party, as public spokespersons, and as fund raisers for themselves and other congressional candidates.
At the state or district level, they may also aid and influence the candidacies of state and local government officials. In addition, some Members also hold leadership posts within their national political parties, such as serving on their party's congressional campaign committee. House and Senate rules mandate that with very limited exceptions, political and campaign activities must be conducted outside of federal facilities, including congressional offices.
With no formal or definitive requirements, each Member of Congress is free to define his or her own job and set his or her own priorities. Although elements of each of the roles described can be found among the duties performed by any Senator or Representative, the degree to which each is carried out differs among Members as they pursue the common goals of seeking reelection, building influence in Congress, and making good public policy.
Each Member may also emphasize different duties during different stages of his or her career as other conditions of the Member's situation change. For example, some may focus on outreach, constituent service, and other state or district activity. Others may focus on developing influence in their chamber by developing policy expertise or advancing specific legislation. No Member, however, is likely to focus on any one role or duty at the exclusion of another, because the extent to which a Member successfully manages all of those roles is the basis on which his or her constituents may judge the Member's success.
I, Sec. Article I, Section 3 requires that a Senator be at least 30 years old, a citizen of the United States for at least nine years, and resident of the state from which they are elected at the time they are elected.
David R. For general treatments of the work of Members of Congress, see Lee H. Davidson and [author name scrubbed], Congress and its Members , 9 th ed. Washington: CQ Press, , pp. Calvin Mackenzie, eds. Wolfinger, ed. Matthews, U.
Gerald D. Hawley, eds. See Davidson and Oleszek, Congress and its Members , pp. Salisbury and Kenneth A. Shepsle, "U. Congressman as Enterprise," Legislative Studies Quarterly , vol.
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