POLSCI 318 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Techne, Franking, Episteme
4 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Congress and the President
9.23.16 Lecture Notes – MoC’s Motivation
Mayhew
o Assumption: Legislators are single-minded seekers of reelection
o Does this truly describe legislators? Does it explain all the variance in legislative action?
Mathematical almost
o Y-axis = activities that aid in reelection
o X-axis = concern for reelection
o Linear relationship
o A legislator who is not really concerned about reelection – will engage in minimal activity
o A legislator who is at risk for being unseated – will be maximally engaged
o Assumption will explain the distance between actual level of activity and average level of
activity
o Still some unexplained variable
The points that lay outside the triangles are unexplained
Profiles in courage – check Mayhew to understand this
Why does this assumption hold?
o Idea of reelection is built into Congress’s institutional design
▪ Idea of electoral connection is the means by which citizens are controlling their
representatives
Idea of parties
o Doesn’t see a large role for parties
o In the US – parties don’t tend to function as teams, while the parties in the UK do function
as teams
o Republicans and Democrats are not always voting for their own party
o Members’ election prospects are not inextricably tied to the party’s fortunes
o Party’s fortune do not entirely determine an individual’s chances of reelection
Primary voters don’t really care about the party loyalty of the candidates
o Keep in mind Mayhew is writing this in 1970s
o 1950s to 1970s – parties got weaker
o Remember APSA got together eventually and decided to strengthen the party structure
Parties are locally rather than nationally oriented
o Candidates need to build their own resources and own constituencies outside of the party
structure for their first election
o Because they develop their initial power base, they will maintain that power base outside
of any additional benefits their party supports them
o In the US, you can have defection (voting outside of party lines)
Because of lack of party unity, it’s mistaken to pay so much attention to the party
Congressman are unable to influence the national partisan tide – drives about 50% of the variation
that means the other half is due to the local component
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