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Organization Theory and the Explanation of Important Characteristics of Congress*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Lewis A. Froman Jr.
Lewis A. Froman Jr.*
Affiliation:
University of California, Irvine
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Extract

By and large the Congress of the United States has been studied on its own terms, as a somewhat unique political institution. Studies of Congress are usually considered to be important simply because they shed light on an important institution in the American political system. It is true, of course, that Congress is an important policy-making body and does deserve study for that reason. But there is no reason why substantive importance cannot be combined with “importance” in another sense. It is also important, for example, to develop theory within any discipline which will help explain the phenomena under study. Trivial substantive problems can be made interesting because of the theory which they suggest. And because a problem may already be substantively important does not mean that it cannot be made even more significant by theoretical development.

As a result of this substantive focus, research on Congress has produced a very rich body of descriptive data on various components of the institution, including its members and leadership, group structure, committees, party systems, organization, and rules and procedures. Studies have also provided generalizations concerning such things as the decentralized decision-making of Congress and the effects of the seniority rule on the distribution of power within the House and Senate. These descriptive data and generalizations may serve as the content to be explained within the context of a theory. As yet there has been very little effort at theory construction concerning Congress. The data are there—their organization and explication remain.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 62 , Issue 2 , June 1968 , pp. 518 - 526
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1968

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Footnotes

*

I wish to thank James G. March and Deane E. Neubauer for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.

References

1 Since the literature is so voluminous, and since most of the findings have been replicated and are not controversial, I will not attempt to cite specific references in each instance. For a general bibliograpny see the latest texts on Congress, Keefe, William J. and Ogul, Morris S., The American Legislative Prcoess: Congress and the States (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1964)Google Scholar, and Jewell, Malcolm E. and Patterson, Samuel C., The Legislative Process in the United States (New York: Random House, 1966).Google Scholar

2 Udy, Stanley H. Jr., “The Comparative Analysis of Organizations,” in March, James G. (ed.), Handbook of Organizations (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1965), pp. 678–709.Google Scholar Proposition seven comes from March, James G. and Simon, Herbert A., Organizations (New York: Wiley, 1958), p. 130.Google Scholar

3 This part of proposition one is actually a deduction from two others: The more highly differentiated … the social setting, the less salient it will be; The less salient the social setting …, the more salient the organization itself; therefore …. By “differentiated” is meant dispersed, heterogeneous, plural, non-unitary. By “salient” is meant important as an influence on the output of the organization.

4 These three dependent variables are positively associated with what Udy calls “breadth and diffuseness of external pressure,” I take “differentiated social setting” and “breadth and diffuseness of external pressure” to be synonymous.

5 For discussions and bibliography see Keefe and Ogul, op. cit.; and Jewell and Patterson, op. cit.

6 For example, see Robert L. Peabody, “Party Leadership Change in the United States House of Representatives,” this Review, 61 (September, 1967), Randall B. Ripley, “The Party Whip Organizations in the United States House of Representatives,” this Review, 58 (September, 1964), 561–576; Lewis A. Froman, Jr. and Randall B. Ripley, “Conditions for Party Leadership: The Case of the House Democrats,” this Review, 59 (March, 1965), 52–63, and Froman, Lewis A. Jr., The Congressional Process: Strategies, Rules, and Procedures (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967).Google Scholar

7 Froman, Lewis A. Jr., Congressmen and Their Constituencies (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1963)Google Scholar; Truman, David B., The Congressional Party (New York: Wiley, 1959)Google Scholar; Fiellin, Alan, “The Functions of Informal Groups: A State Delegation,” in Peabody, Robert L. and Polsby, Nelson W. (eds.), New Perspectives on the House of Representatives (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1963), pp. 59–78 Google Scholar; and Kessel, John H., “The Washington Congressional Delegation,” Midwest Journal of Political Science, 8 (Feb., 1964), 1–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 See, for example, Huntington, Samuel P., The Common Defense (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which draws explicit parallels between Congressional processes and decision-making in the Pentagon.

9 See Richard F. Fenno, Jr., “The House Appropriations Committee as a Political System: The Problem of Integration,” this Review, 56 (June, 1962), 310–324; Matthews, Donald R., U. S. Senators and Their World (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1960)Google Scholar, especially Chapters 1 through 5; Fiellin, Alan, “The Functions of Informal Groups: A State Delegation,” in Peabody, and Polsby, (eds.), op. cit., pp. 59–78 Google Scholar, and John F. Manley, “The House Committee on Ways and Means: Conflict Management in a Congressional Committee,” this Review, 59 (December, 1965), 927–939.

10 (New York, Meridian Books, 1956.) This book was first published in 1885.

11 See Huntington, Samuel P., “Congressional Responses to the Twentieth Century,” in Truman, David B. (ed.), The Congress and America's Future (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1965)Google Scholar; Nelson W. Polsby, “The Institutionalization of the House of Representatives,” paper delivered at the 1966 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, and Lewis A. Froman, Jr., The Congressional Process, op. cit., Chapter 1.

12 See, for example, Fenno, Richard F. Jr., The Power of the Purse (Boston: Little, Brown, 1966).Google Scholar

13 See Matthews, op. cit., Chapter 5.

14 William R. Dill, “Business Organizations,” in James G. March, op. cit., p. 1072.

15 Lewis A. Froman, Jr., The Congressional Process, op. cit.

16 Ibid., passim.

17 This proposition is taken from March, James G. and Simon, Herbert A., Organizations (New York: Wiley, 1958), p. 130.Google Scholar

18 A similar proposition is found in Udy, op. cit.: “The greater the difficulty of group as opposed to individual problems, the greater the pressures toward social interaction” (p. 701).

19 See Proman, The Congressional Process, op. cit., Chapter 2.

20 Udy's article, op. cit., lists many more general propositions, most of which have to do with technological and psychological relationships.

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