Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T08:14:19.709Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Folkways of the United States Senate: Conformity to Group Norms and Legislative Effectiveness*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Donald R. Matthews
Donald R. Matthews
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The Senate of the United States, we are told, is a “club.” The image, while hopelessly imprecise and occasionally quite misleading, does have at least one advantage: it underscores the fact that there are unwritten but generally accepted and informally enforced norms of conduct in the chamber. These folkways influence the behavior of senators to a degree and in directions not yet fully understood. “There is great pressure for conformity in the Senate,” one member (mercifully varying the simile) has recently said. “It's just like living in a small town.” And, as in small-town life, so too in the Senate there are occasional careers to be made out of deliberate nonconformity, sometimes only skin-deep, but sometimes quite thorough-going.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 53 , Issue 4 , December 1959 , pp. 1064 - 1089
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1959

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 The most significant recent exceptions are Huitt, R. K., “The Morse Committee Assignment Controversy: A Study in Senate Norms,” this Review, Vol. 51 (June, 1957), pp. 313–329Google Scholar; Melnik, C. and Leites, N., The House Without Windows (Evanston: Row, Peterson, 1958)Google Scholar; Gilbert, C. E., Problems of a Senator: A Study of Legislative Behavior, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Northwestern University, 1955Google Scholar.

2 The best of these is White, W. S., Citadel: The Story of the U.S. Senate (New York, 1957)Google Scholar but see also the same author's The Taft Story (New York, 1954)Google Scholar; Voorhis, Jerry, Confessions of a Congressman (Garden City, 1947)Google Scholar; Kennedy, John F., Profiles in Courage (New York, 1956)Google Scholar, ch. 1; Pepper, G. W., In the Senate (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1930)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Most of the interviews were conducted in Washington between January and September, 1956. A few follow-up interviews were held during 1958. While the senators, staff members, lobbyists and journalists interviewed were in no sense “samples” of these groups, a strenuous and generally successful effort was made to interview rough cross sections of each. On the whole, however, high rapport was deemed more desirable, given the exploratory nature of the study, than a highly “representative” but uncommunicative group of respondents.

The interviews were of the “focused” type. No formal interview schedule was used, but standardized topics were raised in each interview as time allowed. The interviews varied in length from about 15 minutes to several hours. Notes were not taken during the course of the interview but were written up immediately thereafter as nearly verbatim as possible. All quotations not otherwise cited are from these interviews; when not otherwise indicated in the text the quotations are from an interview with a past or present member of the Senate. All respondents were assured that their remarks would not be attributed to them.

Readers of this Review need not be told that these interviewing procedures are far from ideal. But even if feasible on Capitol Hill, systematic surveys, using highly structured interviews and a representative sample of respondents, are most fruitful when variables are well identified and when all types of respondents are likely to be equally cooperative. Neither condition held in this case. This suggested that greater pay-offs might be achieved by the less rigorous interviewing methods used.

4 Washington Post and Times Herald, February 19, 1956.

5 Cf. Harry S. Truman's comments: “I learned [upon entering the Senate] … that the estimates of the various members which I formed in advance were not always accurate. I soon found that, among my ninety-five colleagues, the real business of the Senate was carried on by unassuming and conscientious men, not by those who managed to get the most publicity.” New York Times, October 3, 1955.

6 Providence (R.I.) Evening Journal, February 8, 1956.

7 See Goodwin, George Jr., “The Seniority System in Congress,” this Review, Vol. 53 (June, 1959), pp. 412–436Google Scholar.

8 Congressional Record, April 24, 1956, p. 6148Google Scholar. References here and herein are to the daily edition.

9 Ibid., June 13, 1956, pp. 9147–8.

10 Cf. ibid., June 11, 1956, p. 8990:

Mr. HILL. Mr. President, although I greatly love the Senator from Illinois, and although he has been very generous toward me in his remarks on the bill—

Mr. DOUGLAS. I had hoped I would soften up the Senator from Alabama. (Laughter).

11 Barkley, Alben W., That Reminds Me (Garden City, 1954), p. 255Google Scholar.

12 Flanders, Ralph E., “What Ails the Senate?” The New York Times Magazine, May 9, 1954, p. 62Google Scholar.

13 Congressional Record February 16, 1956, pp. 2300–01Google Scholar.

14 Ibid., June 13, 1956, p. 9153.

15 Benton, William, “For Distinguished Service in Congress,” The New York Times Magazine, July 24, 1955, p. 38Google Scholar; Ralph E. Flanders, op. cit., p. 13.

16 This “institutional patriotism” extends down to the staff level. For example, one staff member said in the course of an interview:

I'm an apologist for the Senate and senators. When I came here I thought just like the normal academic “liberal” that the Senate was bumbling and incompetent, that senators were strictly from Kokomo and that if you wanted something done you had to go to the Executive Branch. Well, all that is a lot of stuff. It's just not true.

17 That is, the folkways contribute to the survival of the system without change. For a brilliant analysis of the promise and pitfalls of functional analysis see Merton, R. K., Social Theory and Social Structure (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1949)Google Scholar, ch. 1.

18 Connally, Tom [as told to Alfred Steinberg], My Name is Tom Connolly (New York, 1954), p. 88Google Scholar.

19 Providence Evening Journal, February 8, 1956.

20 The number of speeches made by each senator was determined by referring to the Index of the Congressional Record for the 83d and 84th Congresses. The number of speeches given by senators serving during the entire four-year period ranged from 28 to 1,953. All senators who gave more than 500 speeches were ranked as high in floor speaking; those who gave from 250 to 499 speeches were ranked as medium; those who gave less than 250 speeches were ranked as low. (Cutting points of 200 and 400 were used to distinguish between the low, medium and high floor speakers in individual Congresses.)

The index of specialization was computed from data in the Congressional Quarterly Almanac by determining the proportion of all public bills and resolutions introduced by each senator during the 83d and 84th Congresses that were referred to the two committees receiving the largest number of his bills and resolutions. (The “two highest” rule was adopted after experimenting with an index based on the proportion of public bills and resolutions referred to committees on which the senator served. This measure had the unfortunate characteristic of discriminating against members of the Appropriations Committee and was therefore abandoned.) Co-sponsors were ignored, except in the case of bills and resolutions introduced by two senators. The index numbers so obtained ranged from .295 to .95 for the members of the Senate serving during the entire 83d and 84th Congresses. Senators with scores below .50 were considered to have low indices of specialization; those from .50 to .69, medium; and those above .70, high.

Both measures have distinct limitations. The first entirely ignores the length of Senate speeches, while the second is based on the arguable assumption that the bills and resolutions introduced by a senator adequately reflect the breadth of his legislative interests. Moreover, the jurisdictions of Senate committees are sufficiently broad and overlapping so that two bills on different subjects may be referred to the same committee while two bills with similar subjects may be referred to different committees. By assigning equal weights to all speeches and bills, both indices also disregard the fact that some speeches and some bills are more “important” than others. Despite these crudities, both measures seem to be as adequate as can be constructed from published data without a prohibitively high expenditure of time and effort.

21 The larger study upon which this article draws includes a full scale analysis of the social backgrounds and career lines of post-World War II senators. For a preliminary report on this analysis and a brief discussion of sources utilized see my “United States Senators and the Class Structure,” in Eulau, H., Eldersveld, S. J. and Janowitz, M. (eds.), Political Behavior: A Reader in Theory and Research (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1956), pp, 184–193Google Scholar.

22 This conclusion must be treated with more than the usual scholarly caution. Only a longitudinal study or one using far more elaborate cross tabulation than is possible here can adequately isolate the effects of seniority on conformity to the folkways.

23 Cater, Douglass, “Estes Kefauver, Most Willing of the Willing,” The Reporter, November 3, 1955, p. 16Google Scholar.

24 The typology of state party systems is from Ranney, A. and Kendall, W., “The American Party System,” this Review, Vol. 48 (June 1954), pp. 477–85Google Scholar.

25 White, William S., “Realistic Reformer from Tennessee,” The New York Times Magazine, March 4, 1956, p. 32Google Scholar. On the same point, cf. Jerry Voorhis, op. cit., esp. at p. 62.

26 An index of Conservatism-Liberalism was constructed in the following manner. The roll-call voting ratings of the New Republic, October 15, 1956, were obtained and the total number of “liberal” votes cast by each senator on domestic policy issues was divided by the total number of votes cast on the eight domestic issues listed. (Senators who cast less than six votes were omitted.) This operation yields a Conservatism-Liberalism score which can, and did, vary from .00 to 1.00. All senators with scores above .67 were classified as liberals; those with scores ranging from .34 to .66, moderates; and those with scores below .33, conservatives.

An index of this sort generally tends to be multi-dimensional, cf. McRae, D. Jr., “Some Underlying Variables in Legislative Roll Call Votes,” Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 18 (Summer, 1954), pp. 191–196CrossRefGoogle Scholar, although the omission of foreign policy votes mayhave mitigated this common failing to some degree. The labor involved in constructing a more adequate measure of roll-call voting through Guttman scaling seemed excessive for the purpose of this analysis.

27 As was the case for the index of specialization, the data for this index were obtained from the Congressional Quarterly Almanac. Private bills were ignored, as were co-sponsorships (except in cases in which bills and resolutions were introduced jointly by two senators). The index numbers obtained by dividing the number of bills and resolutions passed by the number introduced ranged from .00 to .49 for the senators who served during the entire period of the 83d and 84th Congresses. All senators with scores below .15 were considered low in effectiveness; those with scores from .15 to .34, medium; and those with scores of .35 and above were rated as high.

This measure is, of course, based on the assumption that a senator's bill-sponsoring “batting average” is a fair index of his overall “effectiveness” in the Senate. This assumption might be disputed on a number of grounds. First, a senator might be highly “effective” in, say, his committee work but still unsuccessful in shepherding his own bills through the legislative machinery. It is the author's impression that this is a fairly rare occurrence. Second, by weighing all billB and resolutions equally, the measure gives disproportionate importance to minor legislation. It is precisely on minor matters, however, that a sponsor's standing with his colleagues is important in getting legislative results. Third, the measure ignores the fact that many bills and resolutions are not intended to pass by their sponsors. But senators who habitually introduce bills with no intention of their passing are very different kinds of senators than those who introduce bills only when they intend to see them through. The first type is concerned with the propaganda consequences of his actions outside the Senate, while the latter is concerned with direct legislative pay-offs. This narrowly legislative conception of the senator's role is exactly the role definition the folkways demand.

At my suggestion Hollinshead, Warren H., A Study of Influence Within the United States Senate (unpublished AB thesis, Amherst College, 1957)Google Scholar, checked this index of legislative effectiveness against “influence” rankings obtained through interviews with a panel of Senate legislative assistants. The correlation between the two measures was very high.

28 “Should the new legislator wish to be heard,” George Washington advised his favorite nephew upon his election to the Virginia House of Delegates in 1787, “the way to command attention of the House is to speak seldom, but to important subjects, except such as relate to your constituents and, in the former case, make yourself perfectly master of the subject. Never exceed a decent warmth, and submit your sentiments with diffidence. A dictatorial style, though it may carry conviction, is always accompanied with disgust.” Carroll, J. A. and Ashworth, M. W. [continuing D. S. Freeman's biography], George Washington, (New York, 1957), Vol. VII, p. 591Google Scholar.

Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.