editor's introduction

Editor's IntroductionAuthor(s): Malcolm E. JewellSource: Legislative Studies Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 4 (Nov., 1980), pp. 473-476Published by: Comparative Legislative Research CenterStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/439569 .

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Editor's Introduction

Much of this issue is devoted to the U. S. Congress and various aspects of its interaction with the administrative branch of government. Those scholars who have paid most attention to legislative oversight of the adminis- tration have emphasized that the level and effectiveness of oversight depend not only on the resources that are available (such as enough well qualified staff) but on the incentives that legislators have to devote their time and attention to this role.

A few years ago, when the activities of the Central Intelligence Agency began to come under attack, it became clear that congressmen had been reluctant to oversee its activities vigorously or critically. A new legislative structure was developed in an effort to improve oversight of the CIA, and Loch Johnson examines the work of the House committee during its first full year of existence. That examination focuses on the personal attributes of members that explain the level of attention that each devoted to the tasks of oversight. It also describes the responses of the Agency to oversight. The result is a study that not only contributes to our understanding of the problem Congress faces in overseeing intelligence agencies and activities, but also helps to explain more generally how oversight activities have become highly specialized and fragmented, with very small numbers of congressmen devoting substantial amounts of time to each agency or topic.

Bruce Ray's study deals with another aspect of congressional involve- ment in national security: the role of the congressional armed services committees. One of the disadvantages of specialization in Congress through the use of committees and subcommittees (pertinent to both the oversight and the lawmaking functions) is that the specialized group may not be representa- tive of the views of the parent body. In this case, Ray notes that the armed services committees have been traditionally considered to be more supportive of the military than is the Congress as a whole. Ray demonstrates that this is true, and that the committees have not been responsive to changes in congressional sentiment-changes in the direction of greater criticism of the military. The question he poses is whether these committees are unrepre- sentative because those who are recruited are already more favorable to the

Legislative Studies Quarterly, V, 4, November, 1980 Copyright 1980 by the Comparative Legislative Research Center 0362-9805/80/0504-0473$00.20 473



Legislative Studies Quarterly

military point of view, or whether committee members' attitudes change after they have joined the committees. The author concludes that both factors are at work, with effects that are different in the two branches of Congress.

John Johannes deals with a very different aspect of congressional- administrative relations: constituency casework in the House and the Senate. A number of scholars have called attention to the growing importance of casework, and have examined a number of implications of this trend, including the contribution of casework to oversight of administrative agencies and its contribution to the reelection of congressmen who are effective in carrying out these activities and in advertising their accomplishments. These topics have been examined in earlier issues of the Quarterly. Johannes begins by providing us with some data on the sheer volume of congressional casework; among other things the data show a surprisingly large range of cases handled by members of Congress, from only a handful per week to several hundred a week for representatives and two thousand a week for senators. He then tries to explain the reasons for these large variations. He is not very successful in the sense that few individual variables have an important effect on casework and a multivariate model has limited predictive power. It does appear to be true that the most visible members handle the most casework. The article should be useful in prompting further exploration of the factors that contribute to heavy case loads; these in turn are pertinent to an understanding of some of the consequences of casework.

One of the few advantages of editing a journal is that one can en- courage the publication of research in areas that have been neglected. One such area is primary elections for legislative seats. Relatively few persons have followed V.O. Key's lead in describing and explaining variations in legislative primary competition. Harvey Schantz's article on primary competition for U.S. House seats makes two contributions. First, it provides data for nearly all House seats for an extended period of time, 1956 through 1974; second, it tests some interesting hypotheses about the factors that cause higher levels of competition. He confirms earlier findings that primary contests are more likely in the absence of an incumbent, and in nonincumbent races are more likely when the party's prospects for election are good. Redistricting has a slightly positive effect, but competition is not affected by urban-rural differences. Democrats are more likely to have primaries than Republicans, and this difference is particularly great in incumbency situations. Although there are yearly variations in competition, there is no clear trend over time toward higher or lower percentages of contested primaries in either party, with or without incumbents. We hope in a subsequent issue to have an examination of primary competition in state legislative races.

One of the more difficult and more often explored questions con- cerning legislative institutions is which legislators are most influential and

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Editor's Introduction

why. There are methodological problems in defining and measuring influence, as well as problems in finding the most plausible independent variables. Katherine Meyer has developed a model, using reputational influence as the dependent variable, and she tests it in the North Carolina House. The model concentrates on three sources of influence: formal position, environmental factors (particularly in the district) and individual attributes. She finds that formal office, expertise, and political experience are among the better pre- dictors of influence. Perhaps the most useful finding is that the factors affecting influence are quite different in the majority and minority parties-a situation that may be more common in states like North Carolina where one party has long been in the majority. For those persons not particularly fasci- nated with the North Carolina legislature, the most interesting question is whether such a model of influence is pertinent in other legislatures, and whether the distinction between majority and minority parties would be found in most. To answer this requires research that is particularly difficult to carry out: comparable in-depth studies of a number of legislative institutions.

Forthcoming Issues

When we established the Quarterly, one of our goals was to provide an outlet for some of the best research presented in papers at conferences on particular legislative topics. Since that time, there seems to have been a decline in the number of such conferences, but we have continued the practice of devoting an occasional special issue to a single topic. In the first five volumes, we have had five such issues, three of them based on conferences, and two initiated by the editors. Four have been geographic in focus: Asia, several European countries, Canada, and Communist countries; one has dealt with representation.

The February, 1981 issue will be devoted to studies of American state legislatures. The goal is not only to present a cross-section of the more important work being done on state legislatures but to assess the quality of this research and suggest areas that need further exploration. During the last five years we have published a number of articles on state legislatures, but not as many as we had hoped have provided comparative data and analysis on a number of states. One purpose of the special issue is to stimulate more attention to comparative state studies.

The May, 1981 issue will include a section of articles on congressional elections research. The 1978 national election study provided congressional scholars with a wealth of data on voting for Congress and on constituent contacts with and perceptions of congressmen. These papers will highlight some of the findings and at the same time explore methodological problems that are pertinent to plans for extending these studies to future elections.

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Although the papers may be most pertinent to those with research interests in the immediate area, they are potentially valuable to scholars who want to use survey methods for studying legislative voters and constituents in any legislative system.

These plans for the next two issues do not indicate that the focus of the Legislative Studies Quarterly is becoming more American. We anticipate that future special issues will be devoted to non-American topics, and we welcome suggestions for such topics. We also anticipate special issues on topics that cross geographic boundaries. That was true of the special issue on representation and will be true of an issue on legislative staffing that we are planning for late 1981 or early 1982.

Finally, it may be an appropriate time to repeat a request made in some previous issues. We continue to have a shortage of submissions dealing with non-American topics. We hope that scholars, both in the United States and in other countries, who are doing research on legislatures outside this country will provide us with a larger supply of manuscripts in the years ahead, so that we can provide the geographic balance and the comparative perspective that are essential goals of the Quarterly.

-Malcolm E. Jewell

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