thoughts about representative government

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European Journal of POLITICAL ECONOMY ELSEVIER European Journal of Political Economy 10 (1994) 27-39 Thoughts about representative government Gordon Tullock University of Arizona, Department of Economics, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA Accepted for publication November 1993 Abstract This is a general discussion of what we know and do not know about representative government It deals with legislatures, direct voting, the veto process in the United States, and similar topics. It raises more questions than it gives answers. Key words: Representatives; Voting; Congress; Government JEL classification: HO If we define democracy as government in which the government depends upon the vote of a large number of people, then it is a rather old form of government having possibly existed in Sumer. It certainly existed in Greece and Rome, and persisted in some city states throughout the middle ages. It was even used in such despotic places as China for local government.’ In general, after a period of development, ancient democracy tended to be replaced by despotism of one sort or another. That will not necessarily be our fate, particularly because the new forms of democracy differ from the earlier ones in that they are representative democracy rather than direct democracy.’ ‘Some democracies, including the one in which Bernholz lives, do a good deal of direct public voting on various issues. Use of random samples drawn from the population on the whole has also been characteristic of many democratic governments. Its commonest modern example is the jury. 2 In Greece and Rome there was something vaguely like representative democracy in that voting was by tribes. The particular members of the tribe who turned up at the forum cast votes for the whole tribe. The people who turned up were not selected. 0176-2680/94/$07.00 0 1994 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved SSDI OI76-2680(93)E0030-9

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Page 1: Thoughts about representative government

European Journal of POLITICAL ECONOMY

ELSEVIER European Journal of Political Economy 10 (1994) 27-39

Thoughts about representative government

Gordon Tullock

University of Arizona, Department of Economics, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA

Accepted for publication November 1993

Abstract

This is a general discussion of what we know and do not know about representative government It deals with legislatures, direct voting, the veto process in the United States, and similar topics. It raises more questions than it gives answers.

Key words: Representatives; Voting; Congress; Government

JEL classification: HO

If we define democracy as government in which the government depends upon the vote of a large number of people, then it is a rather old form of government having possibly existed in Sumer. It certainly existed in Greece and Rome, and persisted in some city states throughout the middle ages. It was even used in such despotic places as China for local government.’

In general, after a period of development, ancient democracy tended to be replaced by despotism of one sort or another. That will not necessarily be our fate, particularly because the new forms of democracy differ from the earlier ones in that they are representative democracy rather than direct democracy.’

‘Some democracies, including the one in which Bernholz lives, do a good deal of direct public

voting on various issues. Use of random samples drawn from the population on the whole has

also been characteristic of many democratic governments. Its commonest modern example is the jury. 2 In Greece and Rome there was something vaguely like representative democracy in that voting

was by tribes. The particular members of the tribe who turned up at the forum cast votes for the

whole tribe. The people who turned up were not selected.

0176-2680/94/$07.00 0 1994 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved

SSDI OI76-2680(93)E0030-9

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28 G. Tullock / European Journal of Political Economy 10 (1994) 27-39

A further difference between modern democracy and democracy in the earlier periods is that essentially all adults are permitted to vote. This is a very recent development. In the United States almost all free adult males were permitted to vote from very early times, but women only achieved the vote around the turn of the century. In England, more conservative than we, it was not until almost the end of World War I that all adult males could vote, and women did not receive the full franchise until the 1930s. In a way, we are in an experiment with a new and radical form of government.

But my duty here is to talk about representative government and that is certainly characteristic of most modern democracies. Permitting almost every adult3 to vote is also a modern feature. Indeed that is one of the reasons for the representative nature of modern democracy. If the number of people permitted to vote was quite restricted, the Roman Senate for example, representation would be unnecessary.

Modern representative democracies fall in two general classes4 one of which is (roughly) copied after the English parliamentary system, and one of which is (even more roughly) copied after the American presidential system.5 As a very rough rule of thumb presidential systems are found on the American continent, and parliamentary on the others.

Most modern democratic systems have two house legislatures although there are exceptions to’ that rule. Almost all of the Public Choice work on representative government has dealt with governments where there are two chambers. Further, both of these chambers are normally elected, rather than having one semi-hereditary like at the House of Lords, or appointed like the traditional Canadian Upper House.

If one looks at the United States prototype, it really is a three-house legislature. The president, or in the American states, the governor, normally has veto power which can be overridden by the two houses casting a re- enforced vote of some sort. For the federal government a bill to pass must either achieve the majority in both houses and the assent of the president, or achieve a two-thirds majority in both houses.

If we think of the president as a third house, then it is likely that the two- thirds majority in two houses is not terribly different from a simple majority in both houses with the president also going along. They all represent the same voting body, i.e., citizens of the United States. Still, the method of selection and election is enough different so that a majority coalition represents somewhat different voters in each of the ‘chambers’. It is often

3 Felons and lunatics are common exceptions. 4Perhaps we should say three classes because Bernholz’s country, Switzerland, doesn’t tit into

either category. Although I admire the Swiss constitution, nobody has copied it, so it remains outside the main streams of constitutional development.

5 Small local governments frequently follow other patterns.

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G. Tdock 1 European Journal of Political Economy IO (1994) 27-39 29

pointed out that the president, being elected by all of the voters is less interested in parochial issues than is the House of Representatives.‘j

It is an interesting fact that most of the research dealing with representa- tive government has concerned itself with only one house. Indeed, it has tended to concentrate on a particular body, the House of Representatives of the United States. Even if we confine ourselves thus narrowly there are a great many problems and important matters to concern us. Further, it is likely that all representative bodies have a good deal of resemblance so things we find out about one are apt to be true of another.

The individual houses, even if we ignore the interactions among them, can be quite complicated. Further, the European or parliamentary system in which one of the houses is either dominated by or dominates the executive branch is quite different from the American system in which the executive branch is separate but has the veto. Nevertheless, the problems which this article will mainly address seem to occur in all representative bodies and indeed for elected officials in general.

The next thing to ask is: ‘What are the members of the legislature trying to do’, i.e., what motivates them? There are four major ‘theories’. Listing them, the first is the legislators are people selected for outstanding virtue and knowledge who proceed to go to Washington or Berne for the purpose of providing good government. There are few Public Choice people who regard this as a totally correct model. Still I think there is no doubt that the voters to some extent think of their representatives in this way, and the representa- tives themselves to some extent are so motivated.

Secondly, the public choice approach is more or less that a politician is a man who makes a living by getting elected and he engages almost entirely in an effort to get re-elected once he has been elected. There is no doubt that there is a great deal of truth in this particular approach’ but it is also true that it is not 100% correct. All human beings are at least to some extent interested in helping those less well off and in promoting the public good. Everybody is willing to give away something like 5% of their income to help people who are less than well off than they are. This rule applies to politicians as well as to other people. In fact, it may well be that politicians are willing to sacrifice even more, perhaps 10%.

The third ‘theory’, and this is in accord with the first, is that the politician in oflice simply tries to maximize his personal preference. By this I do not mean that he aims only for luxurious quarters, and elaborately organized

6 It would be even more true if we did not have a House of Electors and cast direct votes for the President.

’ It is the one I usually use.

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30 G. Tullock 1 European Journal of Political Economy 10 (1994) 27-39

and catered trips to Paris.* Although that would be part of it, there are decisions on public policy in which individuals do have personal preferences.

The dispute in the American House of Representatives about whether we should or should not aid one or the other of the two sides in Nicaragua was almost entirely a question of the personal preferences of the various congressmen. There were more on the left than on the right and hence the group which we now know, as a result of the election, was backed by the majority of Nicaraguan people did not get much support from the United States. Still, minorities do have influence, and it got some.

Now all three of these may co-exist in the mind of the individual congressman. The fourth, has that same characteristic. The congressman usually regards himself as a sort of ambassador for his district. His duty is to get things like the Central Arizona Project or the Tulsa Ship Canal to benefit people in his district. In the European systems where proportional represen- tation is used it may not be a geographic district but a particular segment of the population which is thought to vote for the party of the representative.

Congressman Udall of Arizona due to a hung election arrived in Wash- ington as the most junior member of the House of Representatives. As a result he faced a very poor selection of committees, even though he was in the majority party, He ended up on the low ranking postal committee. He was told by a senior congressman: ‘Now you can put a new post office in every town in your District.’ Congressman Udall recounting this always added: ‘And I did’.

To repeat, I think these are the four major theories of what congressmen do and I think that some aspects of them are present in the minds of every congressman. It is essential to add that most modern legislatures are confronted with so many legislative problems that they can hardly be more than very sketchily informed about each one. The consequence is that simple ignorance must be put down as a very major part of the factors which control the congressman’s vote. Even if it can hardly be listed as a ‘motive’.’ You can hardly blame the representatives for this ignorance. Still, it is likely that if we reduced the total legislature burden that the reduction

*They do make these, of course. 9 I have a friend, a Professor of Public Finance, who with a number of his friends and colleagues set up sort of a committee to advise a newly elected member of the Connecticut State

Legislature. Their idea was that each of them would read those items of proposed legislation

which were within in their specialty and assist the member of legislature. They rapidly gave up.

In the first place they discovered that even though they were each reading only about ten

percent of the total volume, it was a killing business. Secondly, they discovered that the member of the legislature paid little attention to them. Normally she was only interested in one specific

aspect of each bill and she found out about that by talking to her colleagues, making trades

with them, etc.

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G. Tdock / European Journal of Political Economy IO (1994) 27-39 31

in the total number of bills would be much more than compensated by the increase in the average quality.

One of the results of this mass of proposals is a high-level of specialization on the part of the members of the legislature. People who visit the American legislature whether it is national or state are frequently shocked to discover that there is practically no one on the floor. It is less true in most other countries, but is rapidly becoming the rule. Now that there is a lot of television coverage almost all legislature have enacted a rule that the television cameramen must concentrate on whoever is speaking and not turn his camera to show the empty benches.

How do representatives legislate? The answer is that there is a web of committees and flow of contacts between the members and the representa- tives which permit them to cast a vote even if it is not obvious that this is an informed or intelligent vote.

In general, the bills themselves are written by the civil service, by congressional assistants or, in many cases, by special interests who offer ‘advice’ sometimes in the form of a completely worked out piece of legislation. All of this, which sounds like criticism, is not criticism of the individual legislators or even the way they are handling their problems, granted that they have this large number of bills.

If the government were a good deal more limited in its scope with the results that fewer issues came up with each session of the legislature, they could be more careful in their consideration of the individual items and there would be more debate. Several places such as Virginia and Switzerland have attempted to reach this objective by simply restricting the amount of time that the legislature can be in session. Whether this actually works or simply means that the legislature is even less informed about what it does is not obvious.

Any careful description such as this looks like criticism, but let us consider the situation if we had direct voting. Switzerland and California do directly vote on very many issues and the average voter is even less informed for the average issue than the average Congressman would be.

There are advantages to direct voting. But consider the situation of, let’s say the Roman Republic. If they had left decisions as to where a road should be built or whether there should be cavalry reinforcements to the army, etc., up to direct vote there would never have been a Roman Empire.‘O Many decisions have to be delegated. Of course, the delegation does not have to go to the legislature, it could go to the president or to other high officials. Roman armies were in fact commanded by consuls who were elected for a one year term. They can be regarded as representatives just as readily as can an American senator.

lo The Senate, of course, was not an elected body

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32 G. Tdock / European Journal of Political Economy 10 (1994) 27-39

How then do modern bodies of representatives make decisions. Let us follow such of the Public Choice literature and start by considering only the activities of one house. For this purpose we will ignore both the existence of a second house and of a president or other officials who make many of the decisions. We will also assume here that we have the American system and the house we are describing is not the House of Commons which in fact delegates most of its power to the cabinet.

Further, we will ignore the information problem, not by alleging that the representatives are well informed, but by saying that they know as much as they themselves feel is worthwhile, i.e., they are not willing to put more time and energy into becoming better informed. It should perhaps be said here that they are normally much better informed about whether their consti- tuents like or do not like a given bill than they are with the details of the bill itself.

Among my possible motives, however, I can go a little further because there has been some empirical testing done. If the congressmen are merely simply trying to get re-elected then a Congressman who is not going to be re-elected, because he lost the last election and is still holding on as a lame duck, or because he has decided to retire should behave somewhat differently than he had done before the loss of the election or decision to retire.

This is subject to empirical testing and there have been a considerable number of such tests.” It would be tedious to go through them all but the general conclusion is fairly simple and straight-forward. Congressman who know that they are not going to face another election do behave differently than they did when they were still potentially running for re-election, but the difference is not gigantic. It requires fairly careful statistical work to detect.

Whether this indicates that trying to get reelected is not the major motive or something else is not clear. I think that over a period of time in Congress they have become so accustomed to a given pattern of behavior that once it no longer becomes necessary they in fact do not immediately make radical changes.

If we had congressman who continued voting for years and years after they realized that they could not be re-elected you might detect major effects. If the present move to limit the term of a Congressman becomes effective, they will behave rather like Presidents in their second term. Many students have noticed the Presidents in their second term do not behave as they do in the first term, but once again the difference is not gigantic.

It should be pointed out that a congressman may be motivated to follow somewhat the same policies even if he is not actually running for re-election. He is probably going back to his own district, keeping a lot of friends and for that matter keeping contacts. I think habit is also important. If

I1 More often with the Senate than with the House.

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G. TuNock / European Journal of Political Economy 10 (1994) 27-39 33

congressmen never faced re-election problems, for example, if they were elected for a single term they might behave differently.” Unfortunately, the other possible motives are harder to test.

Let us proceed to other matters. That the American congressmen consider themselves as sort of superior lobbyists for their district is perfectly obvious to anyone who watches Congress at all. Some people refer to this as ‘pork’ because a very large number of small specific projects are pushed by congressmen for their district. The current issue of The Publiic Interest has a very strong article, ‘In praise of Pork’, by John W. Elwood and Eric M. Patashnik.r3 As the title suggests, it is a vigorous defense of such small special projects. No one who has read much about American congressman can readily refute them, although most of us are not as enthusiastic.

They argue that congressman confronted with a bill which is of general benefit, but might to some extent hurt some of their constituents have to be bought off. They are bought off by some special privilege for some other group of their constituents. In other words the whole thing is legal bribery. The congressman has not directly received any payment, but it does improve his likelihood of being re-elected.i4

All of this is much more open and above board in the American legislature.” It is much quieter in other legislatures, but it is still there. To take but one example, the famous television program ‘Yes Minister’ has the politicians continuously worrying about ‘marginals’, i.e. districts which are likely to change party in the next election. I do not regard this work of fiction as a final authority,i6 but it is notable that none of the many people who commented on it ever raised any questions about this aspect of it.

In other countries the same is true. I have been confidentially informed by high ranking members of a number of parliamentary type democracies that the only difference from the American House of Representatives is simply that it is done in secret. In all cases this kind of trade takes place, in some places they are less secretive than the others.

With proportional representation the bargaining is frequently between the parties representing different interest groups which are not geographical rather than purely geographical constituencies. Still at the time when the

r2Periodically an amendment to the American Constitution in which the president instead of

serving two possible four-year terms would have a single term of six years is suggested.

Presumably those six-year presidents would, in fact, behave differently than current presidents

do, at least during their first four years.

“No. 110, Winter 1993, pp. 19-33. 14See The Triumph of Politics, David Stockman, for a general denunciation of the process by a man who had much experience with it.

r5 It is not completely open and above board as Congressman frequently deny they do this.

I6 As a matter of fact it is a very good portrait.

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34 G. Tullock / European Journal of Political Economy 10 (1994) 27-39

Prime Minister of France was also Mayor of Paris, one can feel fairly confident that Paris was not left out in this bargaining process.

One of the major differences between most European representative assemblies and most American ones is the existence of fairly strong party discipline in Europe and an almost total lack of it in the United States. It is true that in the United States a Democrat is more likely to vote with the majority of other Democrats than with the majority of Republicans.17 But there is a great deal of independence. The individual congressman represents his constituency and perhaps more accurately the democrats or the republi- cans in his constituency rather than the constituency as a whole, but still he is pretty independent.

The Europeans on the other hand for various reasons are generally speaking quite strongly disciplined by their parties and do not have all of the independence. It should be kept in mind that although they are disciplined by their parties, they also discipline the party. The party decisions are made by an internal mechanism in which its elected representatives play a role. In many cases there is simply a party caucus in which all of the representatives in the body can vote for what their particular party will do.

It is not exactly obvious how their differences developed. Certainly if you go back to the 19th Century you find in England, and I believe in those other places where there was a representative assembly, a good deal of independence with parties not really having firm control. In various ways this firm party control has developed and has been steadily strengthened into the present form.

Take two examples. In Israel proportional representation is used and there is a party list with only the names at the top of the list having much chance of being elected. The central body can and on occasions does simply move a delegate down near the bottom of the list. In essence, somebody is given a blackball.

England has a simpler procedure in which money and television time is allocated to the parties for campaigning, but the individual M.P.‘s are put under very strict financial and other controls when they campaign. This is the reason for the otherwise apparently silly business of canvassing. It means that the individual M.P. knows that he is far more likely to be removed from office by the failure of his party than by hs own dereliction if he keeps on good turns with the party. It is true, however, that British M.P.‘s do a great deal of what is called constituency work in the United States.

The result of all this is that modern governments in addition to doing things which can be arguably stated to be in the public interest also do a great many things which are of value only to a very narrow collection of

“This is rather like Baumol’s law: ‘The average driver in a two-lane road is in the more

crowded lane’.

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G. Tullock / European Journal of Political Economy 10 (1994) 27-39 35

voters. It should be pointed out that this is not necessarily a criticism although if one looks at things like the Central Arizona Project or the Tulsa Ship Canal its hard to feel neutral about them.

There are a good many things within any government affecting only some minority. It it were done privately you would have to get unanimous agreement among a fairly large group of people, but nevertheless far less than the total voting body. Having these done by the larger government is sensible.

Unfortunately, it is easy for government to get far beyond programs which confer a net benefit. The European farm program, like the Japanese farm programs, is in fact much more extortionate than the one in the United States, even if it tends to be done in a more quiet and secretive way than the American one.

Thus the role of specialized lobbyist which the average congressman adopts in Washington or the average State Representative in the State Capital by no means is something we should condemn out of hand. Still, it is very hard to look at this activity without realizing that it. leads to an appalling amount of waste. It should be emphasized that the waste that goes to non-geographically located special interests under proportional represen- tation probably is greater.

Although it seems fairly certain that this role of ambassador for his district is important for congressmem,18 empirical studies sometimes cast consider- able doubt on it. For example, cross-section studies frequently show that congressmen on general issues like price control for gasoline, vote in accord with their ideological position rather for the well-being of their district. This would be in accord with the ‘wise and virtuous’ or the ‘follow own preference’ models rather than the ambassadorial one.

On the other hand nobody who watches congressmen in action has much doubt of the ambassadorial role. To take a very local example which affects me, Arizona is a desert state and more than one-half of the population live in Phoenix or its immediate suburbs. The only other large city is Tucson, in which I live,

Certain taxes, especially the sales tax, are collected by the State, and then part of them are distributed to the local governments according to a prearranged formula. The Phoenix delegation has an absolute majority of both Houses Of-Legislature, and I suppose no one will be surprised to hear that they have arranged this formula in such a way that Phoenix gets a lot more per capita than Tucson. Small towns scattered around the rest of the State of Arizona, do even worse.

This is simply an example. How do we account for the empirical fact that congressmen from Texas who are politically on the left are less likely to vote

‘* Ambassador for special interest such as unions or the fanners in Europe.

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36 G. Tullock 1 European Journal of Political Economy 10 (1994) 27-39

against a price control on gasoline. by quite a large margin, than congress- men from Virginia who are politically on the right. The first thing can be said that although this is true, it is not as simple as all of that. The new administration has a Secretary of Treasury, former Senator Bentson. He is not specifically a oil millionaire, but he is a millionaire whose assets are mainly in Texas, and do depend to a considerable extent on the prosperity of the oil business. Further, he has for many years represented Texas in the Senate.

When the transition team was operating there was a great deal of discussion of either a straightforward tax on gasoline or tax on carbon as a way of raising income for the government, which is in deficit, and at the same time reducing air pollution. Since Bentson has been Secretary of the Treasury designate this tax has been pretty much abandoned for a general energy tax which would fall as well on such things as water power, nuclear power, etc. He is to some extent still acting as a senator from Texas.

Nevertheless, there are these studies which show considerable ideological coherence on the part of some congressmen even when it conflicts with the interests of their local district. There are two problems with the empirical studies, one of which is they only deal with a few very general projects and do not consider the innumerable local provisions built into the bills. It may well be that the individual congressman is in fact serving his constituency very well, having inserted several special provisions into this general bill that will benefit it in return for his vote.

This is by no means the only explanation. A Congressman represents not all the voters and constituency, but only some of them, i.e., the ones who are likely to vote for him. He may have a constituency in which his supporters are let us say rather antagonistic to the wealthy oil man even though they indirectly benefit from the oil industry. Under these circumstances making a show of being opposed to the ‘fat cats’ may be helpful. This is particularly likely if he can so arrange the rest of the bill in such a way that it does not injure the interest of his constituency. It is very difficult to straighten this kind of thing out in empirical research.

Most of the things I have said about the representatives can be taken as criticism or at least not as praise. This is correct, but one of the fundamental ideas of Public Choice is that to criticize a institution is not the same as saying it should be replaced by another. You must look carefully at the other ones to make a comparison. The market is full of defects, so is the government. For some things the government works better and some things the market works better.

Representative government may be the best even if, sub specie eternite, it is not very good. Further, representation is not necessarily by way of a legislature. In a very real sense the president of the United States is a representative of the average voter, just as much as is congress. The Roman

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Consul in command of an army could reasonably be called a representative of the voters who had elected him and who were now functioning as soldiers in his army.”

Indeed there is another way of getting representation, a method that was used by many classical democracies, which is the use of lots. Today, we use this only in the form of a jury, but we could select a House of Representa- tives by simply having a computer print out 435 randomly selected names. It would have to be rotated frequently as indeed similar groups were in Athens.

As far as I know, except for juries, this technique is not used or even proposed in the modern world. The reason may be simply tradition, with the tradition having shifted over 2000 years. Aristotle thought it was the perfect democratic system. It certainly assured that the representative assembly was a good mirror of the electorate.

We have discovered that there are many things about representatives that we do not know. This is not surprising granted the fact that what I would regard as reasonably scientific approach to politics is a very new field, but still it is disappointing.

Another area where we use representation very widely is the corporation. In this case the individual voters, i.e., the stockholders are usually even less well-informed than the average voter for governmental officials. It works reeasonably well for two reasons. The first of which is the objective of most corporations is simply to make money and the second is it is fairly easy to tell whether the corporation is doing so. That being so the people at the top who represent the stockholders know that they can be removed and almost certainly will be removed if the company loses money.20 It would be nice if we could do the same with our representatives politically.

The basic problem here is that it is very difficult to tell whether the representatives are achieving the rather badly specified objectives of the voters they represent. The voters themselves do not have clear ideas unlike the voters of corporations who do know what they want the corporation to do. Thus, the possibility, and indeed probability that the politician will be removed from office if he is thought to be unsuccessful is of much less value in disciplining him than is the rather simple procedure of the corporation.

Bush, during the period when he was President and not actively com- paigning, certainly did not expect that he would be criticized during the campaign for the particular things he was criticized for. He was surprised when the Democrats attacked him in many cases from the right, rather than

191t is a little known fact, but the Confederate Army in the American Civil War which on a

man for man basis was clearly better than the Northern one, had elected officers up to and including Captains.

“This was dictated on the day that IBM announced that it was going to have a new Chairman of the Board.

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from the left. Nevertheless, he lost, though his principle opponent did not do very well either. 43% of the vote is far from an overwhelming vote of confidence.

Representation in recent times has begun to have a rather different meaning than it did before. Specifically, the representative is beginning to be somebody who represents his citizens in their contacts with the administra- tive side of the government. In other words, in a way the representatives have taken over part of the duties of the executive branch.

Congressmen now maintain large staffs” which assist the congressmen directly in campaigning. To a large extent, however, they are engaged in what is called constituency work. If you do not receive your social security check you complain to the congressmen and one of his assistants takes care of the matter.” This is obviously a representative activity since they do represent their constituents. On the other hand, it is not what is traditionally meant by representation.

It should be said that this seems to be more highly developed in the United States then elsewhere, but other countries are rapidly following us. Furthermore, France, in any event, frequently has a large overlap between the representative from the direct and the high officials within the district government itself. The fact mentioned earlier that for a considerable period of time, the Mayor of Paris was also Prime Minister of France illustrates this.

It is possible that in the United States an individual congressman’s potential for being reelected is far more influenced by this kind of work than it is by anything else. He in essence substitutes for the higher members of the executive branch in administering the government.

As William Niskanen pointed out, if the congressmen devotes his time and energy to becoming well informed about legislation, in essence he is generating a public good for the other congressmen. On the other hand, if he devotes his energy to constituency work, he is generating a private good for himself. It is well known that private goods tend to drive out public goods, and that people tend to free-ride on others activity. Thus it is not surprising that congressmen are apt to put more time into representing their constitu- ency directly by this kind of method than indirectly by considering the public interest with respect to legislation.

It can be said here that in the United States representation has taken

21 Interestingly, in hiring this staff the Congressman is exempted from all of the civil service

regulations, including the ones prohibiting racial discrimination.

221t should be said that this large staff also engages in a number of other activities. The

constituency work together with these other items are the basic reason that congressmen tend to stay in office as long as they do. It costs about two million dollars per year to provide what amounts to a special campaign fund for each congressmen and opposition candidates never have

anywhere near that much.

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another twist. In this case I think most other countries are farther advanced. The issuance of regulations by career civil servants or to some extent by presidential appointees, produces a larger body of law than that passed by the legislature.

The legislature designates some part of the government to draw up legislation and provides that they will be binding on the citizen without any further congressional action. This is clearly moving representation from the congressman to other officials, most of whom are not elected, and many of whom are career civil servants.

When I was in law school it was still thought a little dubious that all of this was constitutional, At that time, the 1930s it was thought that probably the battle was all over and congress could do it. It is interesting that recently there have been a few signs that possibly this issue will be reconsidered. Of course, it is impossible for congress, or indeed for anyone else to know and work on this vast body of regulations, but perhaps we would be better off if we did not have them.

In any event, the only possible justification for having what amounts to binding rules drawn up by civil servants is that somehow or other they also represent the citizens. It is thought to be a highly technical matter and wise and virtuous civil servants will take care of it, rather than wise and virtuous congressmen. It should be said there are other similarities between their activity and the regular representatives. They also tend to push strongly for various special interests, in particular their own, and are the subject of very vigorous lobbying activity.

This article has not solved very many problems. It is a survey of a very difficult issue and an issue which in general has not yet been solved by research. I am not criticizing the existing research, but it has tended to deal with minor problems around the edge of the main problem. This is necessary for a start and my hope is that having cleared up a lot of the minor problems we will now go on to the major problems. This article is a small first step in that direction.