Representation in Congress: The Case of the House Agriculture Committee

Students of American politics are told that our political system is fundamentally a representative democracy. Concepts of representaion, since Burke, have commonly employed his distinction between action taken in response to instructions from constituents and action based on an independent appraisal of the national interest. A very recent analysis has offered a refinement of this, by distinguishing three types: “delegate,” “trustee” and “politico.” Theory and history alike tell us, however, that a representative does not invariably act in only one of these roles. There have been a number of empirical studies of representatives, few of which concentrate on specific policy fields; and studies also of the play of interests in the enactment of specific legislation, but without a systematic account of the legislative committee members involved, acting in their representative capacities as they saw them. How then can we tell when to expect a representative to view his role in one way rather than another? The aim of this article is to shed a little light on some aspects of this broad question by means of a case study. The subjects of the study were the members of the House Agriculture Committee and their action on the omnibus farm legislation (H. R. 12954 and S. 4071) in 1958 (85th Congress, second session). Most of the data were obtained from interviews with thirty of the thirty-four Committee members but, in addition, the specific stands of members in subcommittees, the full committee, and on the House floor were traced, through the printed hearings and the Congressional Record of floor debates. Finally, other interested and knowledgeable people were interviewed, newspaper accounts were studied, and the characteristics of constituencies were examined.