IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/pubcho/v63y1989i3p237-252.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Looking beyond reelection: Revising assumptions about the factors motivating congressional behavior

Author

Listed:
  • Glenn Parker

Abstract

This paper challenges the assumption inherent in most models of legislative behavior — namely that congressmen are driven by the desire for reelection. I offer an alternative perspective: incumbents seek to maximize their discretionary investments and the income generated by the job. The only constraint on this behavior is that legislators provide a satisfactory level of constituency service — a product that I suggest entails slight opportunity, and few manufacturing, costs for congressmen, and one that is unlikely to lose its value with increased production. I also demonstrate that increases in salary and discretionary investments have lengthened congressional careers. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 1989

Suggested Citation

  • Glenn Parker, 1989. "Looking beyond reelection: Revising assumptions about the factors motivating congressional behavior," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 63(3), pages 237-252, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:63:y:1989:i:3:p:237-252
    DOI: 10.1007/BF00138164
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/BF00138164
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/BF00138164?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Weingast, Barry R & Marshall, William J, 1988. "The Industrial Organization of Congress; or, Why Legislatures, Like Firms, Are Not Organized as Markets," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 96(1), pages 132-163, February.
    2. Peltzman, Sam, 1984. "Constituent Interest and Congressional Voting," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 27(1), pages 181-210, April.
    3. Westefield, Louis P., 1974. "Majority Party Leadership and the Committee System in the House of Representatives," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 68(4), pages 1593-1604, December.
    4. Peltzman, Sam, 1985. "An Economic Interpretation of the History of Congressional Voting in the Twentieth Century," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(4), pages 656-675, September.
    5. Niskanen, William A, 1975. "Bureaucrats and Politicians," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 18(3), pages 617-643, December.
    6. Tufte, Edward R., 1973. "The Relationship between Seats and Votes in Two-Party Systems," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 67(2), pages 540-554, June.
    7. Garand, James C. & Gross, Donald A., 1984. "Changes in the Vote Margins for Congressional Candidates: A Specification of Historical Trends," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 78(1), pages 17-30, March.
    8. Anthony Downs, 1957. "An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65(2), pages 135-135.
    9. Kau, James B & Rubin, Paul H, 1979. "Self-Interest, Ideology, and Logrolling in Congressional Voting," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 22(2), pages 365-384, October.
    10. Erikson, Robert S., 1972. "Malapportionment, Gerrymandering, and Party Fortunes in Congressional Elections," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 66(4), pages 1234-1245, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:4:y:2008:i:25:p:1-11 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Randall G. Holcombe, 1991. "Barriers to Entry and Political Competition," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 3(2), pages 231-240, April.
    3. Randall G. Holcombe & Jeffrey A. Mills, 1994. "Is Revenue-Neutral Tax Reform Revenue Neutral?," Public Finance Review, , vol. 22(1), pages 65-85, January.
    4. Randall Holcombe, 2009. "The social sub-optimality of competitive elections: comment," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 138(1), pages 217-219, January.
    5. Randall G. Holcombe & Jeffrey A. Mills, 1995. "Politics and Deficit Finance," Public Finance Review, , vol. 23(4), pages 448-466, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bohara, Alok K. & Camargo, Alejandro Islas & Grijalva, Therese & Gawande, Kishore, 2005. "Fundamental dimensions of U.S. trade policy," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(1), pages 93-125, January.
    2. John Lott & W. Reed, 1989. "Shirking and sorting in a political market with finite-lived politicians," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 61(1), pages 75-96, April.
    3. Stavins, Robert & Keohane, Nathaniel & Revesz, Richard, 1997. "The Positive Political Economy of Instrument Choice in Environmental Policy," RFF Working Paper Series dp-97-25, Resources for the Future.
    4. Randall G. Holcombe, 1991. "Barriers to Entry and Political Competition," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 3(2), pages 231-240, April.
    5. Rausser, Gordon C. & de Gorter, Harry, 1988. "Endogenizing Policy In Models Of Agricultural Markets," 1988 Annual Meeting, August 1-3, Knoxville, Tennessee 270460, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    6. Stadelmann, David & Portmann, Marco & Eichenberger, Reiner, 2013. "Quantifying parliamentary representation of constituents’ preferences with quasi-experimental data," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(1), pages 170-180.
    7. Robert Lowry, 1998. "Religion and the demand for membership in environmental citizen groups," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 94(3), pages 223-240, March.
    8. Robi Ragan, 2013. "Institutional sources of policy bias: A computational investigation," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 25(4), pages 467-491, October.
    9. Stadelmann, David & Torrens, Gustavo, 2020. "Who is the ultimate boss of legislators: Voters, special interest groups or parties?," VfS Annual Conference 2020 (Virtual Conference): Gender Economics 224562, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    10. Jean-Michel Josselin & Alain Marciano, 2000. "Displacing your Principal. Two Historical Case Studies of Some Interest for the Constitutional Future of Europe," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 10(3), pages 217-233, November.
    11. Atif Mian & Amir Sufi & Francesco Trebbi, 2010. "The Political Economy of the US Mortgage Default Crisis," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(5), pages 1967-1998, December.
    12. Dennis, Christopher & Medoff, Marshall H. & Magnera, Michael, 2008. "Constituents' economic interests and senator support for spending limitations," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 37(6), pages 2443-2453, December.
    13. Charlotte Twight, 1994. "Political Transaction-Cost Manipulation," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 6(2), pages 189-216, April.
    14. Chatterji, Aaron K. & Kim, Joowon & McDevitt, Ryan C., 2018. "School spirit: Legislator school ties and state funding for higher education," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 164(C), pages 254-269.
    15. Glenn Parker & Suzanne Parker, 1998. "The economic organization of legislatures and how it affects congressional voting," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 95(1), pages 117-129, April.
    16. Thomas Tobias & Heß Moritz & Wagner Gert G., 2017. "Reluctant to Reform? A Note on Risk-Loving Politicians and Bureaucrats," Review of Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 68(3), pages 167-179, December.
    17. B. Chupp, 2014. "Political interaction in the senate: estimating a political “spatial” weights matrix and an application to lobbying behavior," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 160(3), pages 521-538, September.
    18. Jacobson, Elaine Mullaly & Emerson, Robert D., 1989. "The Influences Of Id Ogy And Economic Interests On Dairy Legislation," 1989 Annual Meeting, July 30-August 2, Baton Rouge, Louisiana 270466, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    19. Roberto Brunetti & Matthieu Pourieux, 2023. "Representative Policy-Makers? A Behavioral Experiment with French Politicians," Working Papers 2319, Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon St-Étienne (GATE Lyon St-Étienne), Université de Lyon.
    20. Dennis, Christopher & Bishin, Benjamin & Nicolaou, Politimy, 2000. "Constituent diversity and congress: the case of NAFTA," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 349-360, July.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:63:y:1989:i:3:p:237-252. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.