Deliberate or Advocate? The Roots of Congressional Disapproval

• In Event: How Voters View Congress

Abstract

Nearly everyone hates Congress.  Yet we know very little at the individual level about what underlies the increasingly intense negativity directed at the legislative branch. The traditional explanation is that people disapprove of Congress for the same reasons (gridlock, lack of productivity, beholden to special interests, disapproval of the process of governing).

But, in fact, we show that Congress in the public mind is largely the result of divergent views about what people perceive as the purpose of Congress: deliberation or ideological advocacy. For some, Congress should be a place where ideas are deliberated and compromised and made to advance public policy. Recent Congresses fail at this goal; thus it is not a surprise that people who want Congress to do this are dissatisfied. Others want Congress to be a place where members engage in pure ideological advocacy, never compromising with the other side. Congress is succeeding at the no compromise part, but the ideological advocacy is not getting them anywhere and thus people who have those preferences disapprove as well.
 
This paper examines this theme using six years of original survey data from surveys designed and administered by the Center for Representative Government (formerly known as the Center on Congress) at Indiana University. Our paper explores 1) which variables predict these two, very different, preferences for congressional behavior including personality traits, 21st century media variables, ideological measures, civic engagement batteries and structural factors (such as whether one's own party is in the majority) and 2) how differing preferences about the purpose of congressional behavior drives disapproval of Congress, even when controlling for other explanations.

Authors

• Michael W. Wagner, University of Wisconsin, Madison

• Jessica C. Gerrity, McAllister & Quinn

• Edward G. Carmines, Indiana University, Bloomington