The Institutionalization of a Voting Bloc

Abstract

UCH of the current literature on decision-making in Congress is concerned with conflicting considerations a member must weigh or cross-pressures to which he is subjected. Frequently minimized, if not entirely overlooked, is the more fundamental problem of how he acquires an intelligent basis for any decision. How does he become acquainted with all the factors he should take into account? Amidst the welter of conflicting stimuli and many competing demands on his time, how does he even determine which issues merit his serious attention? With the impossibility of familiarizing himself with more than a fraction of the measures on which he must adopt a stand, whence does he turn for voting cues? Because of the requirements of their situation, the over-all leaders in either chamber do not afford much in the way of systematic guidance on how to vote. Once having settled upon a course of action, how does the individual member concert his efforts with those of like-minded colleagues to promote the objectives he favors? Essentially, these are all problems of communication. And they are particularly acute in the House of Representatives with nearly five hundred members, complicated and restrictive procedures, and internal power structures of almost incredible complexity and subtlety. The House Democratic Study Group, whose genesis is described below, is an institutional response to these needs for improved communication devised by liberal Democratic Representatives during the 86th Congress.? During the past forty years, one of the most striking developments in Congress has been the rise of factional groupings. Since the early 1920's, newspapers, periodicals, and books have contained accounts of the Farm Bloc, Labor Bloc, Bonus Bloc, and a variety of other blocs, actual and alleged. Some of these have represented nothing more than evanescent alignments on specific measures and have been largely figments of journalistic imagination. Others have persisted for protracted