From Passive to Active Representation: The Case of Women Congressional Staff

Abstract

Missing from most studies of congressional staff is the insight gained from the representative bureaucracy literature that descriptive characteristics may affect the behavior of unelected bureaucrats. In considering congressional representation as an activity mediated by staff, we ask: Does descriptive representation of congressional committee staff lead to substantive representation? We explore this question, using gender as our descriptive characteristic of interest. We produce a typology of staff roles developed through in-depth interviews about two cases that illustrate how institutional factors affect and constrain women staffers' contributions as substantive representatives for issues concerning women. We posit that passive representation translates into the active representation only when: 1) interest groups hold expectations for passive representation on an issue and then in turn demand some level of active representation; 2) a staff member possesses the necessary resources of interest, expertise, and status, and 3) the opportunity structure of member-staff relations, staff autonomy, and political salience coincide. When these conditions are less than optimal, active representation will not occur. On a day-to-day basis, there is nothing that members do in the modem legislature that is not affected by their staffs (Rundquist, Schneider, and Pauls 1992). In Congress, staff outnumber their elected principals by a ratio of 45:1 (Omstein, Mann, and Malbin 1998). Staffers arrange meetings, confer with constituents, write speeches, prepare questions, research policy alternatives, provide political and technical advice, draft legislation, communicate with interest groups, negotiate with staff representing other members and interested groups, field complaints or inquiries from activists on and off Capitol Hill, do favors for other members' offices, and assist with whatever else may be required of members. In effect, staffers walk in the shadows of representatives and senators (Bisnow 1990, p. 23). The study of congressional staff has produced a modest line of research within the field of legislative studies. Many previous studies of congressional staff have mostly described congressional staff offices (e.g., Kofmehl 1977; Fox and Hammond 1977; Ducharme 1970; Allsbrook 1977; Stenger 1980; Congressional Management Foundation 1995), or they have specified different roles, career paths, and working styles of staff (e.g., Price 1971; Romzek and Utter 1997; DeGregorio 1988). The primary motivations for much of this atJournal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 65-82 ? 2003 Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Inc. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.148 on Fri, 16 Dec 2016 07:41:19 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 66 Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory tention have been to investigate the impact of staff growth on the members (Malbin 1981; DeGregorio 1988 and 1994), to understand the degree of responsiveness of and turnover within the large legislative bureaucracy (Salisbury and Shepsle 1981 a), or to consider forms and mechanisms of accountability (Romzek 2000). These investigations explore in some fashion the impact of staff on the function of representation, but only rarely has the variable of gender factored into these analyses. We employ the concepts and terminology of representative bureaucracy for insight into the representational roles of congressional committee staff. Congressional staff are engaged in representation that is both passive (a synonym for Pitkin's [1967] descriptive representation emphasizing the shared demographic characteristics that allow the representative to stand for others) and active (what Pitkin calls substantive representation focusing on the representative's ability to act on behalf of others). Scholars of representative bureaucracy assert that administrative personnel should be responsive to elected officials, and they argue that demographic correspondence between the bureaucrats and the public they serve enhances representation and optimizes bureaucratic outcomes. Committee staffers are particularly well suited for offering insight concerning the dynamics of passive and active representation. Committee staffers are unlike personal staff, whose absolute obligations to members are straightforward and clear. Because they are hired by the chair or ranking member, committee staff will have a personal and structural connection to that member, but at the same time, committee staff serve other committee members and are immersed in policy issues with many segments of the public. Thus committee staffers confront competing expectations of responsiveness and obligation-to the institution, to different members, to party, and to their policy areas, which may include a whole host of external groups with policy demands. By contrast, personal legislative aides are often policy generalists, and leadership staff specialize in procedural and political expertise (DeGregorio 1997). The model we propose is similar in purpose and substance to the typology of administrative discretion proposed by Richard C. Box (1992). Box posits three levels of administrative discretion (i.e., trustees, interpreters, and delegates), thus providing nuance to the sometimes dualistic concept of discretion or its absence. As does Box's typology, our typology of congressional staff influence implies a certain level of discretion staff members are able to accrue and use. More important, we believe our typology contributes new insight not only to an understanding of the representational behavior of congressional committee staff but also to an appreciation of variants of the minority representative role posited by scholars of representative bureaucracy (Selden, Brudney, and Kellough 1998). Following a discussion of prior research and theory, we will present a typology of staff roles. Our model grows out of an inductive research effort based on exploratory, in-depth interviews with congressional committee staff. The semistructured interview protocol was designed to allow committee staff to talk about their roles and whether they perceived a staff linkage between descriptive and substantive representation. The interviews were conducted with twenty staff during 1999 and 2000 around two issues that were selected because of their gendered dimensions. We present the two cases that undergird our theory-building effort after we introduce the model.