Summary Of The Challenges Of Congress Representation By Richard Fenno

It’s been argued ever since the constitution was made how in touch the congress members where with the people who elect them and this argument still goes on today. With the 425 members of the House each has a district which averages nearly 650,000 people, this is a vast number with many arguing that there is little chance that congress can be in touch with the people when they have to represent such vast numbers. However, the other side of the argument displays evidence that in fact the members of congress are able to stay in touch and represent the people who elect them.

This written report is appertaining to the book How Congress Works and Why You Should Care, written by Lee H. Hamilton. This book is published by Indiana University Press in Bloomington, IL, it was copyrighted in 2004 by the publisher.

When looking how effectively a country represents its citizens, it is important to take into account the manner in which they are represented. The two main types of representation are descriptive and agency representation. Descriptive representation is the concept that those who represent the American people should not only have the same political interest, but should also mirror the demographic makeup of the people. Agency representation, which is what the United States congress looks like, is when the representation does not reflect the demographic, but they speak for their constituents’ interests in congress. The constituents are able to hold the representatives accountable and can choose not to elect them in the next term, so the representatives

The first difficulty is the fact that Congressmen want to be reelected into office. For them to do this they often focus solely on promoting local interests instead of the national interests. This means that they focus on the needs of the local area rather than focusing on a national level. My promoting

In the past century, people continued to express an increasingly discontent view of Congress especially true when one looks back before the Clinton Impeachment debacle As the size of the nation and the number of congressman have grown, the congress has come under attack by both public influences and congressman themselves. Yet looking at one congressman's relationship with his or her constituents, it would be hard to believe that this is the branch of government that has come under suspect. In "If Ralph Nader says congress is 'The broken branch,' how come we love our congressman so much?" author Richard F. Fenno, Jr., provides insight into this view and why, through congress coming under fire, constituents still feel positively about

Members of Congress are voted to office by their electorate as their representatives at the congress level of democracy. In their capacity, they may decide to exercise their powers by the will of the people or according to their personal judgment. When the members of Congress opt to be the people’s delegate, their actions in the House and other congressional engagements are a reflection of the will of their district. As such, the delegate representative does not have or exercise the autonomy to represent and decide for their district. Instead, a strenuous consultation process is required to keep the people in control of all relevant decisions.

Government, all the way from Capitol Hill down to the small cities across the nation, is filled with the elected officials who represent the citizens of that city and state. When people think about who represents them, who comes to mind first? The Senator? The Representative? The mayor? Despite being categorized at different levels of the government, state and federal, each of these officials are tasked with representing their state and hometowns, and each of their jobs is just as important as the other. Their job, in short, is to represent the interests of the people who elected them into office. In this essay, I will identify the individuals who represent me and evaluate the extent to which I feel represented.

The congressional behaviors of Representative Maxine Waters, a Democratic representative for the 43rd district of California, and that of Democratic Representative Darren Soto are both inspired by the goal of reelection. This common goal of reelection coined by David Mayhew is achieved differently by each representative depending on the demographics, political leaning, and incumbency of the district. When comparing the legislative behavior of Darren Soto, the representative of Florida’s newly drawn 9th congressional district, and that of Representative Maxine Waters from California’s 43rd Congressional district, this holding becomes evident. This paper will argue that while both Rep. Waters, and Rep. Soto are inspired by the common goal of

The Constituents entails that illustration in the House of Representatives be assigned to states on the origin of residents. Every single decade, we total the quantity of individuals living in every state and, later making unquestionable that all state acquires one House participant, distribute up the rest. Enormous populace states like California acquire additional House chairs and minor states acquire just the one. A diversity of federal Court cases, however, smeared the fourteenth Amendment’s equivalent safety clause to the procedure of diagram legislative areas occasioning in a prerequisite that every region have unevenly the identical

The previous passage proves that the constitution’s ideal representative that holds some sort of power and status in government need to be educated and wealthy. To sum it up, those who are already in congress are those who decide who’ll be apart of government, and make decisions that will affect our country. This will further create a division amongst classes and tension between the upper and middle class will diverge from one another.

Body #1 - To get started, let's examine the ⅗ Compromise. It has come to my attention that the argument of how representation in congress should be valued whether through

In this editorial, Michael Dobie expresses his stance on our modern day Congress. The main issue that he has with it is that Congress is unable to complete anything at all. He believes that so many of our issues, such as the Zika virus, gun control, our national spending, aren’t being acted on because both parties of Congress are unwilling to work together to develop a strategy to any of these issues. He also shares the statistic that 83% of Americans are not satisfied with the way that Congress is currently functioning. In short, Dobie concludes that Congress, as a group, does not perform their duties as they should be and due to that, are unable to find solutions to our major problems, which we are currently dealing with.

The article Rethinking Representation, written by Jane Mansbridge, explains how there are three different forms of representation apart from the traditional idea of “promissory” representation. Promissory representation is the traditional model of representation. It focuses on the idea that during a representative’s campaign they make promises to their constituents. During the representative’s time in office, these promises are either kept or not fulfilled. As Mansbridge notes, within the last 20 years there has been three new forms of representation, they are anticipatory, gyroscopic, and surrogate representation.

Fenno argues studying the behavior of House members in their district or their home style is important because this interpretation reveals the logic behind of representative’s behavior in a more nuanced manner than attributing their actions to the political climate of Washington, D.C. Fenno describes home style as the manner in which a representative conducts herself or himself in their district and constituents. Observing a House member’s behavior at in their district explains several factors of a representative’s conduct not explained when only focusing on their actions in Washington. First, studying a representative’s home style reveals the logic behind a representative’s allocation of their resources. Second, a representative’s relation

This essay determine how 100 congressional seats should be divided among the 10 states of the union. The number of seats in a state should (in any fair distribution) be proportional to its ratio in the population. Therefore rounding according to some (acceptable) rule should be applied.