Metropolitan Areas and Congress: Foreign Policy and National Security

Abstract

A NY RESEARCH SEEKING ecological influences on roll call voting A behavior in the United States House of Representatives must include urbanization as one variable to be tested. For many decades, one of the more striking of American social phenomena has been the growth of great cities (and more recently their suburbs) and the corresponding decline in population. Journalists and other observers, including congressmen themselves, have assumed since the 1930's that only party affiliation and geographic region are more important elements on which to base legislative organization on at least some issues. Such terms as rural coalition and bloc appear with considerable frequency among contemporary descriptions of the workings of Congress, as well as in the Congressional Record. Much attention has been focused on an assumed clash between urban and groups (in both national and state legislative bodies), particularly in connection with such issues as transportation, housing, and public welfare. A number of studies have demonstrated the existence of variations in roll call voting performance among representatives from communities of different sizes.1 However, almost all of these studies have emphasized legislative action on issues having a direct, immediate, and obvious impact, usually economic in character, on either urban or constituencies (or on both, but in opposite directions). There have been few efforts to measure this influence with regard to issues not usually thought of as possessing an urban-rural dimension.