Abstract
A modification of Stephen Toulmin's (1984) “field-specific reasoning” is applied to the text of deliberations in the United States Congress surrounding the foreign corrupt practices case 1975–1977. Findings suggest that Congress has developed an institutionalized mode of deliberation focused on developing argumentation capable of bringing limited sets of highly general and cathected goals (warrants) into equilibrium. The coalition-building capacity of symbolic resources is traced to their “embeddedness” in overlapping networks of issues, existing legislation, governmental organs, congressional committees, legislative careers, and mobilized (or mobilizable) constituencies. The analysis is used to formulate a resource dependence model of exchange in symbolic resources.
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