Labor Markets, Policymaking, and Representation in Congress Público
McCrain, Joshua (Summer 2020)
Abstract
In political institutions, personnel are politics. In congressional scholarship, the importance and influence of congressional staff is well-studied: members of Congress rely on their staff in all aspects of their representational tasks. In this dissertation, I argue that the influence of legislative staff on congressional policymaking and representation is shaped by the way members strategically employ their resources for personnel and how these allocation choices interact with individual staff career concerns and the collective labor market. In the first chapter, I demonstrate that district traits and demographics, such as median income, urbanness, and competitiveness, predict personnel allocations. Richer constituents tend to have greater representation in policymaking as measured by staff allocations, while poorer districts see more resources dedicated to constituent service. In the second chapter, I suggest that these allocation choices shape the influence of staff in Congress through the labor market. Specifically, staff with higher levels of human capital select into offices with more electoral security and higher potential for policy influence. Offices that spend more of their resources in policy possess higher human capital staff. In the final chapter, I show evidence that staff do in fact attempt to strategically build their careers on Capitol Hill, incentivized by future payoffs in the private sector, specifically in lobbying. Taken together, this dissertation shows that the influence of staff in Congress is shaped by an interaction of legislator incentives and labor market concerns, with important implications for representation.
Table of Contents
1 Introduction 1
2 Legislative Resources, Staff, and Inequality in Representation 12
2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.2 Theoretical and Institutional Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.2.1 Congressional Sta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.2.2 Sta and Representational Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.3 Data and Stylized Facts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.3.1 Congressional Sta and Member of Congress Data . . . . . . . 27
2.3.2 Descriptives of Staffng Heterogeneity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
2.4 Empirical Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
2.4.1 Staffng Allocation and Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
2.4.2 District or Legislator-Driven Sta�ng . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
2.5 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
2.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
2.7 Appendix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
2.7.1 Data Description and Job Titles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
2.7.2 Additional Descriptives and Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
3 Human Capital on Capitol Hill 71
3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
3.2 The Congressional Labor Market . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
3.2.1 Careers on Capitol Hill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
3.3 Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
3.3.1 Careers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
3.4 Sta retention and experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
3.4.1 Human Capital . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
3.4.2 Additional implications for legislator behavior . . . . . . . . . 104
3.5 Discussion and Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
3.6 Appendix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
4 Revolving Door Lobbyists and the Value of Congressional Staff Connections 120
4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
4.2 Lobbying, Congressional Sta and Personal Connections . . . . . . . 124
4.2.1 Lobbying and the Importance of Who You Know in Congress 125
4.2.2 Congressional Sta as Revolving Door Lobbyists . . . . . . . . 127
4.3 Data and Empirical Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
4.3.1 Data Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
4.3.2 Key Dependent Variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
4.3.3 Key Independent Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
4.3.4 Empirical Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
4.4 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
4.4.1 The Value of Congressional Connections . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
4.4.2 Alternative Explanations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
4.5 Discussion and Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
4.6 Appendix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
4.6.1 Job Titles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
4.6.2 Data Description and Coding Decisions . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
4.6.3 Additional Robustness Checks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
5 Conclusion 188
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