The Case of the Vanishing Marginals: The Bureaucracy Did It

Several authors have addressed the postwar decline of electoral competition on the congressional level. Some have attributed the decline to institutional change such as the redistrictings of the 1960s. Others have remarked on the growing use of the growing resources of incumbency. Still others, like Ferejohn, have focused on behavioral change in the larger electoral system, such as the erosion of party identification. In this comment I suggest that while electoral behavior has changed, the change is at least in part a response to changing congressional behavior, which in turn is a reaction to institutional change for which Congress is partly responsible. Specifically, over time congressmen have placed increasing emphasis on district services: more and more they operate as and are perceived as ombudsmen rather than as national policymakers. This behavioral change is an understandable response to an expanding federal role and an increasing involvement of the federal bureaucracy in the lives of ordinary citizens, an institutional change Congress has helped to bring about.