Contacting Congressional Constituents: Some Patterns of Perquisite Use

Over the past several decades, and especially since the mid-sixties, there has been a growing flood of mass mailings sent out by members of Congress. Efforts have been made to use aggregate data on congressional mailings to explain the increased electoral advantage of incumbency. These data mask enormous variation, however, in the aggressiveness with which members use mailings as a communications tool. In an effort to understand this variation better, a survey was conducted of mass mailings from a sample of House offices. On average, the most active members were those who were electorally insecure and those who were relatively new to Congress. One possible explanation for the relationship between seniority and mail output focused on changing communications styles of congressional cohorts. A second survey was conducted several years later to help determine whether this explanation was valid. The results of the second survey were quite similar to those of the earlier analysis, suggesting that the proposed link between seniority and output was not a spurious product of changing communications styles.