Parochialism, Policy, and Constituency Constraints: Congressional Voting on Strategic Weapons Systems

Conventional wisdom holds that parochialism shapes how Congress decides defense issues. Yet most statistical analyses point to ideology as the key variable in congressional voting on defense policy. This study examines Senate and House votes on several strategic weapons systems and corroborates previous findings; members of Congress generally vote in accordance with their policy views and not their constituency's economic interests. This departs markedly from congressional behavior in other areas of the defense budget and suggests that the conventional wisdom about the constituency-voting link is oversimplified. In particular, the findings here lend credence to the argument that the constituency should be viewed as a constraint on members' freedom of action rather than as a positive guide to behavior.