External Factors In Congress

Such result is inevitable when there are both external and internal factors wrestling and, at the same time, supporting each other in every political match happening in Congress. External factors created the necessary condition in which internal changes could be and were discussed in the House and Senate. However, internal changes, in turn, have shaped and amplified the impacts that external factors created. Together, these intertwined factors have brought about their own changes to how Congress makes law.
In Sinclair’s analysis, voters, political activists, and politicians all play significant roles in creating and enforcing the ideological gap between the two major parties in Congress. This trend of polarization is rooted in the electorate

and in the activist core of the Republican Party in such a way that, Sinclair argues, has allowed members of the party to alter how the House functions as a defeated apparatus of the government. On the one hand, voters have become more sensitive to the differences between the parties, as a result of realignment in the South and increased partisan polarization at the voter level. On the other hand, the Republican Party, flooded by evangelical Christians, has moved further to the right of the political spectrum of Congress. In addition, the development of conservative infrastructures and think tanks, cultured by neoconservatives, has further perpetuated the ideological separation of the parties.
Sinclair also points out that the norm in Washington is now unorthodox lawmaking in the hyper-partisan House and Senate.

Special rules and new floor procedures have been institutionalized. Although the external political environment of the House is as electrifying as that of the Senate, it is based on a very different body of basic rules. The individualist Senate, a body in which senators aggressively exploited the great Congressional privileges these rules gave them, as she argues, to further their own individual ends. In fact, nowadays, the process of lawmaking in a chamber with non-majoritarian rules and with members so accustomed to exploiting those rules fully is reasonably expected to drag on for months, if not

years.
The roots of the individualist Senate can be traced to the late 1960s when junior Senators began to rebel against the seniority system and urge rule changes that would facilitate enactment of civil rights, labor, and other legislation. Sinclair notes that the Senate transformed itself from an inward-looking, committee- and seniority-dominated institution, in which influence and resources were unequally distributed, to an individualist, outward-looking institution with a much more equal distribution of resources. In short, the communitarian, small-town character of the Senate of the 1950s with its norms, folkways, and hierarchical structure was replaced by a system that granted wide opportunities to rank-and-file Senators to influence virtually any policy area. This structure is still prominent today. In fact, the Senate is increasingly a place where it’s easier for a single lawmaker to stop a bill in its tracks than to get it passed by bringing others on board.
Members of Congress today desire reelection, good public policy, and influence in the chamber, but not necessarily in that order.

These desires interact with one another in different ways, giving rise to the need for different strategies employed by members of House and Senate. When members' reelection needs and personal policy preferences are similar within the party and differ substantially between parties, as we see in a highly polarized Congress, it makes sense for them to organize their parties and endow their leaders with the resources necessary to facilitate the achievement of their goals. Scholars have argued that the contemporary parties are elaborately organized so as to facilitate joint action toward collective goals, while also providing members with much-prized opportunities to participate in the legislative process. An increased reliance over the past three decades on special rules in the House to achieve legislative goals rather than compromise and negotiation has become the norm, rather than the

exception.
The enactment of the Legislative Reorganization Act in 1970, which made House and Senate processes more transparent by making all committee hearings (excluding national security meetings and appropriations) public, spurred a large number of changes in many aspects of congressional operations, administration, and procedures. The Legislative Reorganization Act also permitted televised broadcasts of many of these committee hearings, with the intent to culture even a higher level of transparency in Congress. These rule changes provided for new ways to consider legislation on the floor and provided new technology to record votes in the House.

In response to the Legislative Reorganization Act, later changes, and exogenous developments, the House and Senate have altered the way legislation is considered. In the House, the use of structured special rules has increased. The use of special rules to control the length of debate and the number of amendments in order has provided the House majority party with the ability to more tightly control the legislative agenda. The number of special rules has also decreased, resulting in fewer measures considered by the House and therefore eligible for potential presentation to the President for his signature. Additionally, the scheduling of legislation under suspension of the rules—a procedure for noncontroversial measures that requires a two-thirds vote of the House for passage and does not allow floor amendments—has increased.
Nowadays, Congress is structured to make public policy from disparate inputs in a limited amount of time. Rather than negotiate and pass laws behind closed doors, Congress is instead asked to conduct its business in a responsible, deliberative, inclusive, and public manner.