Institutional change, discretion, and the making of modern Congress

Institutional Change, Discretion, and the Making of Modern Congress challenges the widely accepted assumption that legislators, if not all politicians, are driven by the desire to be reelected. Through a series of creative arguments drawing on rational choice theory and microeconomics, political scientist Glenn R. Parker offers a controversial alternative to the reelection assumption: he posits that legislators seek to maximize their own discretion--the freedom to do what they want to do. Parker uses this premise to account for the behavior of legislatures, the organization of Congress, the emergence of policy outcomes that reveal legislator altruism as well as parochialism, and the evolution of Congress as a political institution. Legislators behave like monopolists, argues Parker, creating barriers to entry that prevent competitive challenges to their reelection and ultimately increasing their discretion. Parker uses this premise to explain basic historical patterns in the evolution of Congress, from the lengthening of congressional terms of service to the unusual expansion in the number of committee assignments held by members of Congress.