Unit 5C: Governing the USA David Houghton The Lecturer in Government at University of Essex writes for BBC Parliament

Power of the purse, and more

Congress plays a major role in the processes of American Government.

It is not just a rubber stamp, as legislatures often appear to be in a parliamentary system like that of the United Kingdom; it plays a genuine policy-making role, sharing responsibility for the formulation of both domestic and foreign policy with the president through its legislative functions.

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It controls the budget through its "power of the purse". It ratifies treaties and presidential appointments, and also acts as an overseer of what the executive branch is doing.

Representation

Members of Congress tend to adopt one of two classic modes of representation, the trustee model or the delegate model.

Under the trustee model, the legislator sees himself or herself as a representative of the people in a general sense, but nevertheless feels empowered to use his or her own judgments as to what is in the interests of his or her constituents.

Under the delegate model, the member feels bound to faithfully represent the intentions and wishes of the constituents, following these in detail.

In practice, except on a handful of issues where voter intentions are clear and precise (typically on passion-provoking issues such as gun control), representatives in the House and Senate usually follow the trustee model, since it is often unclear what the precise preferences of constituents are.

Like most legislatures, Congress is not demographically representative of the American people as a whole; African Americans and women are particularly underrepresented.

Nevertheless, there is broad agreement that members of Congress are highly representative of their constituents in the sense that they are local in their focus, are highly attentive to constituency demands and have probably become even more attentive in recent years.

The re-election motive is a powerful one, and some commentators (notably David Mayhew) argue that this motive effectively supersedes all others, especially for House members (who serve two year terms, and are hence constantly up for re-election).

The problem may be that members of Congress are too representative of their own constituents, and that Congress as a body is therefore not sufficiently representative of the needs of the nation as a whole.

Power distribution

In a nutshell, power is highly decentralised and dispersed, being parcelled out to a range of committees and sub-committees which craft and amend legislation and oversee the policies and activities of the executive branch.

Within the committee system, the chairpersons are especially powerful since they control the agendas of their respective committees.

This is not to suggest that the party leadership in both houses of Congress is not important, because it often is.

The Speaker of the House of Representatives, for instance - though not nearly as powerful as he was in the early 1900s - continues to enjoy significant formal and informal powers which can prove critical in the passage or rejection of legislation.

The Minority and Majority Leaders also exercise formidable informal powers within the House, on occasion serving as party spokesmen and rallying points for or against the president's position.

Given that the president and Congress share responsibility in many areas of policy, the question of what determines the relationship between the two bodies becomes an important one.

How important are political parties?

Knowing the British political system, one might think that political party is the all-important glue in the American system, helping bind together the executive and legislature.

However, party is not nearly so powerful an adhesive in America as it is in the British system.

This is in part attributable to the fact that the two countries have different political systems.

Britain's parliamentary system means the prime minister by definition can usually count on a majority in Parliament, but members of the US Congress are chosen in elections which are separate (and often held at different times) from those used to select the president.

There is thus no guarantee that the Republicans, say, will win the White House and the House of Representatives at the same time.

They may win one, or both, or neither. Thus in the US system divided government - a situation in which one party controls the Congress (or one house within it) while the other controls the presidency - is quite possible; indeed, it has been increasingly common in recent years.

Divided government sometimes results in government gridlock - a situation in which the day-to-day business of governing grinds to a halt as Congress and the president pull in different directions and cancel one another out - though there is some evidence to suggest that effective policy making is still possible under divided government.

Being elected separately, members of Congress do not owe their election to the president, as Labour MPs swept in on a landslide for Labour PM Tony Blair might.

They also have different electoral interests to the president; they represent only their own constituency, whereas the president represents the whole nation.

This means that a Democratic member of Congress, for instance, may not necessarily see eye to eye with a Democratic president.

President Jimmy Carter, for example, often came to blows with the Congress, even though Carter was a Democrat and the Democratic party controlled Congress at the time.

How can a president be successful with Congress?

The ideological makeup of Congress (as opposed to its party composition per se) is a major factor - politically conservative Congressmen tend to vote with a conservative president, for instance - as are the legislative skills of the president in pushing his policy programme through both houses of Congress.

Successful presidents, according to Richard Neustadt in his classic book Presidential Power, tend to have formidable persuasive powers.

High presidential popularity also tends to translate into success with Congress, particularly in the wake of an electoral landslide such as that of 1964, as does the appearance of some major crisis.