Explaining Congressional Approval

Abstract

Theory: Aggregate public approval of the United States Congress declines when Congress acts as required by its institutional role as both a representative and legislative body. Hypothesis: The passage of major legislation, veto overrides, and internal discord are all anticipated to drive downward public support of Congress. Methods: While previous analyses of Congressional approval have relied on annual time series, we employ a measurement strategy that permits us to tap into over 40 different survey items administered nearly 300 times to produce a quarterly measure of approval, extending from the first quarter of 1974 through the fourth quarter of 1993. A distributed-lag time series regression model is estimated to test our hypotheses. Results: The analysis presented below supports the hypothesis that citizens' attitudes toward Congress respond in the aggregate to veto overrides, intra-Congress conflict, and the passage of major bills. As such, our results stand in contrast to those of earlier studies of Congressional approval, which have typically relied on explanatory variables that are beyond the control of Congress. Approval is also shown to be a function of both economic expectations and New York Times' coverage of Congress.