Book Reviews : Who Makes the Laws? Creativity and Power in Senate Committees. By DAVID E. PRICE. (Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman Pub. Co., 1972. Pp. x, 380, $4.95.)
| Published date | 01 December 1974 |
| Author | Emmett H. Buell |
| DOI | 10.1177/106591297402700420 |
| Date | 01 December 1974 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
748
Who
Makes
the
Laws?
Creativity
and
Power
in
Senate
Committees.
By
DAVID
E.
PRICE.
(Cambridge,
Mass.:
Schenkman
Pub.
Co.,
1972.
Pp.
x,
380,
$4.95.)
The
author
draws
on
his
past
experience
as
a
senatorial
staff
member
to
pro-
duce
a
highly
professional,
carefully
detailed
description
of
the
workings
of
three
U.S.
Senate
committees
during
the
89th
Congress
(1965-66).
Most
of
the
book
consists
of
case
histories
of 13
bills
taken
up
by
the
Commerce,
Finance,
and
Labor
and
Public
Works
committees
and
their
respective
subcommittees.
Readers
inter-
ested
in
the
torrent
of
legislation
that
came
out
of
this
&dquo;Johnson
Congress&dquo;
will
find
rich,
anecdotally
supplemented
accounts
of
such
bills
as
the
Federal
Cigarette
Labeling
and
Advertising
Act,
the
Sugar
Act
Amendments
of
1965,
and
the
Fair
Labor
Standard
Amendments
of
1966.
This
wealth
of
descriptive
material
is
presented
largely
to
argue
that
Congress
maintains
a
responsible
role
in
lawmaking.
Price
contends
that
the
concept
of
&dquo;responsibility&dquo;
has
been
unduly
neglected
in
the
literature,
and
attempts
to
employ
it
systematically
in
an
analysis
of
the
activities
of
committee
members
in
dealing
with
the
13
bills.
In
his
view,
&dquo;responsibility&dquo;
can
best
be determined
by
attending
to
six
policy-making
functions:
instigation
and
publicizing
of
issues;
formulation
of
specific
legislative
remedies;
gathering
of
information
on
feasibility,
hazards,
and
alternatives;
responding
to
various
interests;
and
modification
of
proposals
put
forward.
This
loose
framework
is
further
stretched
to
include
five
roles
of
the
sena-
torial
committee:
organization,
social
system,
representative
institution,
&dquo;island
of
decision,&dquo;
and
communications
center.
When
this
framework
is
applied
to
the
case
materials,
at
least
three
problems
emerge
for
the
concept
of
responsibility.
First,
it
becomes
impossible
to
keep
the
various
functions
separate,
thereby
raising
an
issue
about
the
analytic
utility
of
this
particular
formulation.
Second,
almost
any
actor
who
affects
the
enactment
or
defeat
of
a
bill
can
be
said
to
have
had
some
share
of
the
responsibility
in
deciding
the
outcome.
Time
and
again
the
author
offers
the
unexceptional
finding
that
the
actors
mainly
responsible
for
the
fate
of
a
particular
measure
vary
from
bill
to
bill,
with
no
bill’s
outcome
determined
by
a
single
actor.
Finally,
it
is
impossible
to
untangle
the
situational
variables
from
more
general
ones.
Explanations
of
process
are
mostly
dominated
by
factors
unique
to
the
particular
situation,
e.g.,
this
specific
proposal,
its
special
history,
the
senatorial
personalities
involved
at
this
point
in
time,
the
relative
disinterest
of
the
administration,
etc.
Consequenty,
the
reader
will
find
few
generalizations
that
extend
beyond
the
specific
circumstances
of
an
unusually
productive
Congress.
To
his
credit,
Price
anticipates
this
criticism
and
addresses
it
in
the
last
part
of
the
book.
To
those
who
contend
that
the
89th
Congress
is
a
poor
case
for
test-
ing
legislative
responsibility,
Price
nicely
turns
the
point
around
and
argues
that
this
particular
Congress
represents
an
unusually
difficult.
test,
and
thereby
an
all-
the-more
meaningful
one.
He
also
makes
a
strong
case
for
the
necessity
of
in-
cluding
situational
variables
in
explanations
of
political
events.
No
one
who
plows
through
the
extensive
case
materials
of
this
book
can
accuse
the
author
of
neglecting
the
political,
as
is
sometimes
done
in
the
quest
for
new
and
neater
typologies.
How-
ever,
no
satisfactory
answer
is
made
to
the
recurring
question
of
how
different
the
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