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When established in the 1950s, the American Political Science Association's (APSA) Congressional Fellowship Program (CFP) explicitly sought to promote the institutional study of Congress and political parties as a corrective to the high degree of emphasis the discipline then placed on the executive and bureaucratic aspects of American government.Footnote 1 In this regard, the program has been a success. An impressive output of scholarly literature in legislative studies has resulted from the work of former fellows. Over an extended period of time, this work has both contributed to, and challenged, rational choice theories of political behavior, and simultaneously expanded available data on a variety of topics.Footnote 2 Nonetheless, the Congressional Fellowship Program has also retained a strongly American institutional orientation.Footnote 3 Even when considering key U.S. foreign policy issues, this work emphasizes the balance of power between the president and Congress, and not the subfields of international relations or comparative politics in any theoretical sense.Footnote 4 Thus, it considers Congress in the American political system, not in the world.
The successes of the Congressional Fellowship Program do not need to be thus contained. My own experience prior to serving as a 2006–2007 fellow was nearly a mirror opposite of the other political scientists in the program. I had been theoretically trained in international relations and international political economy with a particular focus on financial institutions in the developing world. I had done fieldwork in Côte d'Ivoire on the politics of nascent stock market formation. Moreover, I had no personal experience with the policymaking process inside the U.S. government except for a summer that I had spent working in the U.S. embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, prior to commencing my doctoral studies. In order to deepen my knowledge of financial politics, I sought an assignment on the staff of the House Committee on Financial Services with responsibility for the subcommittee on domestic and international monetary policy. In this role, I was able to work on planning International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank oversight hearings, as well as help to prepare legislation connected to Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) and divestment from investments in Iran and Sudan. Having had no substantive knowledge of American political institutions prior to the fellowship, the entire year was a learning experience, from the initial orientation through the final days when the committee's bills were on the floor of the House, and then after they had passed and moved to the Senate.
As a result of these experiences, I will argue in this article that the Congressional Fellowship Program offers scholars in subfields outside of American politics numerous opportunities to deepen their concrete experience with the mechanisms and processes of government, and more importantly, to infuse the discipline of political science with the benefits of insights that can emerge when scholars across subfields interact with each other in an immersion program. Therefore, I will elaborate on ways that the benefits of the program are not confined to the study of US politics, but rather can prevent a duplication of efforts across subfields, and can contribute international insights into the study of institutional change in Congress that may not be immediately apparent to the program's traditional target audience in American politics.Footnote 5 Nonetheless, my immediate concern will be with the ways participating in the program can provide valuable experience with politics in Washington that holds great potential to benefit the study of U.S. foreign policy and international relations. These potentialities have only grown more numerous as the increasingly integrated subfields have turned to the analysis of activist networks and the social construction of knowledge taking place simultaneously within American and transnational political institutions.Footnote 6
In order to demonstrate the potential for what is, in effect, a loose form of participant-observation to contribute to the study of politics across subfields, this article will consider what literature in the study of Congress has to offer the study of international relations and comparative politics in two distinct areas that emerged from my own year in the program: institutional change and material interests in international politics. It will then consider a more active agenda for future research of this nature because these two areas are only a starting point and are limited by my experiences on the Committee staff, and my research expertise in the study of international political economy.
In short, Congress's chief interaction with the American bureaucracy is through the material authorization and appropriations process; likewise its chief interaction with international organizations like the United Nations, International Monetary Fund, and World Bank as well as many less-developed countries is through appropriations and to a lesser extent, oversight. Moreover, a degree of consensus exists that the private business sector dominates organized interest group activity in the American political system.Footnote 7 Understanding this sector as it cuts across issues of national security as well as political economy will augment our knowledge of fields as diverse as the environment, the privatization of national militaries, and global manufacturing and consumption flows. Taken together, an investigation of the study of Congress as it operates in a global context forces a reconsideration of the changing nature of American participation in international institutions as well as the material premises of multilateralism as an institutional form in the postwar world. Moreover, broadening the participation of political scientists in the Congressional Fellowship Program across subfields forces a reconsideration of the connection of the discipline to the very real problems of inequality and globalization that characterize the current material world.
To demonstrate these points, I will initially review the fellowship program's components. Next, I will consider how participating in the program can enhance our knowledge of the sources of institutional change across subfields. I then take a sample of specific policy issues and legislation that came onto the Committee on Financial Services' agenda during the 2006–2007 fellowship year and connect these episodes to broader debates in international political economy. I conclude by relating the experience of politics with earlier work in the discipline.
Opportunities for International Research Initiatives in the Congressional Fellowship Program
The APSA Congressional Fellowship Program comprises many varying experiences in the Washington community throughout the year. The initial orientation weeks are spent with a diverse group of fellows from the academy, mid-career U.S. government officials, journalists, and medical doctors. The bulk of the program is spent working in an assignment on the Hill, with every other Friday afternoon devoted to a continuing seminar series on Congress. In the assignment, the fellow works as a full time Congressional staffer, generally with a portfolio of issues for which she is responsible. Several months into the assignment, fellows may participate in a week-long exchange with the Canadian Parliamentary internship program in Ottawa. They may also travel to the home district at some point during the assignment in order to see the differences in operation between the district and Washington offices.
Therefore, the program is an immersion program both in the academic and the practical sense. First of all, participants are immersed in the academic history and functioning of the institution during the initial four-week intensive orientation program conducted by former fellows, Washington journalists, Congress scholars, and the Congressional Research Service. The initial immersion offers an extraordinary opportunity for scholars of international relations and comparative politics to broaden their knowledge of American political institutions at a stage in their careers when such opportunities to learn a new subfield are rare. This learning takes place within a very international cohort because each class of fellows includes Fulbright recipients, many of whom hold faculty appointments at foreign universities, and mid-career government officials from agencies that conduct international activities, such as the Department of State and the Central Intelligence Agency.
The second “immersion” aspect of the Congressional Fellowship Program is the more practical, day-to-day immersion in a Congressional office. For political scientists participating in the program who hold academic positions, adjusting to the day-to-day office rituals can present both a refreshing break from teaching and evaluating students' work, as well as a startling perspective on what research in the academy is judged to be useful by those outside. Unlike many of the world's major legislative bodies, the American Congress is a policy-making and not a policy-ratifying body. The pluralist organization of interest group activity in this forum means that many different kinds of domestic and international interest groups participate, unlike those legislatures where interest groups are represented by formal “peak” organizations. The active participation of foreign governments and lobbying groups representing them are not captured in studies of traditional diplomacy. Moreover, this lobbying activity is not confined to advanced, industrial countries. As the “first branch” of government most, if not all, international policy issues are handled through the workings of the institution of Congress and should be available to a fellow, if he or she considers their choice of assignment carefully.
However, the program does not present a complete set of anthropological participant observation methodological strategies, i.e., complete immersion in the activities of a group as if the researcher were herself a member for an extended period of time. To begin, a fellow does not control the research site because an individual participant must interview for an assignment. Hence, an assignment in a specific office is far from guaranteed. In addition, the fellow is not an ethnographer in the sense that fellows gain varying degrees of acceptance in a Congressional office depending on the assignment, majority party, etc. They are restricted in what information can be used from the experience due to confidentiality demands of a given assignment and fellows may not use the assignment to gather data for publication. Moreover, many of the traditional problems with participant-observation as a research methodology apply here: findings can at times be specific to a particular instance and may not be generalizable; they may lack external validity and they may only apply to small-scale cases.
Even with these limitations over traditional participant-observations, the Congressional Fellowship Program nonetheless offers considerable opportunities frequently associated with participant-observation and other qualitative methodologies such as informal interviews and collective discussions. These opportunities are compounded when combined with other methods. Chiefly, the entrepreneurial nature of the placement process allows the fellows to direct their efforts towards securing a certain type of placement, or in working on a certain set of issues. They generally succeed in obtaining a placement tied closely to their interests. Once the assignment commences, it offers the fellows access to information and points of view they would not otherwise be able to obtain. New problems on the frontier of politics can appear from this vantage point that can then be placed within a theoretical framework for further investigation. Opportunities arise daily to ask general or specific questions in the course of a given office task that may never have occurred to a researcher in a formal interview setting because the researcher would not have understood the larger process. In sum, the quantitative nature of the experience may not lead in the direction initially intended by the fellow, but at minimum the contacts and professional development aspects of the program are highly valuable. At a maximum, the qualitative aspects can be shaped to more quantitative projects in the future, if they are so desired.
Such research initiatives can be difficult to envision because so few international relations scholars have participated as fellows, and because the subfield of international relations does not lend itself to participant-observation easily. Nonetheless, in my own search for a placement, I quickly learned that the offices where I interviewed were receptive to specific skills I have gained through teaching, such as the ability to understand the variety of issues in the international arena that comprise topics used in introductory courses in international politics, and the ability to write certain kinds of correspondence that are a routine part of administrative life in a university. I was offered positions in both the House and Senate, on committee staffs, and in two personal offices. Current or recent fellows have likewise obtained placements on the types of committees that would be of interest to scholars of international relations, such as the Senate Finance Committee, the House Committee on Foreign Relations, and with the personal staffs of individual members keenly interested in the work of these committees.
In addition, the variety of tasks assigned to fellows insures that they will be exposed to members of Congress outside their immediate area, regardless of the assignment. For example, when attending a party caucus of members on the upcoming committee agenda in financial services, I gained a rare opportunity to see members exchange views on substantive policy issues that are emerging on the landscape of financial politics, and to see how these international issues connect to diverse constituencies across the U.S. Moreover, fellows socialize with each other, as well as with former fellows, during the course of the year. Thus, I was able to learn about policy issues and legislation outside my immediate focus in areas as diverse as health care and defense contracting. Finally, the composition of any given fellowship class is international. Participating in the week-long exchange in Ottawa with these fellows from Europe and Latin America added a unique dimension to learning about the Canadian legislative process because they were learning it at the same time, yet through the prism of their own national experience. Therefore, the year in Washington does not offer research opportunities in a formal data-gathering sense. It does offer a wide set of experiences that deepen the fellow's perspective on a range of topics both directly and indirectly.
Perspectives on Institutional Change and the International Financial Institutions
How are these experiences and insights valuable to the broader discipline of political science? My own interests in international political economy led me to seek an assignment on the committee staffs in the House and Senate that have jurisdiction over the international financial institutions (IFIs) that are of concern to current literature on international organizations and international political economy.Footnote 8 These committees, in effect, constitute a unique locus from which to observe what Germain has referred to as the “global financial public sphere.”Footnote 9 The work in international relations that has investigated the Congressional relationship to the international financial institutions relies heavily on Congressional roll call votes on funding the IMF and World Bank, and in particular, analyzes amendments, motions, or bills that considered the IFI component apart from other issues.Footnote 10 These votes occurred after legislation had been negotiated and brought to the floor under very specific circumstances. Most occurred during financial crises, and the most recent was nearly a decade ago in 1998. Scott and Carter's detailed case study of the 1997–98 legislation reveals competing agendas including family planning and IFI agency reform that were integral to the debates during the year. The lines of conflict were drawn between the White House and Congress, the two chambers of Congress, and between factions in each.Footnote 11
Thus, the literature points to the dimension of Congressional support that is necessary for international organizations to mediate policy outcomes as global actors. Yet is misses any potential for the investigation of ongoing Congressional involvement that did not result in legislation, or the myriad controls Congress places on the voting behavior of U.S. executive directors to the IFIs that are bundled in other legislation. This ongoing strategic interaction between the IFIs and Congress can take place through the exchange of letters, staff meetings, hearings, and briefings by the Department of the Treasury that are not captured in specific votes.
These non-legislative Congressional exchanges with the IFIs have grown increasingly important because the funding mechanism for the World Bank has changed over time from being one where the Bank generates revenues for its activities from its borrowing in private capital markets, to one more reliant on the contributions it receives from its donor states.Footnote 12 Since contributions from the U.S. government involve an elaborate authorizing and appropriating process that offers multiple opportunities for interest groups to influence the outcome, the relationship between Congress and the World Bank has altered in recent years as non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and interest groups have accessed these numerous pressure points.Footnote 13 Hence, it is clear that significant institutional change is occurring in both Congress as transnational groups play a role and the multilateral system as legislatures play a role. More importantly, change is occurring in the relationship between the two.
The study of international organizations (IOs) in the subfield of international relations in the U.S. misses these dimensions because it tends to be more overtly rationalist than historical in nature, and does not concern itself so much with institutional change as it does with how institutions (i.e., administrative agencies, laws, norms, and operating procedures) mediate policy outcomes.Footnote 14 In addition, the broader discipline of political science encounters difficulty answering these questions because various subfields take different institutions as their object of analysis, and understand institutional change so differently. As Skocpol and Pierson point out, “everybody is some kind of institutionalist now.”Footnote 15 For many authors in the subfield of comparative politics, “institutions” are social regimes such as capitalism or national financial structures. Change occurs incrementally and without the dramatic disruptions of the first half of the twentieth century. Thus, it occurs within and is constrained by the same postwar institutions.Footnote 16 When the subfield of international relations considers institutionalism, theorists commonly take a sociological view of institutions as being quite distinct from organizations. That is, international relations scholars understand institutional forms as sets of principles that specify appropriate conduct for a class of state actions, such as bilateralism, multilateralism, or imperialism.Footnote 17 Moreover, Simmons and Martin note that international relations literature regards institutions as explicitly normative, insofar as institutions specify what states should do, regardless of whether or not they are effective.Footnote 18 As with theorists of comparative politics who study institutions, an institution can be considered as either the regulation of established order, or as the locus of interactions for the transformation of the existing order. In particular, Cox points out that in practice multilateralism is both.Footnote 19 Specifically, “economic multilateralism” refers to support to a liberal economic order institutionally located in the principal agencies or organizations of the Western dominated world economy, i.e., the IMF and World Bank.
Unlike international relations, literature in American politics emphasizes the constant internal operational changes within the organization of Congress, as well as changing external relations with the executive and judicial branches of the U.S. government. What began as a government centered on Congress during the American revolution evolved into one with a much stronger executive at the turn of the twentieth century, and a significant role for the judicial system in reviewing Congressional legislation that may or may not have reflected the framers' intent in writing the Constitution. Those who design political institutions can rarely anticipate future contexts within which these institutions will be situated. Lee and Oppenheimer demonstrate the myriad consequences of apportionment in the U.S. Senate that the framers could not have envisioned since they were not designing a social welfare system, and the population of the country at the time was considerably smaller than it is in the present era.Footnote 20 Moreover, Polsby's study of the social bases of institutional change reminds readers that an understanding of how institutions function requires an understanding of the social contexts in which they are embedded. Changes that occurred in the political structure and functioning of the U.S. House of Representatives from the 1970s to 1990s can be explained by the changing demographic profiles of states (and subsequently political parties) made possible by technological changes such as air conditioning.Footnote 21
These different methods of investigation therefore complicate an analysis of institutional change occurring between Congress and the IFIs because, in effect, both are moving targets. The literatures surrounding them do not offer opportunities to consider questions such as whether change emanates from the same source, or is independent in each? As Congress has moved from a strong committee system to a stronger party system, the balance of power among branches of government has changed, as well as how policy is shaped between the state and civil society.Footnote 22 What Matthews termed the “committee caste system” in 1960 ranked the Senate Finance, Foreign Relations, Appropriations and Armed Services, Agriculture, Commerce, Judiciary, and Banking as the top spots.Footnote 23 However, Congress scholars point out that the rank of the most prestigious committees changed before and after the Matthews era. Moreover, the Banking Committee has not had the same jurisdiction since the Bretton Woods agreements were signed. The current Committee on Financial Services began as the Banking and Currency committee at the end of World War II. Housing was added to its name in the mid-1970s, and later the name was changed to Banking, Finance, and Urban Affairs. Whereas the current literature on Congressional support for the IMF highlights the role of banks in the financial crises of the late 1990s, most of these banks have also changed and merged into more comprehensive financial entities since that time. Likewise, most of the banks involved in the debt crises of the 1980s no longer exist as independent lobbying entities.
Practical experience working in Congress does not provide definitive answers to questions of institutional change in the IFIs or in Congress, or even how change is related in them. But it does provide clues as to where to look for answers, and how subfields can learn from each other. The work of the House Committee on Financial Services on the IMF and World Bank is well documented through hearing records and legislative mark-up sessions. In addition, the Congressional Record provides insights into issues when they were raised on the floor of the House or Senate. Knowing the details of “how a bill becomes a law” from routine experience with Congressional procedure make these records far more accessible to scholars trained in subfields where they may not have encountered them previously. Additional clues can be found in, for example, the financial press that covers the work of the Committee and that may provide commentary. The current chairman of the Financial Services committee has offered clues to the source of change in the committee's focus in television interviews and editorial publications.Footnote 24 Similarly, knowing the routine procedures within the committee staff allows the researcher to interpret this evidence in a far more informed manner.Footnote 25
My own experience was one where the majority party changed as I commenced my assignment, and I had the advantage of gaining perspective into how political parties can shape broader institutional shifts like globalization when they come into the majority and seize the agenda. Chairman Barney Frank (D-MA) has chosen to emphasize economic inequality in the overall work of the committee and views its work on the IFIs as an extension of that theme to the world community. His legislative interest in the IFIs extends to the previous Democratic majority in Congress when he was the chair of the Domestic and International Monetary Policy subcommittee and worked to develop inspection panels within the framework of World Bank lending.Footnote 26
Therefore, direct interaction with members of Congress who themselves have operated in the majority and minority party offers insight not only into how party ideology shapes policy with respect to the IFIs and globalization more generally, but the potential that majority/minority party status can hold for shaping a legislative and oversight agenda. Direct interaction also reveals how experienced members with a high degree of expertise in an issue can make a difference. Likewise, daily exchanges with staffers who have had long-term experience with the IFIs and their interactions on Capital Hill helped me to situate these issues within the broader work of the subcommittee such as international monetary policy and remittances, and the individual member's priorities that likewise shift. Having direct experience thus allows a fellow to conceptualize and shape research questions that they would not have been able to conceive without having daily contact with a broad variety of members, staffers, constituents, interest groups and professionals from other branches of the federal government such as the Treasury and State departments.
Perspectives on the Work of Interest Groups
The assortment of daily experiences on Capital Hill shapes the fellow's perspectives on the study of politics, yet not necessarily in ways anticipated. To detail some instances where work I completed in the program relates to scholarship in both international political economy and U.S. foreign policy, I will connect three pieces of the Committee's legislative activity to their implications for broader debates. These are not issues where I had an initial research interest, nor could have anticipated any involvement when I began the program. Yet each has informed my thinking about the international political economy, after I worked on it. Moreover, each policy issue will require serious theoretical attention to resolve that could draw on literature in different subfields because each speaks to the many dimensions of the work of interest groups in the domestic and international political systems. The first issue is legislation authorizing divestment from Sudan promoted by an activist network. The second is legislation formalizing the legal status of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS) promoted by the business community, and the third is the mortgage crisis and credit crunch that began to unfold at the end of my time on the staff.
Interest Groups and Divestment Campaigns
The House of Representatives passed H.R. 180, the “Darfur Accountability and Divestment Act of 2007” in the final weeks of my fellowship term. The bipartisan bill was designed to enable individual U.S. citizens to voice their opposition to the genocidal practices of the government of Sudan by selling shares of foreign corporations that conduct business there, if they so desired. In order to gain passage, committee staff spent a considerable amount of time reconciling the competing needs of NGO coalitions and industry groups that had concerns of both a philosophical and practical nature. The day-to-day experience of working with transnational advocates and interest groups that have a common concern with genocide provides perspective on current studies of the activities of NGOs in world politics and illuminates literature on interest groups in American politics that may help to solve some of the puzzles of the power and influence they hold in transnational civil society.Footnote 27
Previous work in Congress had attempted to address the problem of genocide in Darfur through a variety of pieces of legislation.Footnote 28 H.R. 180 came to the Committee on Financial Services because it involved the investment community and authority of state pension funds and private investment firms' fiduciary responsibilities to their shareholders. The work in 2007 involved meeting with activists who had experience with the legislative models used elsewhere, the Federal agencies that would (or would potentially) be involved, and eventually with the pension fund representatives who would be responsible for carrying out the sale of assets.
Studies of political activity in industrial democracies have pointed out that interest groups can operate to varying degrees within the public sphere, depending on the audience they seek to influence and their position in the social hierarchy. In an early critique of pluralist understandings of American politics, Schattschneider argued that theorists cannot simply assume a balance of power exists among groups in the U.S., nor that there is universality of group representation within them. His insight is that powerful groups seek private resolution of their demands, and weaker groups seek public resolution. By going public, weaker groups raise visibility of a given conflict, widen its scope, and make certain that the power ratio among private interests will not prevail. Nonetheless, if literally everyone were equally involved the pressure system, it would result in a stalemate. By his estimate, 90 percent of Americans were excluded from it in the 1970s.Footnote 29 According to Schattschneider's oft-repeated phrase, “the flaw in the pluralist heaven is that the heavenly chorus sings with an upper class accent.”Footnote 30 Likewise, Bachrach and Baratz point out that political activity—conscious or unconsciously—can create or reinforce barriers to the public airing of certain policy conflicts.Footnote 31 Hence Bachrach and Baratz's focus differs from Schattschneider's insofar as the most powerful elements in a system do not remain silent, but the weakest do. For Bachrach and Baratz, power incorporates activities that create or re-enforce social values, political values, and institutional practices that limit the scope of the political process. Similarly, in American politics and IOs headquartered in the U.S., a range of interest groups operates both inside and outside the public sphere to resolve political issues, and the activities of some actors either consciously or unconsciously can reinforce barriers to the public airing of some conflicts.
Given the distribution of independent associations that could qualify as NGOs, they tend to have a “Northern” orientation and their success in generating norms and change in social relations at the social level cannot be separated from their origins and funding in the North when viewed from the South.Footnote 32 Insights from these studies apply not only to domestic interest groups, but to transnational coalitions active on the Darfur issue as well. The activist coalition comprises many secular and religious groups that coordinate activities and communication with each other. For obvious reasons, none of the NGOs active in Washington comprises a significant membership of citizens in Darfur. Industry groups opposed to the legislation were reluctant to speak openly about their opposition due to the negative aspect of appearing to support genocide.
The configuration of interest groups on the Darfur question would appear to be an instance of Berry's citizen groups' activity crossing into the international domain.Footnote 33 Citizen groups are lobbying organizations that mobilize members, donors, or activists around interests other than their vocation or profession. Because most individuals' identities are increasingly non-partisan, citizen groups allow individuals to support advocacy on the political issues they care most about. These groups' success in gaining legislative allies upsets traditional policymaking networks because they increase the number of participants who need to be satisfied. Nonetheless, they have been successful in pushing their issues onto the Congressional agenda and putting business on the defensive.Footnote 34
The advantages of all of these groups' ability to navigate the Washington Capitol Hill network is apparent from the first meetings with them on an assignment. Moreover, the requisite financial resources, expertise, and access to offices in Washington are not practical for most NGOs from the South, who are dependent on Northern-based NGOs for funding, and for any presence in Washington or New York.Footnote 35 Transferring Schattschneider's insight into the international realm, relatively powerful groups such as international banks and corporations would gain considerable advantages by staying out of the public realm. They would prefer to operate out of view. Relatively weaker groups (such as NGOs and advocacy networks) could gain considerable advantage by seeking to widen the conflicts' scope, and thus take the conflict public. Mobilizing a member of Congress's constituency to act on a given issue is a key strategy of either group, either publicly or privately. In the Darfur campaign, student groups are particularly active, as is the ability to circulate information about local groups that have already divested. On many policy issues there may simply not be an opposing group, or that group may not choose to press a certain issue. Since the Darfur divestment campaign is still active, it is not possible to make a definitive judgment on the level or degree of mobilization of the opposition.
Therefore, advocacy NGOs perform a valuable function in the world system by attempting to pursue the interests of the entire world community and not just that of a single state. They appear to be most successful in Congress when they, like any interest group, can connect the issue to the broadest possible local constituencies of individual members. Turning international politics into local politics requires a degree of sophistication with American political processes that many individuals from the Global South lack. Knowing more about the connections that advocacy networks make to domestic politics, and how these connections are distinguished from international organizations, would contribute to the existing literature on their effectiveness.
Wall Street, the Department of the Treasury, and the Range of Committee Legislation
One of the committee's early legislative successes in the 110th Congress was the passage of H.R. 556, the National Security Foreign Investment Reform and Strengthened Transparency Act of 2007, that established a statutory framework for the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS). Sensationalized by media accounts of the takeover of U.S. firms by the China National Offshore Oil Corporation and Dubai Portsworld, earlier versions of the bill had passed the House and Senate in different versions and failed to be reconciled. The meetings and negotiations for this bill provided perspective on a different set of interest groups than the Darfur legislation. I shadowed the staff member responsible for the legislation through various drafts, amendments, and trips to the legislative counsel prior to the committee mark-up for this bill. As it moved out of the committee and onto the floor of the House, a great deal of the work involves educating personal staffs in the member's offices about its details and why it was written the way it was. These discussions directly addressed the subtle interplay of national security and free market capitalism, as well as the nuances of law that are necessary to strike a balance between these concepts.
In the discussions surrounding the CFIUS legislation, I did not have access to the entire financial system. Nor could I argue that I could observe the entire international political economy. I did, however, learn about the process of reconciliation of group interests that takes place in the committee staff and with the committee and House leadership. The discussions also challenged my notions of the role of domestic and international business lobbying in politics. In a good amount of international political economy, literature on policymaking in financial circles depicts a monolithic structure and situates interest representation within notions of C. W. Mill's power elite in a “Wall Street-Treasury complex,” or Gramscian hegemony in a “Washington-Wall Street alliance.”Footnote 36 Wade and Venero describe activity in concert with, and at times including the IMF, although the mechanisms for coordination are not specified.Footnote 37
Literature on policymaking in Congress challenges these notions of interest group/agency coordination and support for international organizations. First of all, early portrayals depicted policy subsystems in American politics as “iron triangles” that encompassed administrative agencies, legislative committees, and interest groups at a single level of government. Notions of a Wall Street-Treasury complex thus omit a third point in the old “iron triangle,” with no explanation for why Congressional committees do not matter in determining policy outcomes in financial politics. Moreover, literature on policymaking has advanced beyond these notions of iron triangles to incorporate the very real element of competition that operates among advocacy coalitions and their allies in political institutions. Hence, more sophisticated understandings broadened the concept to include journalists, researchers, and policy analysts who play an active role in disseminating policy ideas, and actors at all levels of government working in policy formation and implementation.Footnote 38 Other work on interest representation has pointed out that when institutions such as corporations or universities seek to influence public policy, their leaders do not advocate for employees or students, but rather for the needs of the institution as a continuing organization.Footnote 39 In addition, the president plays a powerful role in rallying interests to support some initiatives.Footnote 40
Therefore, when working on the Financial Services committee staff, notions of a unified “Wall Street-Treasury complex” become extremely problematic. Even legislation such as H. R. 556 that had received overwhelming, bipartisan support in the previous Congress and had the support of the financial services community encountered obstacles and required refinements after consultations with senate staffs, the current presidential administration, and the Department of the Treasury. Groups do not fall neatly along party lines, and members of the majority or minority party may alter legislation through amendments that are not predictable.
After this introduction to the work of the committee, far deeper divisions were apparent on all of the legislation. Notably, institutional investors and firms differ over non-binding shareholder votes on executive compensation (currently H.R. 1257 “The Shareholder Vote on Executive Compensation Act”) and the Federal Reserve and Department of the Treasury differ on approaches to the reform of the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (currently H.R. 1427 “Federal Housing Finance Reform Act of 2007”). The growth of interest groups on highly specialized aspects of global finance was evident as hedge funds organized and began to assert influence on the question of the taxation of carried interest on private equity firms at 35 percent.Footnote 41 Divisions were also apparent on the issue of the connection between the Treasury and the IFIs, when added to the Wall Street-Treasury complex. In fact, the IFIs are far more autonomous than the interlocking web of social connections would suggest from the outside. Other appraisals from researchers who took the time to consult the archival record and interview key participants have reached similar conclusions. For example, the push to amend the IMF's Articles of Agreement in the late 1990s has been portrayed as the IMF doing the Treasury's bidding.Footnote 42 Abdelal's closer examination finds that the initiative for the liberalization amendment came from within the Fund itself and did not have the backing of the Treasury or the world's bankers and investors.Footnote 43
Working within the complexity of Congress reveals not only that international political economy needs better understandings of how large and small investors, firms, banks, and international organizations shape international policy in the current era, but also needs better understandings of how financial actors influence policy outcomes in Congress through appropriations processes, which the literature on interest groups demonstrates to have its own distinct lobbying dynamic.Footnote 44 Finally, investigations of the lobbying activities of the transnational financial services industry in international political economy need to distinguish the extent and source of the industry's influence over different branches of the government such as the Presidential administration, Treasury, Securities and Exchange Commission, Federal Reserve, IFIs, and Congressional committees in the House and Senate. The Congressional Fellowship Program offers a particular advantage here to observe these processes because groups are openly attempting to influence outcomes on the Hill through hearings and meetings with members and staff.
Financial Crises and Government Regulation
As the fellowship year wound down in August of 2007, a credit crunch related to the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market worsened. The crisis was not confined to American capital markets because the securities had been sold in transnational markets. German asset management firms were among the first to close funds to protect investors. By the fall of 2007, credit rating agencies have come under increasing attack for their role in giving high ratings to subprime securities and failing to respond when borrowers began to default. Senators questioned the potential for a conflict of interest between rating agencies and the fee payment system, whereas the head of a private sector group advising the White House proposed the option of breaking up the rating agencies themselves.Footnote 45 Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, argued that the structured finance sector of the market would self-correct and not require government action.
The connection between public and private authority in global governance has been of increasing concern in international political economy that debates the degree to which power at the global level is contested between states and private authority. Most of the literature concludes that authority results from some mix of the two.Footnote 46 One side of the debate emphasizes expertise. Sinclair's work on the rating agencies argues that markets and governments take account of the agencies because they are viewed as an authoritative source of judgment in a world where capital increasingly flows through non-bank intermediaries.Footnote 47 Likewise, Porter highlights the importance of expertise in the financial crises of the 1990s, whose resolution was not simply bargained among states but required technical collaboration as well.Footnote 48 On another side of the same debate, Pauly points out that in a crisis, national governments are blamed, and they respond, regardless of the existence of private authority.Footnote 49 In the daily work of the committee, I became aware of a variety of financial issues where a corresponding discussion concerning whether or not legislation was needed to handle these issues takes place. Some issues can be handled through oversight hearings. Some are handled through letters to the appropriate agency head that likewise may prompt action to prevent further Congressional involvement. Private actors can follow a given path to pre-empt the need for legislation. Hence, non-legislative involvement presents another dimension to this work.
Moreover, insofar as Moody's was generating fees at the same time the firm was advising financial actors and rating bonds in the securitization process, new information has become available on the connections among political and economic actors. Hence, the intense media coverage of Moody's role in the unfolding crisis, as well as the committee's work on the issue, have uncovered new dimensions to existing work on the public/private authority question by adding the question of starkly material interests to each side of the debate. As the House and Senate work with the Treasury and Federal Reserve to resolve the crisis, further case studies of the way the Federal government responds in these situations will likewise become available. While the current crisis has yet to reach a conclusion, more work in this area could generate richer notions of public/private regimes by distinguishing how they operate in periods of elite apathy, and in periods of crisis where the media becomes focused on longstanding problems in public/private arrangements.
These three experiences with legislation during my fellowship are far from inclusive. Nonetheless, they contributed to my evolving thinking on international political economy and U.S. politics in ways that I could not have anticipated prior to the fellowship. My ability to evaluate historical evidence and conduct interviews was greatly enhanced by the experience. More importantly, the experience of working in Congress suggests that fellows can generate multiple ideas for ways to extend existing research into other areas of political science that he or she could never have conceived, let alone explored, before they began.
Conclusion
Earlier insights into the study of government and politics emerged from the same nexus of policy, practice, and theory both domestic and international that the Congressional Fellowship Program provides today. Woodrow Wilson, an early president of the American Political Science Association, President of the United States, and influential thinker on international relations researched the institution of Congress. His own view of total war had been shaped by his experiences with the American Civil War and reconstruction in the South. In Congressional Government, he argues for the importance of understanding the political context, or as he terms it the “conditions of public life.”Footnote 50 Wilson chose to focus on Congress as the heart of the American democracy at the same time he offers a strong critique of Madison's separation of powers on the grounds that separation rendered the executive weak and ineffective. Yet he pointed out that for the first quarter of a century of its existence, the substantive work of the Federal government was with foreign relations, such as the former colonial power England, the French and Spanish over the Louisiana Purchase and Florida, and later bilateral relations with various newly independent South American states.Footnote 51
In the current era, any single, individual benefit of the Congressional Fellowship Program is not systematically available to each participant. Nonetheless, the days spent working on the Hill are a constant reminder to all of the participants of the immediacy and turbulence of political issues vis-à-vis those examined in history that have had time to settle, or those studied within the context of large data sets. Working on the Hill, even if only for a finite number of months, affords political scientists the opportunity to engage political actors in their natural environment. Due to the volume and variety of issues that are channeled through Congressional offices, it would be unrealistic to think that a fellow could focus on just one specific policy issue during their time. Some issues may be completely unrelated to a given research project, for a given time. Nonetheless, fellows can control to a certain degree the portfolio of issues they will cover when they negotiate a placement on a personal or committee staff. Thus, for gaining a new perspective from which to develop new ideas about the range of issues that operate across broad international policy fields as diverse as global health, the environment or financial issues, the Congressional Fellowship Program is a significant, yet underdeveloped, resource for international relations scholars.
The potential in broadening participation in the program across subfields is not simply to widen topics in Congressional studies, although that would be a worthy endeavor. Broader participation holds a significant amount of potential to expand the discipline and frame new and interesting research questions that cannot be handled within subfields as they are currently defined, and to further our knowledge of pluralism in an era where it operates on national and international levels.Footnote 52 How are debates about war connected to the constituencies who will provide troops and the military hardware to fight it? How is the balance of power between the Executive and Legislative branches configured during a war that is immensely unpopular with the American and international publics? How does the location of defense contractors in members of Congress's districts shape those members' and their committees' agendas in a time of war? How are national financial regulations to govern capital markets in a world characterized by transnational flows? How can the work of the Congress best address the growing economic inequality in the U.S. and the world? And what is the connection between capital market governance arrangements to that growing inequality?
The loose form of participant-observation in the program can help to generate hypotheses for these questions that can be quantified at a later time if that is the method the researcher chooses to use to develop her scholarship. Moreover, multiple opportunities to access resources, archival and otherwise, are opened through the program should the researcher choose to investigate further using these sources. These resources amplify the possibilities for expanding ways of thinking about available data from which to construct research. Anecdotal evidence gained by the author would suggest that the community of scholarship in Congressional studies created both by the fellows and at the APSA secretariat serves as a strong entry into the field, and a supportive environment within which to work far more creatively than stereotypes of narrow subfields would suggest.
