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Abstract
This article analyzes congressional activism during an international crisis. Using the 1994 Rwandan genocide as a case, this study explores executive–congressional relations during a time when immediate policy responses are needed. A content analysis of policy statements made during committees, on the House floor, and on the Senate floor is used to investigate the specific policy ideas proposed by members of Congress. The models presented pay particular attention to the actions of Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) members, in relation to other more common predictors of congressional activism. In addition to the results for CBC members, other conclusions indicate that foreign policy leaders in Congress are international affairs policy experts without serious concerns of being defeated in their next election.
Notes
1. See, for example, Robert A. Dahl, Congress and Foreign Policy (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1950); Richard F. Fenno, Jr., Congressmen in Committees (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973); Arthur M. Schlesinger, The Imperial Presidency (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1973); James L. Sundquist, The Decline and Resurgence of Congress (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1982); Randall B. Ripley and James M. Lindsay, “How Congress Influences Foreign and Defense Policy,” in Randall B. Ripley and James M. Lindsay, eds., Congress Resurgent: Foreign and Defense Policy on Capitol Hill (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), 17–36; Barbara Hinckley, Less Than Meets the Eye: Foreign Policy Making and the Myth of the Assertive Congress (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1994); Louis Fisher, Congressional Abdication in War and Spending (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2000).
2. William G. Howell and Jon C. Pevehouse, While Dangers Gather: Congressional Checks on Presidential War Powers (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007); Ralph G. Carter and James M. Scott, Choosing to Lead: Understanding Congressional Foreign Policy Entrepreneurs (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009).
3. Congress has its own constitutional authority in international affairs as well, such as declaring war, raising and supporting armies, and organizing US military associations, along with providing, maintaining, and regulating land and naval forces.
4. Michael Brecher, “Toward a Theory of International Crisis Behavior: A Preliminary Report,” International Studies Quarterly 21, no. 1 (1977): 39–74.
5. For clarification on defining international crisis, this article considers Brecher’s definition of “a foreign policy crisis is a breakpoint along the peace-war continuum of a state’s relations with any other international actor(s).” The author adds that for primary decision makers involved, the perceived conditions that exists in a foreign policy crisis are (1) a change in the external or internal environment, which generates (2) a threat to basic values, with a simultaneous or subsequent (3) high probability of involvement in military hostilities, and (4) the awareness of a finite time for their response to the external value threat (pp. 43–44).
6. Douglas Jehl, “US Is Showing a New Caution on UN Peacekeeping Missions,” The New York Times, (New York, NY), May 18, 1994.
7. Ripley and Lindsay, “How Congress Influences.”
8. Douglas Rivers and Nancy L. Rose, “Passing the President’s Program: Public Opinion and Presidential Influence in Congress,” American Journal of Political Science 29, no. 2 (1985): 183–196.
9. A. Cooper Drury, Richard Stuart Olson, and Douglas A. Van Belle, “The Politics of Humanitarian Aid: US Foreign Disaster Assistance, 1964–1995,” Journal of Politics 67, no. 2 (2005): 454–473.
10. Brecher, “Toward a Theory.”
11. Romeo Dallaire, Shake Hands with the Devil (New York, NY: Carroll & Graf, 2004).
12. Barbara Sinclair, “The Role of Committees in Agenda Setting in the US Congress,” Legislative Studies Quarterly 11, no. 1 (1986): 35–45.
13. John Dumbrell, “Was There a Clinton Doctrine? President Clinton’s Foreign Policy Reconsidered,” Diplomacy & Statecraft 13, no. 2 (2002): 43–56.
14. Bill Clinton, My Life (New York, NY: Knopf, 2004), 593.
15. Intercoder reliability agreement at 65.9 percent, with a “good” coefficient kappa of 0.61. See J. Richard Landis and Gary G. Koch, “The Measurement of Observer Agreement for Categorical Data,” Biometrics 33, no. 1 (1977): 159–174.
16. Donald R. Matthews, US Senators and Their World (New York, NY: Vintage Press, 1960).
17. Steven S. Smith, Call to Order: Floor Politics in the House and Senate (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1989).
18. All such committee hearings that addressed the Rwandan crisis, to some degree, during this time period.
19. The seven committee hearings included in the analysis are (1) Senate African Affairs Subcommittee’s “UN Peacekeeping in Africa” heard May 2, 1994, (2) House Subcommittee on Africa’s “The Crisis in Rwanda” heard May 4, 1994, (3) House Foreign Operations Subcommittee’s “Funding of the United Nations Programs” heard May 5, 1994, (4) Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s “US Foreign Policy” heard June 30, 1994, (5) House Subcommittee on Africa’s “Situation in Rwanda” heard July 22, 1994, (6) Senate Armed Services Committee’s “Department of Defense Briefing on the Situation in Rwanda” heard July 25, 1994, and (7) Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s “Crisis in Central Africa” heard July 26, 1994.
20. Forrest Maltzman and Lee Sigelman, “The Politics of Talk: Unconstrained Floor Time in the US House of Representatives,” Journal of Politics 58, no. 3 (1996): 819–830; Douglas B. Harris, “Orchestrating Party Talk: A Party-based View of One-minute Speeches in the House of Representatives,” Legislative Studies Quarterly 30, no. 1 (2005): 127–141.
21. Policy positions from items submitted into the Congressional Record, but not spoken on the floor by the MCs, are not included in the analysis.
22. Again, the timeframe for this content analysis is April 6 to July 31, 1994. Results coded from the Public Papers of the President equals 12 returns, while results coded from the New York Times equals 13 returns.
23. This could be because of presidential reluctance, a rejection of the policy, or because the administration had not considered the policy.
24. Howell and Pevehouse, While Dangers Gather.
25. David R. Mayhew, Congress: The Electoral Connection (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1974).
26. James M. McCormick and Neil J. Mitchell, “Commitments, Transnational Interest, and Congress: Who Joins the Congressional Human Rights Caucus?” Political Research Quarterly 60, no. 4 (2007): 549–592.
27. Clarence Lusane, “Unity and Struggle: The Political Behavior of African American Members of Congress.” The Black Scholar 24, no. 4 (1994): 16–29.
28. This includes the nonvoting delegate representing the District of Columbia, Eleanor Homes Norton, and US Senator Carol Mosely Braun.
29. Raymond W. Copson, The Congressional Black Caucus and Foreign Policy (Hauppauge, NY: Novinka Books, 2003).
30. The House had 38 CBC voting members in 1994. Of the House CBC members, nine members spoke on the crisis, with an average number of words for these Representatives equaling 232 (SD = 283.1).
31. US Congress. Congressional Record. 103rd Cong., 2nd sess., 1994. Vol. 140, pt. H4879.
32. Copson, The Congressional Black Caucus and Foreign Policy.
33. Lusane, “Unity and Struggle.”
34. Fred Kaiser, “Oversight of Foreign Policy: The US House Committee on International Relations,” Legislative Studies Quarterly 2, no. 3 (1977): 255–279.
35. Floor statements are constrained to daily legislative agendas as well as formal and informal rules. However, the consideration of overall contributions to the Congressional Record during a four-month time period gives MCs ample opportunity to contribute, at some point in time, freely on this international issue.
36. Standard deviation = 538.5.
37. Standard deviation = 173.1.
38. The foreign policy–related committees used for this count measure are the House and Senate Armed Services committees, House and Senate Appropriations subcommittees on Defense, House and Senate Intelligence committees, House Foreign Affairs committee, and Senate Foreign Relations committee.
39. Yossi Shain, “Ethnic Diaporas and US Foreign Policy,” Political Science Quarterly 109, no. 5 (1994): 811–841.
40. Party leaders are the House Speaker, House and Senate Majority Leaders, House and Senate Minority Leaders, House and Senate Whips, Democratic Caucus Chair, Republican Conference Chair, President Pro Temp, Chief Deputy Whip, Secretary of Conference, and Conference Chair, as well as the Chair of the DCCC, NRCC, DSCC, and NRSC.
41. An alternative model can be seen in Appendix 3. This alternative model uses a dependent variable measuring the log value of the total number of words spoken by an MC on the Rwandan crisis during the sampled time period.
42. US Congress. Congressional Record. 103rd Cong., 2nd sess., 1994. Vol. 140, pt. E696.
43. The resolution was approved by voice vote in the Senate on 26 April 1994.
44. Matthews, U.S. Senators.
45. See David M. Abshire and Ralph D. Nurnberger, The Growing Power of Congress (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1981); Kevin A. Hill, “The Domestic Sources of Foreign Policymaking: Congressional Voting and American Mass Attitudes toward South Africa,” International Studies Quarterly 37, no. 2 (1993): 195–214; Joseph Uscinski, Michael S. Rocca, Gabriel R. Sanchez, and Marina Brenden, “Congress and Foreign Policy: Congressional Action on the Darfur Genocide,” PS: Political Science & Politics 42, no. 3 (2009): 489–496; Lars Berger, “Guns, Butter, and Human Rights—The Congressional Politics of US Aid to Egypt,” American Politics Research 40, no. 4 (2012): 603–635.
46. Brandice Canes-Wrone, Who Leads Whom? (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2006).
47. Wendy J. Schiller, “Senators as Political Entrepreneurs: Using Bill Sponsorship to Shape Legislative Agendas,” American Journal of Political Science 39, no. 1 (1995): 186–203; Carter and Scott, Choosing to Lead.
48. Arthur G. Stevens, Jr., Daniel P. Mulhollan, and Paul S. Rundquist, “US Congressional Structure and Representation: The Role of Informal Groups,” Legislative Studies Quarterly 6, no. 3 (1981): 415–437.
49. John Gerring, “What Is a Case Study and What Is It Good For?” American Political Science Review 98, no. 2 (2004): 341–354.