PROFESSIONAL COMMITTEE STAFF AS POLICY-MAKING PARTNERS IN THE UNITED-STATES-CONGRESS

Members of Congress often act on the advice of professional, unelected staffers who now outnumber them by more than 75 to one. From this obs ervation arises the criticism that congressional aides undermine the r epresentative function of the institution. This study revisits the deb ate over staff involvement on Capitol Hill. The evidence from intervie ws with 43 staff directors and twelve subcommittee chairs reveals a hi erarchy of services rendered by aides. Participation is uniformly freq uent when tasks have minimal direct impact on policy outcomes and leas t frequent when services have direct effects on matters of extreme imp ortance to constituents. Furthermore, when several well-accepted notio ns of staff participation are examined anew, these data support some b ut not all of our expectations. Not surprisingly, legislators are more inclined to listen to loyal aides, whose years of service on a commit tee outstrip their own. Also there is more reliance on staff when the issue is technically complex. In contrast, public attentiveness toward the issues, legislators' own political ideologies and the chamber in which they work have little bearing on staff involvement. These findin gs, together with the fact that no one model explains all types of sta ff involvement, provide guidance for future investigations into the de legated power that accrues to staff.