Attentive and Inattentive Publics: Citizens United and the Montana Senate Race

Debit and Credit Card Swipes.
A vote on a rule governing debate on the 2012 Homeland Security Appropriations Bill.

Who would’ve thought that these two obscure issues would become major issues in the Montana Senate race?

Senator Jon Tester has received a lot of press—both statewide and nationally—for his amendment to delay implementation of a federal rule putting a cap on the fees banks collect from debit and credit card transactions. That amendment, by the way, failed on the Senate floor late last week by a vote of 54 to 45 (the vote needed 60 to pass).

Meanwhile, Congressman Rehberg voted, back in April, against the Ryan Plan to overhaul Medicare (read a summary here). Of course, given the high percentage of seniors in the state of Montana, this vote made perfect sense. However, a vote on rule governing the debate of the Homeland Security appropriations bill is being cited as evidence that Rehberg actually supports the Ryan plan. What gives?
Both of these issues illustrate nicely the concepts, articulated by Doug Arnold in the The Logic of Congressional Action, of attentive and inattentive publics. In The Electoral Connection, David Mayhew explains that the primary factor motivating the behavior of members of Congress is the need to get reelected. The positions taken and the votes cast by members are all a function of the need to face voters at the ballot box. According to this account, members of Congress are delegates and not trustees—they merely do what the voters want.

Arnold argues, however, that Congress often must make hard choices and do things which are not popular but necessary. For example, it is not a popular position to close a military base in one’s congressional district, but it might be necessary to cut the budget. Congress must make decisions which are not always in the electoral individual interests of members. Given this fact, how does Congress and individual members make those decisions?

To answer that question, individual members first ask if the issue concerns something that the public cares about or not. Arnold discusses attentive and inattentive publics. If the issue is salient to voters and there are strong feelings about the issue, then the member will vote with the public UNLESS the traceability chain is weakened. Members do not want to be blamed for an unpopular vote, so Congress will often design procedures to make it harder to individual members to shoulder the blame for an unpopular vote. Congress will often delegate to bureaucracies or commissions to make the hard choices and the collective result will then be ratified by Congress. This is exactly what Congress did when it had to close military bases: they delegated to a commission (BRAC), it made the difficult choice, and the Congress merely ratified it.

But when the public is inattentive to an issue and is not particularly passionate about the issue then the member can use more discretion in casting their vote.
Unless, of course, that inattentive becomes an attentive public and that attentive public is on the other side of the issue from their member. How are attentive publics created? In lots of ways, but one way an issue can become salient among the public and opinion become solidified is through the actions of interest groups. And the power of interest groups to create attentive publics has much greater in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United (2010), which allows corporations and labor unions virtually unfettered access to the political airwaves during campaigns.

What does this have to do with credit card swipes and the Ryan plan? Very simply put, it is much harder for members of Congress to cast votes under the radar screen and out of the public limelight because it is much easier for interest groups to spend money to mold public opinion and generate attentive publics.
Take the issue of the credit/debit swipes. Senator Tester argues that it is important to delay the fee curtailment because—even though every bank in Montana is exempt because they are capitalized at less than $1 billion—Montana banks will be placed at a disadvantage. Large banks will have to lower their swipe fees, forcing small banks to do the same in order to remain competitive. This could hurt smaller banks much more than larger banks—so Tester argues.

Retailers, however, favor this bill because it lowers the cost of business for them. They have sponsored advertisements (hear them here) throughout Montana painting Jon Tester as the tool of big banks and Wall Street. And, according to some polling on the issue, it looks like what was once an obscure banking regulation fight between banks and retailers is no longer obscure. These ads and the press accounts have created an attentive public concerning the issue in the state, and this attentive public seems to think that delaying the fee cap is a bad idea. Part of the problem Senator Tester faces is his argument is complicated; it takes 30 seconds to explain while the retailer argument takes 5 seconds. Complicated arguments, unfortunately, often lose in politics even if they may be right.

In the case of Congressman Rehberg, he voted against the Medicare plan—which is the correct vote in the sense that Medicare has an attentive public (seniors) who feel strongly about keeping Medicare as it is. In short, Rehberg can say quite simply that he was defending Medicare for seniors.

The wrinkle, however, is the fact that the Congressman also cast a vote in favor of an open rule governing House debate on the Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill. Open rules have become exceedingly rare in the House (see Barbara Sinclair’s work on this), as they allow anyone to amend the bill under discussion at any time and on any point (as long as the amendment is germane) during the course of the allotted debate. Democrats complained in 2006 of the increasing use by the Republican majority of closed rules, which oftentimes allowed no amendments from the floor on a bill and strictly limited debate. Democrats, however, found themselves arguing against this rule. Why?

Because the rule also contained a self-executing provision. This provision, once the rule passed, deemed that HR 34 (The House GOP Budget plan, of which the Ryan Medicare plan is a part) “shall have force and effect… in the House as though Congress has adopted such concurrent resolution” (see The Hill’s account here). In other words, once the House passed the rule establishing the parameters for debate on the Homeland Security Appropriations bill, the House budget which the Senate previously rejected would be considered in place. Congressman Rehberg voted for the rule—and Democrats are now claiming that Rehberg supports the Ryan Medicare plan (see “Congressman Rehberg votes to end Medicare as we know it”, a Montana Democratic Party press release, dated June 1, 2011). The hope, of course, is to suggest to an attentive public that Rehberg is no friend of Medicare.

On the one hand, what the Democrats are doing is smart politics—they are trying to tag Rehberg as a flip flopper and do so on an issue about which a group feels strongly about. The devil’s in the details, however. Did Congressman Rehberg vote for the rule in order to fund Homeland Defense or did he vote to implement the Ryan plan? Technically, he did both. The trouble from Rehberg’s perspective—even if the Democrats are grossly oversimplifying the issue—is a defense of his vote is complicated and makes him sound like a Washington insider. The Democratic version of the story is short, sweet, and already plays into perceptions seniors have about Republicans on the issue of Medicare.

To summarize, I think Senator Tester did himself few favors when offered his amendment to delay implementation of the credit/debit fee ceiling and the House Republicans did Congressman Rehberg few favors when they structured the rule governing debate on the Homeland Security Appropriations Bill as they did. Citizens United—whether you agree with the decision or not—has made it much harder for candidates to control the political debate and to protect themselves from being on the wrong side of public opinion that can be much more easily mobilized and shaped today by interest groups, corporations, and labor unions than at any time since 1974.

Turkish Resurgence: A Look at What Turkey’s New Foreign Policy Means for the US

By Brianne Haight

In February of 2010 I decided to opt out of another Montana winter and instead to take the semester to intern at the US Embassy in Athens, Greece. During my internship I learned a lot of things; one facet I took considerable interest in actually had less to do with Greece, and more with its neighbor to the east, Turkey. As Greece and Turkey have had a very long and at times very tense relationship, I became quite familiar with Turkish foreign policy. One concept that I heard a lot referring to a new direction in Turkish foreign policy was ‘neo-Ottomanism.’ It was my sheer intrigue with this reference that would eventually lead me to the subject of my capstone paper.

For my capstone, I wanted to first look at the causation of the recent shift we are seeing in Turkish foreign policy, which is, by some, characterized as ‘neo-Ottomanism.’ Historically, Turkish foreign policy has been firmly based in Ataturk’s founding ideas of modernization through close ties with the West and acceptance of their norms and policies. Throughout the 20^th century, this translated into Turkey joining NATO in the 1950s, backing the West against the Soviet Union, and aspiring to join the EU. It also meant that Turkey paid little attention to most of the countries located geographically close to it. However, in the last decade, I found that a unique combination of events, actors, and politics in Turkey all contributed to produce a more proactive shift in their foreign policy. Presently, the atmosphere in Turkey is one where religiosity is on the rise, economic success has encouraged a search for new Eurasian markets, as well as substantial disillusionment with the EU over the slow ascension process. Even more, with Prime Minister Erdogan and the ruling AKP party having gathered considerable power over the traditionally strong pro-Western military, enough factors seem to be in place to produce an ideal backdrop for a shift in Turkish foreign policy. Add to that a new foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, who feels Turkey has made a mistake by ignoring its backyard for so long, and thus insists on a more thorough regional engagement, and the result is a much more proactive foreign policy than has historically been seen in Turkey.

After analyzing the reasons for this recent shift, I focused on what this shift meant for some of Turkey’s historical allies and beneficiaries of their traditional foreign policy directives. One of the most interesting cases I looked at was the US and the ramifications Turkey’s new more assertive foreign policy will have on the US’s relationship with Turkey.

Initially, President Obama had hopes of calling on Turkey in an effort to make US-Turkey relations the bedrock for the way in which he was going to reach out to the rest of the Muslim world. However, rather than simply being able to rely on Turkey to be an instrument of US power in its region, the Obama Administration is now facing a stronger and more assertive Turkish government that can and has been shown to disagree with it on key foreign policy issues, ranging from Iran’s nuclear program to Israel’s Gaza offensive. The impact for US-Turkey relations is that the US is no longer going to be able to fully utilize Turkey as a proxy in its bid to assert US foreign policies to the degree it could in the past. Ultimately, this more assertive Turkish foreign policy will result in a relationship based more on ad hoc agreements than utter compliance.

Although there are, and have shown to be clear negative impacts for the US, which has historically capitalized on a weaker Turkey to follow its lead, such as during the Cold War, the US should not cast off the potential value in a stronger, more assertive Turkey in the post-Cold War era. A Turkey that is willing to take on greater responsibility for regional stability in the Middle East is something the US needs; the US cannot manage security in all regions of the globe. The US has long been looking for someone to take up responsibility in the region. A leaked 2010 US State Department Cable written by current US Ambassador to Iraq, James Jeffery, asserted this when he suggested in a cable, “having regional heavyweights take on burdens, thereby relieving us, has long been a desired goal of US policy.” An appreciation of Turkey’s stabilizing role in the region and a willingness to allow Turkey to assume managerial responsibilities, although yes, without being able to dictate how Ankara should define its priorities, is something the US must be open to, and if so could reap possible benefits.

In my capstone I found that although a more proactive Turkey is requiring historical allies to readjust their relationships with the country, a more assertive Turkish foreign policy should be perceived not as a serious threat but a mixed bag where possible benefits could be realized. It is a mistake to embrace an alarmism that selectively concentrates on the dangers and fails to recognize the opportunities opened by a new Turkish direction. It is easy to argue that historical allies fear this change; however, although there will of course be some disruption in status quo relations, with some negative impacts, there are benefits from the evolution of this relationship. If it is going to happen- and it looks like it is- the US would be remiss to not acknowledge the shift and consequently miss gaining from the possible benefits.

Who Will be a Choice Architect?

I have been reading some Richard Thaler on choice architecture. Thaler, you may know, is the co-author with Cass Sunstein of the book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness. The things I’m reading now describe how choice architecture works in the market but it got me thinking about politics and other things.

Briefly, choice architecture is the obvious idea that decisions are influenced by how the choices are presented. We rarely bother to change the default settings on software and so the manufacturer “nudges” us to use it in a certain configuration (Microsoft nudges us toward Internet Explorer by including it on PCs). Thaler uses the example of an MP3 player. When the market first emerged, we made purchasing decisions based on size, storage capacity, and features – we usually chose the one that gave us the most storage and features within our budget constraint. Then Apple came along.

The Apple IPod changed the choice architecture by presenting a product that has less functionality and fewer features. By conventional measures, they are inferior products; but we all have one – why? Very simply, Apple singlehandedly changes our evaluative framework by making a product that is so unlike the others that we think of it differently when we make a choice of what to buy. Apple products are elegant, almost sexy; just listen to Stephen Fry go on about Apple products. All purchases are decisions about value; Apple changed how we defined value from functionality to aesthetics. Sometimes, creative people change the way we make decisions.

Another example: Thirty years ago, there was only one kind of home mortgage; 30-year fixed rate. The law said that home loans had to be reported in a uniform way – the APR and associated values. That made choosing the best mortgage very easy. Now, we have many types of mortgages and APR is no a longer sufficient metric. The bankers changed the choice architecture to include all sorts of features that made home loans more complex and rendered APR just one of many parts within the evaluative framework. Sometimes, consumer confusion and eventual market failure is the result.

Here is how this might work in politics. President Obama will not be contested from his own party; at least by any serious candidate, so that choice is easy. On the Republican side, there are multiple declared and quasi-candidates that are all running on the same message. There is variance of course between Gingrich, Palin, Bachman, and Romney but their message is the same – vote for me because I’m Not Obama. Within this choice architecture Obama wins hands down because the intraparty competition among the Republicans will so weaken the winning candidate they will be unable to recover and present a coherent political message. Incumbents win frequently for multiple reasons but one of them is that voters received a coherent message throughout the campaign.

The strongest Republican candidate may be the one who takes political risk and presents a new choice architecture. I do not know what that might be yet but I am watching to see not only who emerges but also how them frame themselves. A good example of this is a recent article by Joshua Green in this month’s Atlantic that suggests how Sarah Palin could have run as a legitimate reformer given her track record in Alaska. The implication is that had she made that decision rather than to build an identity as an entertainer, she could be a viable and credible candidate.

With all the above being said, I am not anticipating a true choice architect emerging in the next campaign. Like most people in positions of leadership (or want to be leaders), risk aversion is the default strategy. The political system and the media seem incapable of assimilation of a nontraditional candidate like a Palin or Bachman; they are much more comfortable with a Romney. Let’s remember, for all his apparent differences, Obama ran a very traditional campaign on a very traditional theme – change. In short, there may be no nudge toward a new choice architecture in the upcoming Presidential campaign and until there is, it is rational to expect the candidates and election of 2012 to resemble those of the past.

Stubborn as the Mule: Why the Department of Defense Has Resisted Military Change

By Daniel Brooks

Unlike most MSU senior students, I did not start my Capstone on the first day of class this past spring semester, but rather on the streets of Rabiah, Iraq in 2009.

It was my 3^rd Marine Corps deployment to Iraq since 2005, and although much had been accomplished there was still sporadic fighting and the ever-present threat from al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). Along with many of my multi-deployment, Jarhead colleagues, I began to ask the increasingly persistent question: “Why are we still here?”

Accordingly, when I was informed that our Senior Capstone topics were to be chosen and formulated by ourselves, I could think of no better research question to try to answer for myself, my fellow Marines and—if I dare say so—my fellow students, faculty and fellow Americans. Why, 30 years after the fiasco of Vietnam, are we still confronted by asymmetrical warfare conundrums (such as combating an enemy who withdraws to the anonymity of citizenry)? Realizing that this was much too broad a topic for a paper limited to 20 pages, I was able to narrow it down with a focus on the Department of Defense (DoD) and its resistance to change. Thus the title of my Capstone: Stubborn as the Mule: Why the Department of Defense Has Resisted Military Change.

Looking at three factors, I hypothesized that the DoD is resistant to change because of: 1) institutional change constraints, 2) concern of politicians about the image of weakness, and 3) the conventional warfare core value inherent in the military leadership of the DoD.

These are not the only factors stymieing change, clearly, but through my research I deemed them the most influential due to their augmentation of each other.

Before addressing these factors, I felt it necessary to explain why the DoD needs to change. To do so, I drew from the work of Colonel Thomas X. Hammes, The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21^st Century, in which he outlines the evolution of modern warfare through four generations. Starting with the Napoleonic Wars (1^st Generation Modern Warfare) and ending with insurgency-based warfare (4^th Generation Modern Warfare), Hammes provides a roadmap showing how warfare has developed and how historically it has never retraced its steps to past generations, and thus consequently calls for military change to address the asymmetrical battles we face now.

Institutional constraints are the first factor to hinder change within the DoD, the most influential being organizational structure. Simply put, the DoD is enormous. Boasting the non-official title of being America’s largest employer, the DoD has a ‘staff’ of over 3 million people. With the Secretary of Defense at the top, there are 35 sub-branches within the chain of command, creating a hierarchy model in the shape of a pyramid. This pyramid is a supremely robust resistor to change as vertical and horizontal attempts to create change are overwhelmed by transaction costs and imperfect information, to put it into economic terms.

The second factor impacting on the DoD’s inability to change are politicians persistent in their almost blind support of American conventional military preponderance out of fear of appearing weak, or ‘soft’ on defense. Essentially, if a rival candidate can make the argument that a standing politician’s weak military policies jeopardize our way of life, it is unlikely that the latter will remain in office. One of my main arguments to support this point is the current policy of President Obama, who is supportive of the proposed $7 billion increase to the defense budget. Dealing with an economic recession plaguing the country, unemployment hindering American productivity and a crippling national debt, this ‘liberal, democratic’ president cannot resist the temptation of shoring up in more conservative circles by showing support for the institution that creates the image of security for voters—the American military, namely, the DoD.

Lastly, the military leadership within the DoD reinforces the conventional warfare ‘core value,’ which also inhibits change. Rising through the ranks with a large emphasis on physical strength, courage, and obedience, members of the military embrace the ethos and norms of the conventional-warfare warrior.

I do not mean to imply that the men and women running the Department of Defense are ignorant yes-men, better suited to charge hills. Most have highly-specialized academic degrees and understand warfare very well. However, most have achieved their rank because of an understanding of conventional warfare, bred into them through their 20-plus years of service. Their understanding of warfare predisposes them to support conventional warfare values, and object to a switch away from the warrior ethos.

Because of the personal nature of the project, I feel that I became entrenched in my own narrative and was remiss in addressing some very important questions solicited to me during my presentation to the panel. Particularly, if these are the three most important factors, how can change occur, if at all? Where does General David Petreaus’s concept of COIN, or ‘Counter-Insurgency’ warfare (‘hearts & minds’), and its ‘long war’ implications fit into the picture? How does the Andrew Bacevich critique of Petreaus and COIN (‘semi-permanent war’) address the need for change?

Though these questions are beyond the purview of a 20-page paper, they are important, and I look forward to future research into these aspects.

Day by Day, Rock by Rock: Transforming Mineral Wealth into Economic Development

By Laura Villegas

Recent Graduate, Department of Political Science, Montana State University

There is no pretty way to say this, so I will just say it: I am an optimistic version of a masochist. I find lots of satisfaction in undertaking tasks that involve huge deals of effort. That's why for my political science capstone project I chose to find a solution to a problem that has been puzzling economists and political scientists for over 30 years.

Common sense says that countries that are rich in natural resources can grow faster than countries that lack natural wealth. Well, it turns out that what has happened in the developing world since 1970 is quite the opposite. In general, countries that are well endowed with natural capital have underperformed their counterparts.

This phenomenon is often called the "paradox of plenty" or the "resource curse". I wanted to investigate the mechanisms of transmission of this so-called resource curse and explore ways to avoid it. On top of that I wanted to apply my findings to the specific case of mining coltan in Colombia. Coltan is a very valuable mineral, relatively new to the world and hence highly controversial. I believe coltan has the potential to trigger Colombia's collapse, as it is believed to have done in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

I did not start my project with a question but with a vision. Death, despair, suffering, social injustice, infants dying suffocated in dark mines, women being raped in the fields, militias abusing of rural residents, and corrupted officials smoking million-dollar cigars. It was not a picture of the future, it the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Because on Earth humans are loss averse—I yet have to discover if this behavior persists in the blogosphere—the fear to lose my country to some economic model of development encouraged me to find an escape to fate. My specific research question was: How can the government of Colombia avoid the resource curse and responsibly transform coltan-generated wealth into sustainable social and economic development?

To make a long story short, I found that the resource curse is far less common in developing countries than originally thought. Moreover, the type of resource happens to matter a lot when determining the effects of natural wealth on future development. For example, it is not the same to be rich in forests than to be rich in gold. Obviously, countries rich in the so-called "point-source resources", like gold and diamonds, have had a harder time evading the resource curse, basically because it is a lot easier and much more profitable to smuggle gold than wood. Hence, smugglers and criminals are attracted to the country and set corrupted institutions that deteriorate the very foundations of society.

The key to turn natural wealth into a blessing is to coordinate the efforts of bureaucrats, mining companies, and institutions. First, for society to actually benefit from mineral wealth it must have a well defined set of laws and an adequate institutional framework that can regulate and enforce the laws.

Institutions are social capital creators. They attract certain kinds of personalities into certain activities and further promote particular types of legal, political, historical and cultural relationships. Also, they assign process incentives, and set frameworks of behavior that are fundamental for determining the tone of the legal discourse and for making policy. Moreover, institutions solve the problem of transaction costs and asymmetric information and thus foster economic efficiency and social welfare optimization. Finally, they help private and public entities to minimize the risk and maximize the profits associated with a potential deal. The bottom line is that efficient institutions allow countries to absorb benefits from thriving corporations and healthy states.

To build strong institutions that guarantee accountability and transparency Colombia’s government must privatize its mining sector; consolidate a diverse economy; and promote a healthy political environment.

Second to institutional development is the need to invest mineral revenues in interest generating assets.

In conclusion, the solution to avoid the resource curse is to open the mining sector to private domestic companies and to invest mineral revenues in social infrastructure to improve the quality of human capital and the productive capacity of Colombia's factors of production. In other words, the Colombian government must pass policies that allow the state to secure a sustainable source of revenue and policies that guarantee the fair and efficient distribution of those revenues—given a strong institutional framework.

Maybe the answer is not eccentric, but who says that parsimonious is easy? The fact that I have theory and evidence to support my findings make me feel comfortable about the way I am structuring my worldview and raising my level of awareness about the importance of managing natural resources for in the quest of allowing humans to flourish.

Rehberg and Tester: They Ain't Legislators

On Friday, both Senator Tester and Congressman Rehberg's March 31 Quarterly fundraising numbers were released and discussed in the media. Check out the article from the Helena Independent Record here.

Long story short: Both candidates had good quarters. The long story will have to wait until the reports are posted online at the FEC. Once that I have those numbers, I can dig into them more deeply to figure out how each campaign is doing.

In the meantime, I'd like to explore an issue raised by Senator Tester in some recent remarks he made here in Montana. Last month at a fundraising dinner in Helena, Senator Tester ripped Congressman Rehberg for his relatively slim record of legislative accomplishment. Tester said that Congressman Rehberg's record consists of naming a few post offices, and that's about it. The article can be read here.

The bigger point is how should we, as voters, evaluate the jobs that both Tester and Rehberg have done while in Congress. Should we evaluate them by their legislative accomplishments? If so, the record is pretty slim indeed for both candidates.

Using both THOMAS and the Congressional Bills Project, I examined the number of bills Tester and Rehberg have sponsored while serving in the Senate and House, respectively. I also looked to see if those bills passed their respective chambers and was eventually signed into law. For this analysis, I only looked at the bills where Tester and Rehberg were the primary sponsor. The analysis is in the chart below:



Neither candidate is what one might call a stellar legislator. None of Tester's sponsored legislation has signed by the president, and of the 77 bills sponsored by Congressman Rehberg, only four have (and yes, two of those bills are renaming post offices).

Of course, these data need to be placed into some broader context. Using the 110th Congress as a baseline, I looked at the total number of bills sponsored in each chamber and then broke out the average number of bills introduced by member and their success at passing legislation into law.



As one can plainly see, most legislation goes to Congress to die. Very few bills become law, and the average number of bills sponsored becoming law is only 1 in the Senate (close to 2 if you just look at the Democratic majority in the Senate), and less than 1 in the House. The mean number of bills sponsored in the Senate is 36 and only 16 in the House.

If we use these numbers as a guide, both Congressman Rehberg and Senator Tester are less active than the average member in terms of bill sponsorship (although Congressman Rehberg approaches the mean in the 11th Congress). Their inability to pass any of their preferred legislation into law is not surprising either. If you look who was the MOST successful legislators in the 110th Congress, they tended to be more senior, more seasoned, and holders of key instituitonal positions such as committee chairmanships. They also, surprise surprise, tend to come from the majority party. Senator Kennedy successfully sheparded 13 bills to passage in the 110th Congress, followed by Senator Leahy (8), and Senators Biden, Feinstein, and Harkin (7 each). In the House, Congressmen Oberstar and Berman got 8 and 7 of their bills passed, followed by Congressmen Conyers and Kildee (6 each). As you look at those names, the amount of seniority is clear--and this is not surprising at all. The literature on congressional careers (see Hibbing in particular) shows that legislative productivity increases over a member's term in office.

Neither Senator Tester or Congressman Rehberg are particularly senior, and Congressman Rehberg has only now achieved a leadership post as chairman of one of appropriations subcommittees. Evaluting their accomplishments as sponsors of legislation is perhaps not the best approach to figuring out who is doing a better job for Montana. Quite simply, neither are particularly distinguished legislators but we should not expect them to be given their career stage.

As Mayhew (2000) points out, legislating is only half of what members of Congress do. Members of Congress investigate, they take stands, they oppose presidents, they engage in foreign policy discussions, and they attempt to affect the flow of public discourse more generally. In the words of Richard Fenno, members of Congress are not just policy experts. They are constituent servants and they strive to demonstrate to voters that they are in touch or "one of us". Members can chose which aspects of their jobs to highlight to constituents. Perhaps the most useful way to evaluate both Tester and Rehberg is less on their legislative accomplishments, and more on their work as constituent servants and how close they are to the voters of Montana in terms of policy positions. Do they listen? Are they responsive? Do they successfully help Montanans navigate the federal system? And what are they doing to make sure the needs of Montanans are address? All of these questions can and often do have very little to do with legislation.

Jobs vs. the Environment, Part II

In my last post, I suggested the jobs vs. the environment policy debate and legislative agenda was a false choice and cited a recent paper that demonstrated a positive relationship between economic well-being and environmental quality. Here is what that relationship could look like in Montana.

When we produce basic commodities like wheat, beef, or minerals, global markets set prices; commodity producers are price takers not price makers. Nationally, U.S. cattle producers slaughtered 2.96 million head totaling 2.29 billion pounds in 2010. Montana producers shipped 1,700 head or 1.5 million pounds. A consumer would be hard pressed to differentiate a steak from Chouteau from one raised in Texas because of the way beef is distributed and marketed. As a result, beef producers make far less money that they could. What if we branded our beef as being raised in an environmentally sensitive way and capitalized on Montana’s clean environment, water, and open ranges? The short answer is – producers could make more money on each cow.

There are many niche markets for beef – Lean, Organic, Natural, and Pasture-finished are just a few examples of efforts to brand meat raised and finished in a nontraditional manner. They all base their higher prices on issues of quality. In Montana, we have the advantage that quality is already inherent in our state. For many of our products, the Made in Montana label should be a proxy for “clean and healthy”. Efforts to undermine environmental protections are economically short-sighted and counterproductive to a state economy that could be less dependent on global markets. Our beef market is so relatively small (we are not in the list of the top ten beef producing states), the adjustment could be done in a few years.

This version of economic good tied to environmental quality demands that we need to rethink how we do business. If, as a rancher, your customer is a meat packer, your production will have to conform to industry standards for everything from breed selection to use of antibiotics to yield and quality grades. But, if your customer is an individual looking for lean beef raised and finished on a local family farm, or raised organically, you will be working with a very different production model. This requires new skills and ways of thinking about what and how we produce goods and services. It would require infrastructure and human investment.

The logic can apply to other areas. Montana could adopt a quality management assessment for public policy including not only food but also timber production (i.e. sustainable, low impact to watersheds), predator control (predator friendly wool), tourism (triple bottom line accounting), and manufacturing (energy and water efficient). None of this is revolutionary and examples can be found around the world. Montana’s competitive advantage is that we already have the environmental quality; all we need to do is design an economy that benefits from it.