Instructor: Professor J. Theodore Anagnoson. Pronounced:  a-NAG-no-son.  Office: King Hall, D-3081J. (323) 343-2245. Office hours for Winter, 1999: Monday, 5:00-6:00 p.m.; Tuesday, 5:00 - 6:00 p.m.; Wednesdays 11-12, and 2-3 p.m. Internet: tanagno@calstatela.edu or (preferred) anag999@silcom.com.

Your instructor returned in September, 1997, from two years spent in Washington as Acting Director of the Health Financing Policy Division of the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and has many first hand stories about Washington.

Purpose: The catalog states that POLS 400 covers the structure, functioning, and interaction of Congress and the president, but in reality the course is far broader than that, covering not only Congress and the President, but also a little on the Supreme Court, and a considerable amount on interest groups, the media, think tanks, the bureaucracy, and all the other participants in Washington’s "policy primeval soup," as John Kingdon put it in his Agendas, Alternatives and Public Policies. We will cover the basics of each institution or group and seek to answer the question of what determines national public policy in this nation – a corrupt mixture of Congress, the Presidency, and interest groups, or something broader, in which the corruption element, while present, is only one factor of many.

Course Description: Congress provides the unifying structure for the course, and we will consider the other participants in the Washington power struggles in terms of their interactions with Congress. We will do a little history the first week or two, and then turn to four topics about Congress –

• How people get to Congress (recruitment, campaigns, campaign finance and its potential reform, how members interact with their districts),
• How Congress operates internally (leaders, parties, committees),
• How Congress interacts with outside groups (the President, bureaucracy and executive branch, courts, organized interests), and
• How Congress makes policy (rules, procedures, decisions and how they are made, budgets, domestic and international policy making).

Texts: The following have been ordered:

Course Requirements:

1.  Class attendance and participation. Attendance counts. Participation counts. 10%.

2.  Oral Reports. One required. 25%. Choose a member of the House or Senate leadership, or a committee chair or ranking minority member from the period from 1960 to 1980. Choose the person in the same position from 1980 to the present. Do a 10-15 minute oral report comparing the two. Compare them on:

• How they got to the positions they are in -- how much seniority and committee experience did they have, how much policy knowledge, how much of a public presence.
• Goals and accomplishments while in office, major political issues considered, relationships with the House or Senate leadership and their committee members, etc. I.e., basic political stuff.
• These will be scheduled from the 5^th to the 10^th week. Choose your position and person between the first and second week; report on your choice the second week. Schedule to be delivered to class the 4^th week.
• Resources -- there are a number of books on congressional committees, including Richard F. Fenno's famous Congressmen in Committees, Steven S. Smith and Christopher J. Deering's Committees in Congress, as well as Congressional Quarterly's Almanacs and Weekly Reports. The Almanac of American Politics, published every two years since 1972, will give you basic information on the congressman/senator and his/her district.

• Examine a real conflict between the President and the Congress involving the appointment of a member of the Cabinet or other high position. You should choose someone from the Clinton or Bush administrations to simplify the research process. A separate sheet, adapted from a similar assignment given by Prof. J. Emenhiser of Humboldt State University and an old friend, describes the process and some potential conflicts.
• Select a cabinet secretary, under secretary or assistant secretary. It is 1995, and you want to obtain one of these jobs in the second Clinton administration, which will be elected in 1996 and take office January 20th of 1997. You first need to find one of these jobs, preferably one where the web site and other sources have a lot of information available about the job. What do you do to make yourself available? What kinds of qualifications would you want to have? (Think about what qualifications those who have had the job over the last 20-30 years have had.) What should you have done to get this particular job? Once you have a strategy for obtaining the job, think about the major issues you would have to deal with. What kinds of issues has this office dealt with recently? What are the political and policy aspects of those issues? What might you have done differently from the incumbent? Check the Prune Book!
• Same as above but for an interest group or think tank that you either want to work for in an executive capacity or for an interest group you wish to start.

We have handouts on how to use the World Wide Web and lists of potential sources.

Also, we will do some searches using databases the Library has available. This process will get you acquainted with the potential of some of the databases, which is always useful.

Standard Washington sources:

• Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report
• Congressional Quarterly Almanac
• National Journal Reports
• Almanac of American Politics (congressional districts)
• Newspapers: The New York Times, The Washington Post (check their Web site, very useful), The Los Angeles Times – each of the newspapers has a very useful WWW site for current research. Research older than the last few months still demands paper indices and microfiche….

5. World Wide Web trivia hunt -- drawn from the web page with POLS 400 links. This will be distributed either the 10th week or the 11th week during class or at the final exam; you will have 24 hours to complete the trivia hunt of some 10 questions that can be answered from the sources on the POLS 400 Congress and the Presidency world wide web pages. You should therefore become familiar with the pages before the trivia hunt. 5%.

Grading – plus and minus grades are used in this class.

Plagiarism -- see the university's regulations in the catalog. I always report instances of plagiarism to the Student Discipline Coordinator for appropriate action. Be ye warned. Do it right.
 

Schedule:

1 Introduction, problems
        Davidson/Oleszek, Ch 1,2.  Steuerle, Ch 1, 2, 3.  Kingdon, Ch 1.  Wright, Ch 1.

2.  Players, congresspeople, congressional elections, recruitment, interest groups, Presidential appointees, etc.
        D/O, Ch 3, 4, 5.  K, Ch 2, 3.  W, Ch 2, 5.

3.  week 2, continued.  (January 18th is a university holiday.)

4.  Inside Congress: leadership, rules, committees, floor voting.
        D/O, Ch 6, 7, 8, 9.  S, Ch 5.

5. President, President and Congress.
        D/O: Ch 10, 11.

6. President, President and Congress, continued.

7.  Interest groups.
        D/O, Ch 12.  W, Ch 3, 4.

8.  Policy making.
        D/O: Ch 13, 14.  S, Ch 4, 6.  K, Ch 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.  W, Ch 6.

9.  Policy making, continued.

10.  Reforming the system.
        D/O, Ch 15.  W, Ch 7.