Metropolitan Areas and Congress: Foreign Policy and National Security

Any Research Seeking ecological influences on roll call voting behavior in the United States House of Representatives must include urbanization as one variable to be tested. For many decades, one of the more striking of American social phenomena has been the growth of great cities (and more recently their suburbs) and the corresponding decline in rural population. Journalists and other observers, including congressmen themselves, have assumed since the 1930's that only party affiliation and geographic region are more important elements on which to base legislative organization on at least some issues. Such terms as “rural coalition” and “urban bloc” appear with considerable frequency among contemporary descriptions of the workings of Congress, as well as in the Congressional Record.