Logrolling in an Institutional Context: A Case Study of Food Stamp Legislation
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Description
The food stamps program is often cited as an example of logrolling between proponents of two unconnected policies. Allegedly, representatives agricultural districts, facing increasing getting their commodities programs enacted, saw food stamps as an opportunity to obtain support by advancing a program that would serve urban districts. On their side, urban congressmen, who were having difficulty getting welfare programs through the conservatively led Congress of the late agreed to support farm legislation in exchange for a food stamps program. As we will see there is abundant anecdotal evidence for this account. Congressmen of all descriptions seem to agree that “deals” were struck at various critical points of the legislative process and, indeed, that the political foundation for the two programs rests squarely on an explicit alliance between urban and rural Democrats. Thus, the logrolling hypothesis appears not only as a plausible theory but also as a true account. Recent advances in the theory of collective choice appear to cast some doubt on the adequacy of this account of the foundations of the food stamps program. Logrolling relationships are inherently unstable: if a logroll is required to enact some set of bills, then there can be no package of bills that could win a majority against every other package. Thus, while a logrolling arrangement may, because of the procedural rules of the chamber, allow some package of bills to pass in a given session, there will always be other packages of bills preferred to it by a majority. Thus, to say of some particular piece of legislation that “it passed because of a logroll” is no explanation at all. Many alternative outcomes must have been equally possible, and the logrolling hypothesis cannot explain why none of these occurred.
Source Publication
Congress and Policy Change
Source Editors/Authors
Gerald C. Wright Jr., Leroy N. Rieselbach, Lawrence C. Dodd
Publication Date
1986
Recommended Citation
Ferejohn, John A., "Logrolling in an Institutional Context: A Case Study of Food Stamp Legislation" (1986). Faculty Chapters. 511.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/511
