Abstract
In this paper I examine what influences members viewed as shaping their voting decisions on U.S. strategy in the Persian Gulf in January 1991. Rather than focusing on predictors of votes and the outcomes of members' decision-making processes (the yea or nay votes as in roll-call analyses), I focus on the predominant considerations that members perceived as swaying voting choices. More specifically, drawing on data gathered from interviews with 365 congressional staff people, I show that three influences in particular stand out as significant in the decision-making process on this crisis policy: members' own policy views, supportive constituents, and (for certain groups of members) the president. Thus, while the analysis confirms, in part, the conventional view of legislators' personal policy assessments as the critical influence on foreign and defense policy votes, it also underscores that this influence does not operate in a vacuum.
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Burgin, E. Influences shaping members' decision making: Congressional voting on the Persian Gulf War. Polit Behav 16, 319–342 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01498954
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01498954