The unrepresentativeness of the U.S. House of Representatives–in terms of ethnicity, gender, race, and socioeconomic status—and its nearly closed system for election have generated questions about the legitimacy and authority of the House as an institution which “represents’ citizens and whether the membership of the House should reflect the citizenry at-large. The articles collected for this symposium offer answers to some of these questions.

Most observers of the United States House of Representatives undoubtedly agree that in many respects, large and small, the House does not perform its representative function very well. Not being an expert on the details and intricacies of House operations, I shall leave the smaller matters—such as incremental steps to reform the financing of election campaigns—to the specialists. Let me focus instead on three major characteristics that makes the House insufficiently representative: (1) its election by plurality, which does not provide adequate representation for minorities and minority views; (2) its election by an unrepresentative electorate, especially in midterm elections when only about one-third of the eligible voters make use of their right to vote; and (3) its comparatively small size of only 435 members.

In the aftermath of the 1996 election campaigns, scholars, journalists, policymakers, and campaign finance professionals alike declared the House election financing system “broken” and “out of control.” That cycle saw party officials raising unprecedented amounts of “soft money” and directing it into specific federal campaigns. Coalitions of interest groups spent tens of millions of dollars attacking or defending candidates in “issue advocacy” campaigns, and disclosed neither their spending nor the sources of their funds to the Federal Election Commission. Groups like the Christian Coalition distributed tens of millions of “non-partisan” voter guides with thinly-disguised endorsements of candidates, again without disclosing their activity.

Nineteen ninety-seven will be remembered as the year when a large majority of the people in Scotland voted in a two question referendum to establish a Scottish parliament (74.3%) with tax-varying powers (63.5%) (Jones 1997). Elections will take place in 1999, with the first Scottish parliament being fully operational by the year 2000.

Perhaps the most intriguing element of the current milieu of political reform is the fact that the United States Supreme Court seems to be standing in the way of many reform measures. In several recent decisions, the court has either struck down attempts to reform some element of the electoral process or upheld laws that reformers regard as problematic. For example, in response to the court's restricting the extent to which the Voting Rights Act can be used to draw majority-minority districts (Shaw v. Reno 1993; Bush v. Vera 1996; Miller v. Johnson 1995), Representative Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) has introduced the Voters' Choice Act which would permit states to elect their congressional delegations by proportional representation (PR).

The House of Representatives is one of the most dynamic of governmental institutions. Formally and informally, the House regularly revises its rules, procedures, practices, and structures to adapt and adjust to, among other things, membership and workload changes. Absent its capacities for reform, the House would soon find itself unable to meet the diverse challenges of the day. Generally, the House's reorganization imperative is driven by the constant influx of new lawmakers who bring fresh perspectives on how the House should work; typically, they want to make changes in the status quo.

Reform sentiments are much in evidence on the American political scene as we approach the end of the century, and improving the way public opinion is represented in political institutions is often the major motivation of reformers. This is clear from the essays in this collection, from the activities of contemporary political elites, and from the mood of ordinary people. Gross dissatisfaction exists with the nature of representation perceived to be offered by the modern political system.

On February 9, 1996, after a seventeen-month cease-fire, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) set off a bomb in East London. Less than a week later, the London police found and destroyed a bomb that the IRA had left in a telephone booth in the West End. A few days later, another IRA bomb went off on a doubledecker bus. The British government, under the leadership of John Major, asserted that it would have no official contact with Sinn Féin, the political arm of the IRA, until the paramilitary activities stopped. The government also deployed 500 additional troops in Northern Ireland. In October 1996, the IRA detonated two bombs at the British Army's headquarters in Lisburn, bringing the violent conflict back to Northern Ireland for the first time since the cease-fire.

On May 1, 1997, Tony Blair was elected Great Britain's prime minister. His election brought a renewed sense of optimism and good will to the conflict in Northern Ireland. Responding to Blair's overtures, including his warning that “the settlement train is leaving, with or without them” (Hoge 1997a, A7), the IRA announced on July 19, 1997, that they had “ordered the unequivocal restoration of the cease-fire” (Clarity 1997c, 1). Soon thereafter, Sinn Féin was invited to participate in the peace talks, which reconvened on September 15, 1997.

Editor's Note: This essay is drawn from a 1997 APSA Annual Meeting roundtable entitled “Can the Rational Choice Framework Cope with Culture?” It was presented by the Comparative Politics Division, chaired by Nancy Bermeo of Princeton University, and included, in addition to Ian Shapiro, Robert H. Bates of Harvard University, Ronald Inglehart of the University of Michigan, and Ian Lustick of the University of Pennsylvania.

I do not believe it is fruitful to try to answer the question, “Can the rational choice framework cope with culture?” Asking it implies that the rational choice approach founders due to its inattention to cultural variables, and (depending on how dire one takes the diagnosis to be), that this defect would be remedied if the rational choice framework was replaced, modified, or supplemented by what might be thought of as a “culturalist” one. Consider each of these prescriptions.