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Summary Of The Challenges Of Congress Representation By Richard Fenno

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The main argument in The Challenge of Congressional Representation is whether or not Congress is truly represented. Richard Fenno chose five members of Congress to follow and he reports their thoughts on Congressional representation throughout this book. The five members Fenno followed all seem to want to help their constituents; however, they have completely different means of obtaining constituent approval. The problem of representation within Congress is mainly brought up by constituents. The issue of representation; however, also concerns the representative. Most members of Congress are concerned with representing their constituents and how to change policies in order to better their districts. Fenno takes an in-depth look at how Congress represents their constituents and to what extents. Fenno’s goal in writing this book is to also show the audience that Congressmen and Congresswomen work to accurately …show more content…

Also, this book failed to portray equal regions in the sense that only one Congress member represented the West coast. I believe if the author took these two suggestions and incorporated them in his book it would have provided a stronger argument in support of his core thesis. Each individual presented has a different view in how they represent their constituents. Consequently, by not representing what the constituents want in Congress can cause distrust in Congress as a whole and not just distrust of the House of Representatives. The one similarity that all five members of the House had in common was the fact that they truly wanted to represent their constituents; however, the obstacle they were faced with was whether or not to vote in favor of what they personally believed or put their beliefs aside and vote in favor of the

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