2015-03-27

[public] 596K views, 6.39K likes, 185 dislikes audio only

CrashCourse

This week Craig breaks out the crystal ball to try and figure out why our congresspeople do the things that they do. We’ll talk about the three motivating factors of congressional decisions - constituency, interest groups, and political parties - and we’ll break down how each of these factors motivates certain actions like casework, public opinion polls, and logrolling. Craig will even weigh in on which of these factors probably contributes most significantly to the actions and decisions of our congresspersons and he'll do it without even a touch of cynicism!

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This episode is sponsored by Squarespace: http://www.squarespace.com/crashcourse

Chapters:

Introduction 00:00

How constituents & public opinion influence lawmakers 0:38

How interest groups influence lawmakers 2:01

How political parties influence lawmakers 3:07

Presidential power & political parties 4:20

Other influences on congressional decisions 5:20

Credits 6:05

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