ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the way in which the context of other activities affects incoming information and the way in which the congressman perceives and interprets it. The action which he takes on the basis of such information must also be placed in the context of his other activities. Congress is not a temporary convocation. It is an ongoing social system which must preserve itself intact and which deals with problems on a long-run, rather than a one-shot, basis. Because Congress is a social system, what comes out in the form of legislation often, and probably usually, differs from what one would predict from an enumeration of the opinions of individual congressmen. Congressmen specialize according to their committee assignments far more than most laymen realize. The complexity of the organization and procedures of Congress reduces the effect of external voices on it. Its social organization exerts constraints on what any single congressman can do.
