Fenno's Theory Of Home Style Analysis

Fenno's theory of home style applies itself differently to Arizona State Legislature than its intended purpose in the US Congress, because in Arizona legislature the representatives spend more time at home and less time in session. The Arizona State Legislature also breaks up time in session and time out of session so that session is all at one time, where the US Congress has many sporadic breaks. These small differences largely impact the representative's interaction with constituents. Fenno's theory looks at how interaction with constituents relates to actions in Washington, using this theory the differences in interaction with constituents in the Arizona legislature, should translate to differences in how legislators vote and act while in

He did this by looking at how representative's thought of their constituents. Fenno found that successful representatives thought of their constituents as a series of circles progressively getting smaller, like a bulls eye. The largest circle is geographic, then reelection, primary, and the smallest circle is personal. These four groups of possible voters all require slightly different things to keep them happy and voting for the representative. Fenno also stated that representatives couldn't get reelected purely based on home style or Washington style the representative had to have both. Finally Fenno argued that home style, and Washington style impacted each other, but he couldn't do much more than speculate on how. While speculating Fenno used two examples: One representative that made his constituents feel welcomed at home but when they saw him in Washington he had bigger priorities than talking to them, and one representative that loved interacting with his constituents but hated the more formal parties and affairs of lobbyists and politicians in Washington. Fenno argues that both of these Representatives by not using either home style or Washington style correctly were seriously limiting their success. The first representative didn't make his constituents feel

Usually the Arizona State Legislature is in session for four months a year, but there is no official end date so this can fluctuate.(In 2015 they were in session from January 12 to April 2, but in 2012 it was only in session from January 10 through May 3.) (ballotpedia.org) This is different from the US Congress in two ways: it spends less time in session, and also the Arizona State Legislature is out of session for a large block of time, while congress is out of session sporadically throughout the year. This is important because it gives legislators an extensive amount of time to connect with their constituents continuously. I believe that this leads to representatives focusing more on their home styles, simply because they have more time to, and they spend more time among their constituents. In theory this lead to representatives being more responsive to their constituents, voting more inline with what the people they represent want. This leads to Washington style having less importance, which has some definite consequences: less time to pass bills means less bills are passed, with more focus on home style there is less “Washington politics” at play, while this may seem good it means that things are harder