Lawrence Becker remarks that “it is no wonder that the American Congress is among the most reviled of American institutions,” and casts partial blame on political scientists who depict Congress as “gridlocked, impotent, overly influenced by special interests, and even corrupt (p. ix).” Becker has a point, and his investigation of several issue areas (base closings, free trade, nuclear waste disposal, and tax reform) where Congress has enacted legislation that “imposes direct costs on localities or particular economic sectors in favor of some general diffuse benefit such as deficit reduction” is refreshing (p. 1). The book is a nice complement to graduate-level readings that typically emphasize the particularistic, local emphasis of congressional policymaking. The well-written case studies and Becker's propositions concerning when such change is most likely to occur and how, though not ironclad, provide plenty of food for thought and discussion.

The main focus of the book is on better understanding congressional procedures “that grant formal power to craft the specifics of particularistic costs to ad hoc institutions outside of Congress, and in some cases, to impose those costs without explicit congressional approval (p. 2).” Other scholars have drawn attention to procedural tactics designed to reduce the visibility or traceability of unpopular decisions (e.g., R. Kent Weaver, Automatic Government: The Politics of Indexation, 1988; or R. Douglas Arnold in The Logic of Congressional Action, 1990). Doing the Right Thing's contribution is to ask the obvious follow-up—why are such tactics not used more frequently?

Each of the cases examined shares the common characteristic of requiring that specific, often geographically concentrated, interests bear the costs of advancing a policy having more general benefits. The leverage for Becker's theorizing comes from the differences among the cases. He advances five propositions to explain when Congress is likely to resort to “extracongressional” blame-avoiding procedures. Congress is more likely to delegate when the costs of a policy change are so geographically concentrated and the number of affected groups so large that enacting change within Congress is politically infeasible; when events conspire to build consensus within Congress that change is needed; when no powerful champion in Congress emerges to take on the unpopular issue; and when the scope of the issue is defined sufficiently narrowly to mitigate concerns about agency loss through delegation to nonlegislative actors.

The most innovative of these propositions is that delegation is more likely for issues of narrow scope. This is where the detailed case studies bear fruit. Becker demonstrates, contrary to conventional wisdom, that Congress does not abdicate control in its pursuit of blame avoidance. In two of the cases, Congress chose not to delegate, while in the other two, it carefully limited the scope of its delegation. Base-closing commissions operate under constraints imposed by Congress to limit the range of the commission's recommendations (the 1988 commission could only recommend closures that would yield savings within six years, thus preventing the closure of any large installations). In addition, Congress retains ultimate authority to reject all or none of the commission's recommendations. These procedures reflect the issue's long history, where legislators have perceived that administrations were playing politics with the issue, as well as the recognition that members experiencing the pain of a proposed closure are compelled to do everything in their power to prevent it. The solution was to tie Congress's hands through delegation while limiting agency loss.

Congress similarly limits the scope of the president's fast-track authority to negotiating reciprocal trade-barrier reductions (rather than trade agreements in general) and is “very careful to ensure that the trade actions taken by the President are in line with legislators' preferences” by requiring positive approval of any agreement (pp. 90–91). The best explanation for these arrangements also seems to be that legislators recognize that Congress is unlikely to avoid the temptation to enact restrictive trade policies, but that there are also risks associated with delegating too much control to the president.

In contrast, Congress did not delegate the decision of where to site the nation's nuclear waste repository. It turned to an expert commission to make recommendations, but provided criteria that all but ensured that the commission would recommend what most legislators already preferred. In contrast to base closures and free trade, the costs of this issue were predominately located in a single state, so that the need to delegate in order to advance reform was less pressing. Finally, powerful champions emerged to take on the issues of tax reform and nuclear waste disposal in the 1980s, not only because there was credit to be claimed but also because there were costs to be avoided. No such leaders emerged to champion base closings. Although the costs associated with tax reform were widespread, it was also the issue of broadest scope and, as a result, the least likely to be delegated.

The limitations of this book are also the sources of its strengths. Becker derives five propositions from four selected case studies involving issues with many distinguishing characteristics. The cases are carefully researched and revealing. But one can also ask whether the propositions will withstand additional scrutiny if applied to other issues where extracongressional procedures have also been used, such as Social Security and Medicare reform, and perhaps even congressional pay raises. The pay raise issue seems especially interesting due to the many variations in extracongressional procedures employed since the early 1960s (see Roger Davidson, “The Politics of Executive, Legislative and Judicial Compensation,” in Robert Hartman and Arnold Weber, eds., The Rewards of Public Service: Compensating Top Federal Officials, 1980). In addition, one might also want to ask whether there are other deserving issues that have not received similar attention and responses. If not, why not?

The book's normative conclusion—that legislators sometimes seek to promote general benefits—is also less novel than the author seems to suggest. A prominent line of congressional research does indeed argue that the reelection concerns motivate members to place particular interests ahead of the general. But many members of Congress and prominent scholars see things differently. Steven Kelman has built a career out of documenting examples of “public spirit” in government, including in Congress (e.g., see his “‘Public Choice’ and Public Spirit,” Public Interest [Spring 1987]: 93–94). Other prominent scholars portray members' goals as multifaceted (e.g., Richard Fenno, Congressman in Committees, 1973; David Mayhew, America's Congress: Actions in the Public Sphere from James Madison Through Newt Gingrich, 2000), and find patterns in member activity that suggest that reelection is a primary consideration, but not all-consuming (e.g., Glenn Parker, Congress and the Rent Seeking Society, 1996; John Hibbing, Congressional Careers: Contours of Life in the U.S. House of Representatives, 1994). Reviewed in the light of prior research, Doing the Right Thing offers additional evidence for a perspective on Congress that appreciates electoral pressures, but recognizes that reelection is not the be-all and end-all of representation for many, if not most, legislators.