The Myth of Institutional Memory

Institutional memory is a collective set of facts, concepts, experiences and know-how held by a group of people. As it transcends the individual, it requires the ongoing transmission of these memories between members of this group. Elements of institutional memory may be found in corporations, professional groups, government bodies, religious groups, academic collaborations and by extension in entire cultures.

Institutional memory, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Institutional_memory&oldid=274207172 (last visited Apr. 10, 2009).

The title of this post isn’t accurate.  Admittedly, it’s was titled that way to drive traffic and get people interested in reading.  Of course there is such a thing as “institutional memory.”  That’s not the myth.  The post should be more accurately entitled “The Value of Institutional Memory in Legislative Bodies is a Myth.”  But that’s long winded.

Those who oppose term limits have several arguments against them. Some of those arguments we agree with. One we agree with is that for federal office term limits cannot be constitutional unless all states adopt them or they come about through a constitutional amendment process.  The 14th Amendment’s “equal protection” clause has been the reasoning used to strike down federal office term limit laws enacted by the various states.  Secondly, the Founders didn’t contemplate them, knowing the people should have the right to vote for whoever they wished to vote for, regardless of the number of terms.

But the “institutional memory” argument used to oppose term limits is the one of easiest to refute. The argument goes something like this: If elected office holders rotate through too fast, they won’t know the history of the issues being discussed. They won’t know how to effectively manage the process because they have no experience. How can anything be accomplished if everyone is being trained in their new jobs.

The first crack in the institutional memory wall is the premise that elected bodies are to be efficient and institutional memory is an aid to efficiency.  When the Constitution was created the authors understood human behavior.  They knew that efficient governments were dangerous.  They didn’t want the government to be monolithic.  They wanted in-fighting, or in James Madison’s language “factions”.  Our separation of powers has worked relatively well.  Not only did they separate power into the executive, judicial and legislative branches, they divided the legislative branch.  This was discussed in James Madison’s Federalist Paper No. 51.

The Senate, with longer terms than the House of Representatives, representing the several states was established as a more diliberative body.  The staggered terms allow for some institutional memory.  Assuming no incumbent is reelected, the Senate turns over every 12 years.  The 2 year overlap of each third allows for some “institutional memory” to remain.  Intentionally, legislation is to move slowly through the Senate.  This slowness is to temper the madhouse the Framers knew the House of Representatives would become.

Unfortunately, populist pressure and some poor decision making by some states destroyed one of the ways of preserving institutional memory (and creating a new memory path at the same time).  In 1913 the 17th Amendment to the Constitution was enacted changing the responsibility for the appointment or election of senators from the states’ legislative branches to a direct election by the people.  This changed the entire make up of the federal government.

No longer were the memories of the sovereign states perserved in the senate, but rather the memories of the senators and how to stay in office.  Senators with the interests of their state governments were replaced by senators with the interests of their “constitutents” paramount.  Over time, we’ve seen what has happened.  Senators spend more time worrying about reelection than the needs of their states (it’s an important distinction for a different discussion).

But a more thorough discussion of the problems related to the 17th Amendment would be a digression from the topic at hand: legislative institutional memory.

The other crack is the premise that new legislators won’t be able to efficiently conduct business.  The premise comes from the argument that the rules of the legislative bodies are law.  The current rules are created by the body to collect power to those who have been there the longest.  Generally, seniority is used to determine committee leadership.  None of these rules need to remain.  If we accepted the premise of regular turnover then the rules could (and should) be altered to reconginze the realities of the short terms.

The system in place has evolved over time and doesn’t take into account the paradigm shifting changes from technology.  Today every piece of legislation is usually online before it’s voted upon.  Citizens have access to pending legislation, meeting minutes, video, audio, data, ad nauseum.  We’ve already seen a shift in the way the citizens are able to interact with their lawmakers.  In this world the entire citizenry serves as an “institutional memory” to the legislative body and each other.

The last crack in the wall is that the framers of the Constitution didn’t plan on long serving House members – that’s why they are 2 terms.  Their expectation was for citizen statesmen who would serve for a term or two then return to their lives.  And for the most part, that’s what happened until the 20th century when it became  a life long career.  As discussed, the senate was designed to hold longer term memories.  The system was intentionally designed to help the House forget – that way it wasn’t stuck in the past and couldn’t see the future.

To Summarize:  The existing system has what is necessary to preserve any necessary “institutional memory.”

1. Institutional memory might make legislatures more efficient, but that runs counter to the need for legislatures to be inefficient.
2. The system was designed with sufficient institutional memory assuming no elected official would serve for more than one term.
   1. The Senate has staggered 6 year terms.
   2. The House of Representative’s 2 year terms are designed to help the institution “forget.”  Institutional memory for this legislative body is actually undesirable.
3. Current rules are created by those with seniority to consolidate power to them.  This system does serves the legislators more than the citizens.  New rules acknowledging (or even encouraging) one or two term service would allow for “efficient” action in the House and Senate.
4. Technology and communications advances will negate any issues with “long term memory.”

Of course, these arguments aren’t complete.  Howerver, they are to serve as starting points for dicussions.  We would be very interested to hear from an elected official who’s served in office more than two terms as to why he/she thinks institutional memory has value.