Echo Chambers

“Echo Chambers finds and tills new terrain in the study of the U.S. Congress. Rather than study the dynamics of the legislative process narrowly construed, Gaynor elevates the importance of legislators’ communications in explaining how the modern Congress works and how well legislators represent their constituents. Focusing on the rise of leadership-led partisan messaging (even on ostensibly bipartisan measures), Echo Chambers offers a new way to think about emerging challenges for today’s lawmakers."

-- Sarah Binder, George Washington University

“Echo Chambers is the best kind of book on the modern Congress. Gaynor shows how party and committee leaders have turned constituent communication into a centralized and polarizing machine. When talking points trump policy, even the most bipartisan bills can get trapped in the polarization vortex. This dynamic swamps the narrative of congressional problem solving, leaving the problem solvers dismayed, the advocates for the partisan war thrilled, and the public disgusted. This book is a must read for anyone interested in how Congress became so dysfunctional.”

-- Sean Theriault, University of Texas at Austin

“A combination of rich data and deep interview evidence—all built on Gaynor’s own experience working in Congress—makes this book an important new contribution to our understanding of what messages voters hear from their representatives, why the power to shape those messages increasingly sits with party leaders, and what this distribution of power means for representation.”

-- Molly Reynolds, The Brookings Institu