Conditions for Party Leadership: The Case of the House Democrats

All major legislation in the House necessitates a special rule from the Rules Committee before it can be brought to the chamber floor. These rules often strictly limit floor amendments to bills considered by the House. Scholars of political parties have argued that the House majority party can bias policy output away from the floor median through its usage of restrictive rules. In this article, we argue that in order to secure the passage of restrictive rules, the majority often makes concessions to centrist legislators through the amending process. We examine this theory using a newly collected data set that includes all amendments considered by the Rules Committee during the construction of structured rules in the 109th, 110th, and 111th Congresses (2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010). Our results are mixed, but they do suggest that moderate members of the majority party often receive concessions via amendments for their support of the majority party's agenda-setting regime.Despite Congress having a reputation as an institution beset by partisan gridlock, the modern day US House of Representatives is a quite efficient legislative machine. In contrast to the more deliberate Senate, cohesive majorities can and do process legislation through the House while using precious little plenary time. The primary procedural tool that allows this kind of legislative efficiency is the special rule. The House Committee on Rules issues simple, yet flexible, resolutions that allow the chamber to choose bills to be considered and establish the terms and length of debate on bills. These special rules can increase legislative efficiency by limiting the time allowed for debate and restricting the number, as well as the content, of amendments allowed to be considered. The permissiveness of rules can range from those that allow all germane amendments (i.e., open rules) to those that allow a limited set of

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 88%

The Cost of Majority‐Party Bias: Amending Activity under Structured Rules

Lynch¹,

Madonna²,

Roberts

2016

“…We also consider the effectiveness of party leaders. 21 Majority party leaders are primarily concerned with scheduling, referral, and the maintenance of coalitions (Bach and Smith 1988;Cox and McCubbins 1993;Froman and Ripley 1965). The increased demands on their time leads to a decreased likelihood of introducing bills.…”

Section: Institutional Arrangements and Legislative Successmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Keys to Legislative Success in the U.S. House of Representatives

Anderson

Box‐Steffensmeier

Sinclair-Chapman

2003

176

132

Our research addresses how individual member behavior and institutional variables affect legislative success in the U.S. House of Representatives. Using new measures of activity from the 103d Congress (1993–94), a count dependent variable, and negative binomial regression, our analysis assesses member effectiveness. We find that a member's activity level encourages legislative success, but gains are limited when members speak or sponsor too frequently. Our results provide a clearer picture of the role of legislative context and the relevance of institutions in determining a member's legislative successes and failures.

“…Some bills provoke a great deal of constituency pressure because they are high-salience matters, others are subject to heavy lobbying from interest groups, and yet others allow members considerable leeway to vote their own predispositions (see Miller and Stokes 1963). Some of the work cited here acknowledges differences across broad classes of votes, such as procedural and substantive matters (see also Froman and Ripley 1965). Clearly, one should not expect partisanship to have the same effect on all votes.…”

Section: The Hunt For Party Disciplinementioning

confidence: 99%

“…These counts are usually conducted on behalf of a committee chair or the leadership and ask members how they plan to vote on an upcoming piece of legislation. Although the whip system was heavily studied early in its development (Dodd and Sullivan 1981;Froman and Ripley 1965;Ripley 1964), it has been all but abandoned by the literature since then (cf. Evans et al 2003;Sinclair 1981Sinclair , 1983Sinclair , 1995.…”

Section: Using House Whip Count Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…If the vote appeared close, then he would call on them to vote with the party; otherwise, they were free to vote against it (Farrell 2001;O'Neill 1987). In the 1960s, the leadership would routinely line up 8 to 10 pocket votes when it needed them (Froman and Ripley 1965). King and Zeckhauser (2003) described how "strategic waiting" affected the vote on the 1990 anti-flag-burning measure.…”

Section: Pocket Votesmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Preferences, Partisanship, and Whip Activity in the U.S. House of Representatives

Burden

Frisby

2004

Using Democratic whip counts from the 92d House, we compare representatives' stated intentions to their actual roll‐call votes to detect evidence of party pressure. After arguing that this strategy understates real party influence, we nonetheless point to evidence of member conversion by party leaders. On 16 bills analyzed, two‐thirds of the switches between the count and the vote occur in the direction favored by party leaders. We examine one bill in depth, showing how the efforts of party leaders were consequential to the outcome. The pattern of movement on this bill, along with data from the larger set of bills, provides evidence that leaders act strategically, targeting the members whose persuasion requires the fewest resources.