The Electoral Effects of House Committee Assignments

Fowler, Linda L.; Douglass, S.R.; Clark, Wesley D.

doi:10.2307/2130030

Cited by 42 publications

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“…, and committee assignments (Bullock 1972;Fowler, Douglass and Clark 1980). A second and complementary approach has attempted to explain the incumbency advantage in terms of the voters' opinions.…”

Section: ; and Johannes And Mcadams 1981) District Attentivenessmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Return of the Incumbents: The Nature of the Incumbency Advantage

Campbell¹

1983

The Western Political Quarterly

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Section: ; and Johannes And Mcadams 1981) District Attentivenessmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Return of the Incumbents: The Nature of the Incumbency Advantage

Campbell¹

1983

The Western Political Quarterly

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“…Party influence was replaced with an increased importance of individual credit taking that committees allowed. Fowler et al (1980) claim not all committees are equally well suited to increase a member's re-election chances. They find members who request and obtain a seat on a semi-exclusive committee increase their vote share in their next election by more than other members.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Macroeconomic conditions and committee re-election rates

McGarrity

2005

Public Choice

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The traditional literature on the link between the macro economy and House elections follows Kramer (1971) and assumes all members of the President's party are equally vulnerable to voter wrath caused by economic changes. Using Presidential Party return rates from 10 House committees over the time period 1916–1996, I find the impact of economic conditions at the polls varies by committee. Generally, committees that manage money or provide a public good are the most sensitive to economic fluctuations. Contrastingly, members of the Public Works committee and the Rules committee are more insulated from electoral culpability due to economic fluctuations. Copyright Springer Science + Business Media, Inc. 2005

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“…This benefits the chamber since individuals placed on committees they sought are more involved in committee work and therefore do their share in providing expertise for their colleagues to draw on (Gertzog, 1976;Shepsle, 1978). Beneflts to the member from having a committee request honored include a sense of achievement and perhaps a larger reelection margin (Gertzog, 1976; but on the latter point, see Bullock, 1972, andFowler, Douglass, andClark, 1980, who found no relationship between getting desired assignments and later reelection margins). This research on the Senate will determine whether senators were as successful in achieving their committee objectives as House members were.…”

Section: Previous Research On Committee Assignmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

U.S. Senate Committee Assignments: Preferences, Motivations, and Success

Bullock¹

1985

American Journal of Political Science

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JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sat, Research into congressional committee preferences and assignments has been notably one-sided, with little attention given to the Senate. Using information from senators' letters and memos, this paper analyzes 290 committee requests made by Democrats from 1953 to 1971. The relative attractiveness of committees for freshmen and more senior members is reported along with information on the reasons behind committee desirability. The materials on member motivations permit development of a classification scheme for committees. Multivariate analyses reveal that seniority is the variable strongly related to success in getting assignments that have been requested. Seven other independent variables that have been used by scholars studying House committee assignments are not related to success among Senate competitors.

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The Electoral Effects of House Committee Assignments

Cited by 42 publications

References 0 publications

The Return of the Incumbents: The Nature of the Incumbency Advantage

The Return of the Incumbents: The Nature of the Incumbency Advantage

Macroeconomic conditions and committee re-election rates

U.S. Senate Committee Assignments: Preferences, Motivations, and Success

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