Cover

Half-title

Title

Copyright

Contents

Introduction

1 The Weakness of Parties

1.1 The Limited Role of Parties

1.2 Rational Choice Views of Party

1.3 The Theoretical Status of Parties

1.4 Plus Ca Change…

2 Committee Government

2.1 The Decision-Making Power of Committees

2.2 The Distinctiveness of Committees

2.3 The Autonomy of Subcommittees

2.4 Summary

3 An Outline of the Book

Part One The Autonomy and Distinctiveness

1 Self-Selection and the Subgovernment Thesis

1 Self-selection

2 Constituency interests and assignment requests

3 Accommodation of assignment requests

4 Accommodation of transfer requests

5 The routinization of the assignment process

6 What of norms in the assignment process?

7 Whither assignment routines? the republican revolution

8 Summary

2 The Seniority System in Congress

1 Seniority in the rayburn house: the standard view

2 Reconsidering the standard view

3 The empirical evidence

4 Interpreting the evidence: postwar democratic rule

5 Interpreting the evidence: the republican revolution

6 Conclusion

3 Subgovernments and the Representativeness of Committees

1 The previous literature

2 Data and methodology

3 Results

4 The representativeness thesis

5 Conclusion

Part Two A Theory of Organization

4 Institutions as Solutions to Collective Dilemmas

1 Collective dilemmas

1.1 Standardization

1.2 The Prisoner’s Dilemma

2 Central authority: the basics

2.1 Political Entrepreneurs

2.2 Economic Entrepreneurs

2.3 The Hobbesian State

2.4 Central Agents

3 Why central authority is sometimes necessary

4 Multiperiod considerations

5 Problems with central authority

6 Conclusion

5 A Theory of Legislative Parties

1 The reelection goal

1.1 The Party Record

1.2 The Existence of Partisan Electoral Tides

1.3 Secular Trends and Regional Differences

1.4 The Perception of Partisan Electoral Tides

1.5 Some Crucial Premises

2 Reelection maximizers and electoral inefficiencies

3 Party leadership

4 Some criticisms of our theory and our rejoinder

5 Conclusion

Part Three Parties as Floor-Voting Coalitions

6 On the Decline of Party Voting in Congress

1 Party voting: trends since 1980

2 Party voting: trends from 1910 to the 1970s

2.1 Party Votes

2.2 Intraparty Cohesion

3 Party agendas and party leadership votes

3.1 Party Agendas

3.2 Party Leadership Votes

3.3 Following the Leader: Party Voting Since the Republican Revolution

4 Conclusion

Part Four Parties as Procedural Coalitions: Committee Appointments

7 Party Loyalty and Committee Assignments

1 Assignments to control committees

2 Party loyalty and transfers to house committees

2.1 Previous Research

2.2 Who Transfers?

2.3 Data and Methods

2.4 Results

2.4.1 Democratic Transfers

2.4.2 Republican Transfers

2.5 Democratic Assignment Requests and Transfers

2.6 Democratic Request Success and Failure

2.7 Summary

3 Loyalty, the republican revolution, and the great purge of 1995

4 Assignment success of freshmen

5 Conclusion

8 Contingents and Parties

1 A model of partisan selection

2 Which committees’ contingents will be representative?

2.1 The External Effects of House Committee Decisions

2.1.1 Committees with Uniform Externalities

2.1.2 Committees with Targeted Externalities

2.1.3 Committees with Mixed Externalities

2.1.4 Summary

2.2 Extramural Effects

2.3 The Impact of Assignment Norms and Internal Party Practices

3 Results

3.1 Contingent Versus Party Means: ADA Scores

3.2 Contingent Versus Party Medians: NOMINATE Scores

3.3 Contingent Versus Party Distributions: NOMINATE Scores

3.4 Contingent Versus Party Behavior on Committee-Related Roll Calls

3.5 Regional Representativeness

3.6 A Key Comparative Statics Test: Continuing Members and New Members

4 Conclusion

Part Five Parties as Procedural Coalitions: The Scheduling Power

9 The Majority Party and the Legislative Agenda

1 The speaker’s collective scheduling problem

2 Limits on the scheduling power

2.1 Challengeable Scheduling Decisions

2.2 Sharing the Scheduling Power

3 Committee agendas and the speaker

3.1 When Time Is Ample

3.2 When Time Is Scarce

3.3 The Chair’s Scheduling Decision

4 Intercommittee logrolls

4.1 Constructing Complex Logrolls

4.2 The Majority Party’s Leaders as Deal Brokers

5 Coalitional stability

6 Critiques and rejoinders

7 Conclusion

10 Controlling the Legislative Agenda

1 The majority party and the committee system

1.1 The Instruments of Control

1.1.1 Creating and Destroying Subunits

1.1.2 Assigning Tasks and Resources

1.1.3 Regulating Subunit Personnel

1.1.4 Reviewing and Revising Subunit Decisions

1.2 Can the Majority Party Act?

2 The consequences of structural power: the legislative agenda

2.1 Sponsorship and Committee Reports

2.2 Deference to Committee Proposals

3 The consequences of structural power: public policy

4 Comments on the postwar house

Conclusion

Appendix 1: Uncompensated Seniority Violations, Eightieth through Hundredth Congresses

Appendix 2: A Model of the Speaker’s Scheduling Preferences

1.2 Some Implications of Optimal Scheduling

Appendix 3: Unchallengeable and Challengeable Vetoes

Appendix 4: The Scheduling Power

Bibliography

Author Index

Subject Index