Stalemate in the States: Agenda Control Rules and Policy Output in American Legislatures

This article examines how the power of majority‐party leaders to set the legislative voting calendar influences policy change in American state legislatures. By generating an opportunity for party leaders to exercise gatekeeping or negative agenda control, such rules introduce an additional partisan veto player into a system of governance. This addition typically increases the size of the core or gridlock interval, which drives policy change downward. Using both traditional data on bill passage counts and new data on Affordable Care Act compliance, I find strong support for these claims. More specifically, when I calculate core sizes that are sensitive to agenda rules, I find that agenda‐control‐adjusted core size is negatively correlated with policy change, as expected. Moreover, even when I match states on their overall preference dispersion or polarization, the ability of party leaders to exercise negative agenda control is strongly negatively associated with policy change.     

The Influence of Governors on Veto Override Attempts: A Test of Pivotal Politics

Abstract Using the “switcher” analysis developed by Krehbiel (1998), we examine the ability of Missouri governors to sway legislators on veto override attempts. Our initial results closely mirror Krehbiel's finding that the chief executive successfully achieves influence at and around the veto pivot, but these results change once we take into account the political party of the legislators. Governors are far more likely to influence legislators from their own party, regardless of legislator ideology. Our study provides a rare systematic analysis of gubernatorial influence in the legislative arena, while also contributing to the current debate over preference‐based versus partisan‐based theories of legislatures.     

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

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 (2005–2010). 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.     

The European parliament and the co‐decision procedure: A reassessment

In this paper, I reassess the co‐decision legislative procedure introduced by the Maastricht Treaty on European Union. Specifically, I examine the dispute as to whether co‐decision enhanced or diminished the European Parliament's influence over EU law making. Employing a combination of formal analysis of the different stages of the procedure and evidence from its actual operation, I argue that Garrett and Tsebelis’ claim that co‐decision reduces Parliament's legislative powers is both theoretically and empirically unsupported. The implications for the Parliament's position within European politics are evaluated in the conclusion.     

The Mask of Neutrality: Judicial Partisan Calculation and Legislative Redistricting

Do judges ruling on redistricting litigation increase electoral competition in congressional races while simultaneously drawing districts favoring their party's congressional candidates? I offer a novel theory of judicial partisan calculation, arguing that judges draw more competitive districts than legislatures or commissions, but that judge‐drawn districts favor the electoral interests of their copartisans. These claims are reconcilable because judges target districts held by contrapartisan legislators to maximize their copartisans’ fortunes. I find that Democratic judges draw competitive districts by adding Democratic voters to Republican‐held House constituencies. Court‐administered redistricting increases competitiveness, ostensibly due to judicial neutrality. This mask of neutrality, however, conceals sophisticated partisan calculation.     

Political Parties and the Representativeness Of Legislative Committees

What role do parties play in determining which interests committees represent? In this article, I compare committee organization and representativeness in Nebraska's nonpartisan legislature with those in the partisan senates of Kansas and Iowa. I demonstrate that when parties do not organize legislative conflict, committees are less representative of the full chamber. I argue, however, that committee representativeness does not necessarily result from parties actively working to create representative committees. Rather, when legislative conflict has a definitive partisan structure and the committees are always controlled by the majority party, representative committees will result as a simple by‐product of the partisan structure and organization.     

War for the Floor: Partisan Theory and Agenda Control In the U.S. House of Representatives

This article extends recent research on partisan agenda control in the U.S. House of Representatives to the issue of procedural control of the legislative agenda via special rules. In particular, we draw out a facet of cartel and conditional party government theories that has not been addressed in prior analyses: the simultaneous interrelationship between positive and negative agenda control. Using roll‐call data on two procedural matters—votes to order the previous question on a special rule and votes to adopt a special rule—over the 1953–2002 period, we found that, in the area of procedural control of the floor agenda, the majority party's amount of agenda control depends to a significant degree upon the party's homogeneity and power.     

Partisanship,Sophistication, and Public Attitudes about Majority Rule and Minority Rights in Congress

The balance between majority rule and minority rights is a central issue in the design and operation of democratic institutions and remains a contested issue in debates of policy‐making processes. Remarkably, public attitudes about this balance are not subjected to scholarly investigation. In this article, we report the findings of the first survey experiment in which the American public's attitudes about majority rule and minority rights in legislative bodies are explored. We find robust support for both majority rule and minority rights, discover that only a few Americans distinguish between the US House of Representatives and Senate in the application of these principles, and demonstrate that views of majority rule and minority rights can be moved once we introduce respondents to the partisan implications of procedural rules. Moreover, with conflicting theoretical expectations about the effect of political sophistication on attitudes about majority rule and minority rights, we find that higher levels of political sophistication are associated with stronger partisan effects on attitudes about the balance between majority rule and minority rights in Congress.     

Parliamentary Rule: The US Senate Parliamentarian and Institutional Constraints on Legislator Behaviour

This article analyses the extent to which institutional rules constrain member behaviour in the United States Senate by examining the evolution of its parliamentarian. Interestingly, the US Senate parliamentarian has received surprisingly little scholarly attention given the important role she performs in the legislative process. The subsequent analysis thus provides a new understanding of the parliamentarian's role in the legislative process and the interplay between institutional rules and member behaviour in the Senate. To this end, the following analysis is situated within the context of the two primary theoretical approaches to understanding how institutional rules constrain member behaviour: path dependency and majoritarianism. These contrasting approaches provide expectations about the extent to which members will defer to the parliamentarian's interpretation of Senate rules rather than exercising their own discretionary control over those rules. Examining the evolving relationship between the parliamentarian and individual members affirms the centrality of institutional rules as a constraint on member behaviour over the past several decades. Yet such an examination also yields two surprising, and potentially contradictory, observations. First, individual senators in both parties have increasingly deferred to the parliamentarian to interpret the Senate's rules. This is surprising given that the Senate has simultaneously become more individualistic, partisan, and ideological over the same period. Second, the majority party has recently disregarded the norm of parliamentary constraint reflected in past practice and demonstrated a willingness to ignore Senate rules when doing so was necessary to achieve legislative success. This could signify a potential shift in how majorities view the constraints imposed by Senate rules if current trends of legislative dysfunction continue.     

The View from the Hill: Legislative Perceptions Of the District

This article addresses legislative perceptions of constituents' interests and develops a theory of perception that highlights the role of information accessibility in the formation of legislative offices' views of their districts. I used original data regarding health policy in the U.S. House to analyze perceptions of constituents' interests. I found that legislators do not see all constituents in their district, nor do they see the largest constituencies. Rather, legislators are more likely to see active and resource‐rich constituents. These findings provide unique evidence of the influence of money in Congress and suggest that legislative misperception is both common and systematically biased.     

Presidential Support in the Russian State Duma

Recent comparative research on presidential systems has analyzed the ways in which presidents build majorities for their legislative agendas. Through an analysis of roll‐call votes from the 2000‐03 Russian State Duma on a set of issues reflecting President Putin's legislative agenda, I examine the impact of parliamentary party affiliation, policy preferences, issue type, and electoral mandate type on structuring floor support for the president. I also assess the implications of a mixed electoral system for building legislative coalitions in multiparty legislatures. Further, my findings shed light on Putin's recent reforms of the Duma's rules and procedures and the country's electoral system.     

Minority Rights and Majority Power: Conditional Party Government and the Motion to Recommit in the House

Students of legislative politics have struggled to explain and measure party influence on voting and outcomes in Congress. Proponents of strong party effects point to the numerous procedural advantages enjoyed by the majority party as evidence of party effects, yet recent theoretical work by Krehbiel and Meirowitz (2002) argues that House rules guaranteeing the minority a motion to recommit with instructions effectively balances the procedural advantages enjoyed by the majority. This article identifies and tests the empirical implications of the Krehbiel and Meirowitz theory, using roll‐call data from the 61st to 107th Congresses (1909–2002). The results call into question the validity of Krehbiel and Meirowitz's conclusions about party government in the House and provide support for the theory of conditional party government.     

The Development of Special Orders and Special Rules in the U.S. House, 1881–1937

The modern Committee on Rules plays a critical role in structuring the agenda of the U.S. House of Representatives. In fact, resolutions from the Committee on Rules are the primary means through which controversial legislation reaches the House floor. But the Committee on Rules did not play a role in shaping the floor agenda until the 1880s and, despite intense scrutiny of episodes such as the institution of the Reed rules and the revolt against Speaker Cannon, our understanding of the role of the Committee on Rules is limited and skewed heavily toward the post‐World War II era. This limitation is unfortunate, because special rules play a starring role in major theories of legislative organization. In this article, I present analysis of the usage and historical development of special rules in the House, and I offer findings from my empirical analysis of the determinants of rule choice from 1881 to 1937. A nuanced interrogation of new data on special rules in this era reveals support for committee specialization and conditional party government as motives for rule choice in this era.     

The Impact of Presidential Campaigning for Congress on Presidential Support in the U.S. House of Representatives

Presidential influence is partly a function of the partisan, economic, and international context within which the president governs. Presidents are, however, more than bystanders relying on the political milieu for policy opportunities. Recent scholarship demonstrates that presidents consciously influence this milieu and build political capital by campaigning for congressional candidates. We contribute to this literature by assessing the effects of presidential campaigning on legislative support for two presidents who governed under extremely dissimilar circumstances: Bill Clinton in the 106th Congress and George W. Bush in the 108th Congress. We find evidence of campaign effects on congressional policymaking during both administrations.     

Agenda Control in Congress: Evidence from Cutpoint Estimates and Ideal Point Uncertainty

This article develops two new tests of partisan and nonpartisan theories of lawmaking based on cutpoint estimates and measures of uncertainty about ideal point estimates. Theories of congressional organization make explicit predictions about the absence of cutpoints in certain intervals of the policy space. We test these theories with new cutpoint estimates and exploit the fact that the ideal points of members located far from the density of cutpoints are necessarily estimated with less precision. We validate our empirical approach through simulations, and we test three models of congressional organization using House roll call data from the 86th through the 110th Congresses (1959–2008). We find strong evidence of partisan agenda control. Our findings exhibit modest differences from the results predicted by Cox and McCubbins's party cartel theory: negative agenda control increases over time and is negatively correlated with the size of the blockout region.     

Disentangling the Role of Ideology and Partisanship in Legislative Voting: Evidence from Argentina

We present a novel approach to disentangle the effects of ideology, partisanship, and constituency pressures on roll‐call voting. First, we place voters and legislators on a common ideological space. Next, we use roll‐call data to identify the partisan influence on legislators' behavior. Finally, we use a structural equation model to account for these separate effects on legislative voting. We rely on public opinion data and a survey of Argentine legislators conducted in 2007–08. Our findings indicate that partisanship is the most important determinant of legislative voting, leaving little room for personal ideological position to affect legislators' behavior.     

The Question Concerning the Common Frame of Reference

The many directives on private consumer law enacted in the last three decades have met with considerable neglect and resistance amongst domestic judges, legislatures and scholars, bringing about less legal unity and more ‘legal fragmentation'—to say it in the words of the Commission. The Draft Common Frame of Reference is one more attempt, on the part of certain strands of European private law scholarship, at imposing a formal break on, and at overcoming, such fragmentation. Presented as a ‘comprehensive and self‐standing’ document, its ambition is to definitively implement the Commission‐generated, market‐orientated agenda of private law reform, so much resisted at the national level. The article argues that the EU legislative institutions should not go ahead with the plan of incorporating the Draft's content in EU law, by adopting a CFR. A CFR would confer an unprecedented degree of authority on a range of contested directive‐generated rules, from the test of fairness to the risk development defence in product liability. In creating a climate in which CFR‐based legalistic arguments promote unity over fragmentation, a CFR would emasculate public debate by implementing, under the spell of legal necessity, exactly those partisan, Commission‐initiated policies that have been, and still are, openly opposed in domestic legal circles. The Draft embodies a grammar of imposition that should be questioned.     

Changes in Legislative Support for the Governor's Program Over Time

Abstract This study examines changes in legislative support for the governor's legislative agenda in Georgia during the governor's first term in office (1991–94). I analyze the factors that led legislators to support the governor's agenda, as well as how the level of support changed between election years and off‐years. I use multivariate OLS models of gubernatorial support to determine how support varied (1) between the parties, (2) between factions within parties, and (3) over time. I find that there was wide variation in support among factions in the majority party and that support varied widely between election years and off‐years.     

PARTISAN POLITICS,ELECTORAL COMPETITION AND IMPRISONMENT: AN ANALYSIS OF STATES OVER TIME*

The now well‐documented explosion in prison populations over the last 30 years has spurred significant attention in the literature. Early research focused primarily on economic explanations. More recently it has focused on political explanations of prison growth. Here we extend research on political explanations of imprisonment by drawing on the literature on state politics and public policy. We argue that the effect of partisan politics on punishment is conditional on how much electoral competition legislators face. We test this hypothesis using annual state level data on imprisonment from 1978 to 1996. Our findings show that the effect of Republican state legislative strength on prison admissions depends on time and the level of competition in state legislative elections. We argue that these findings suggest the need for a more nuanced understanding of the link between partisan U.S. politics and imprisonment.     

Parties,Preferences, and Petitions: Discharge Behavior in the Modern House

Although discharge petitions lie at the confluence of personal preferences, committee prerogatives, and party leadership in Congress, these procedures have received little scholarly scrutiny. We capitalize on the public nature of petition signatures since 1993 to examine the behavior of the most cross‐pressured members in discharge battles: bill sponsors and cosponsors belonging to the majority party who personally prefer the bills they have sponsored but who face party pressure not to sign the petitions that threaten the leadership's control of the legislative agenda. After controlling for personal preferences, we find a statistically significant partisan effect in the U.S. House, which further illuminates the “Where's the party?” debate.