Legislator Success in Committee: Gatekeeping Authority and the Loss of Majority Control

In multiparty legislatures, the largest party or coalition may fall short of controlling a majority of plenary seats. However, plurality‐led congresses generally endow the largest parties with extensive agenda‐setting prerogatives, even when plenary majorities are lacking. In this article, we present a model and compelling evidence describing changes in the strategic behavior of committee chairs when majority control is lost. Using a dataset that includes all the bills proposed to the Argentine House in the last 25 years, we estimate success in committee in majority‐ and plurality‐led congresses. We provide extensive evidence that the loss of majority control reduces the importance of the median voter of the plurality party while improving the success of the median committee voter.