Looking for a smoking gun: Committee jurisdictions and congressional voting decisions

The nature of jurisdictional boundaries of committees in the House of Representatives has received little scholarly attention. Recently, however, LaRue and Rothenberg (1992) focused specifically on this topic and concluded that for some legislators — namely, those involved in a jurisdictional dispute — jurisdictional issues were an important influence, above and beyond policy preferences, in determining votes. I expand on their analysis in an attempt to discover whether members who are not involved in such a dispute also seek to protect jurisdictional property rights. I find that these non-involved members werenot affected by the jurisdictional considerations.