Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T19:20:50.849Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Are Congressional Committees Composed of Preference Outliers?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Keith Krehbiel
Keith Krehbiel*
Affiliation:
Stanford University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A diverse set of congressional studies portrays members of standing committees as more or less homogeneous “high demanders” or “preference outliers” relative to members of the larger legislature. Using interest group ratings of members of the Ninety-sixth to Ninety-ninth Congresses, I conduct conventional statistical hypothesis tests to discern whether standing committees are more extreme and more homogeneous than the legislature as a whole. With only a few exceptions, the tests do not allow confident rejection of null hypotheses of identical committee and chamber preferences. The absence of convincing evidence of preference outliers is broadly consistent with emerging incomplete information game-theoretic legislative research and difficult to reconcile with many previous formal theories of legislative politics.

Type
Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 84 , Issue 1 , March 1990 , pp. 149 - 163
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1990

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Arnold, R. Douglas. 1979. Congress and the Bureaucracy. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Benson, Bruce L. 1981. “Why Are Congressional Committees Dominated by ‘High-Demand’ Legislators?” Southern Economic Journal 48: 68–77.Google Scholar
Benson, Bruce L. 1983. “Logrolling and High Demand Committee Review.” Public Choice 45: 427–34.Google Scholar
Cook, Timothy E. 1983. “The Policy Impact of the Committee Assignment Process in the House.” Journal of Politics 45: 1027–36.Google Scholar
Cowart, S. C. 1981. “Representation of High-Demand Constituencies on Review Committees.” Public Choice 37:337–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davidson, Roger H. 1981. “Subcommittee Government: New Channels for Policy Making.” In The New Congress, ed. Mann, Thomas E. and Ornstein, Norman J.. Washington: American Enterprise Institute.Google Scholar
Denzau, Arthur T., and Mackay, Robert J.. 1983. “Gatekeeping and Monopoly Power of Committees: An Analysis of Sincere and Sophisticated Behavior.” American Journal of Political Science 27: 740–61.Google Scholar
Fernno, Richard F. 1966. The Power of the Purse: Appropriations Politics in Congress. Boston: little, Brown.Google Scholar
Fernno, Richard F. 1973. Congressmen in Committees. Boston: Little, Brown.Google Scholar
Fiorina, Morris P. 1981. “Universalism, Reciprocity, and Distributive Policymaking in Majority Rule Institutions.” In Research in Public Policy Analysis and Management, ed. Crecine, John. Greenwich, CT: JAI.Google Scholar
Fowler, Linda L. 1982. “How Interest Groups Select Issues for Rating Voting Records of Members of the U.S. Congress.” Legislative Studies Quarterly 7: 401–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fowler, Linda L., Douglass, Scott R., and Clark, Wesley D.. 1980. “The Electoral Effects of House Committee Assignments.” Journal of Politics 42: 307–22.Google Scholar
Gilligan, Thomas, and Krehbiel, Keith. 1987. “Collective Decision-making and Standing Committees: An Informational Rationale for Restrictive Amendment Procedures.” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 3: 287–335.Google Scholar
Gilligan, Thomas, and Krehbiel, Keith. 1989. “Asymmetric Information and Legislative Rules with a Heterogeneous Committee.” American Journal of Political Science 33: 459–90.Google Scholar
Goss, Caroll F. 1972. “Military Committee Membership and Defense Related Benefits in the House of Representatives.” Western Political Quarterly 25: 215–33.Google Scholar
Jewell, Malcolm E., and Chi-hung, Chu. 1974. “Membership Movement and Committee Attractiveness in the U.S. House of Representatives, 1963–1971.” Midwest Journal of Political Science 18: 433–41.Google Scholar
Krehbiel, Keith, and Rivers, Douglas. 1988. “The Analysis of Committee Power: An Application to Senate Voting on the Minimum Wage.” American Journal of Political Science 32: 1151–74.Google Scholar
Krehbiel, Keith, Shepsle, Kenneth, and Weingast, Barry. 1987. “Why Are Congressional Committees Powerful?” American Political Science Review 81: 929–45.Google Scholar
McConachie, Lauros G. 1898. Congressional Committees. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell.Google Scholar
Mackay, Robert, and Weaver, Carolyn. 1979. “On the Mutuality of Interests between Bureaus and High Demand Review Committees: A Perverse Result.” Public Choice 34: 481–91.Google Scholar
Mackay, Robert, and Weaver, Carolyn. 1983. “Commodity Bundling and Agenda Control in the Public Sector.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 98: 611–35.Google Scholar
Manley, John F. 1970. The Politics of Finance: The House Committee on Ways and Means. Boston: Little, Brown.Google Scholar
Munger, Michael C. 1988. “Allocation of Desirable Committee Assignments: Extended Queues Versus Committee Expansion.” American Journal of Political Science 32: 317–44.Google Scholar
Niskanen, William A. 1971. Bureaucracy and Representative Government. Chicago: Aldine-Atherton.Google Scholar
Price, David E. 1978. “Policy Making in Senate Committees: The Impact of Environmental Factors.” American Political Science Review 72: 548–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ray, Bruce A. 1980. “The Responsiveness of the U.S. Congressional Armed Services Committees to Their Parent Bodies.” legislative Studies Quarterly 5: 501–15.Google Scholar
Schick, Allen. 1980. Congress and Money. Washington: Urban Institute.Google Scholar
Shepsle, Kenneth A. 1978. The Giant Jigsaw Puzzle. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Shepsle, Kenneth A., and Weingast, Barry R.. 1987. “The Institutional Foundations of Committee Power.” American Political Science Review 81: 85–104.Google Scholar
Stephens, Herbert W. 1971. “The Role of the Legislative Committees in the Appropriations Process: A Study Focused on the Armed Services Committees.” Western Political Quarterly 26: 142–62.Google Scholar
Smith, Steven. 1989. Call to Order: Floor Politics in the House and Senate. Washington: Brookings Institution.Google Scholar
Van Doren, Peter M. 1988. “The Limitations of Roll-Call Vote Analysis.” Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School. Typescript.Google Scholar
Weingast, Barry R. 1989. “Floor Behavior in Congress: Committee Power under the Open Rule.” American Political Science Review 83: 795–815.Google Scholar
Weingast, Barry R., and Marshall, William. 1987. “The Industrial Organization of Congress.” Journal of Political Economy 96: 132–63.Google Scholar
Weingast, Barry R., and Moran, Mark J.. 1983. “Bureaucratic Discretion or Congressional Control? Regulatory Policymaking by the Federal Trade Commission.” Journal of Political Economy 91: 765–800.Google Scholar
Wilson, Woodrow. 1885. Congressional Government. Cleveland: Meridian.Google Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.