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The Committee Function: An Influence Equation*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Thomas W. Casstevens
Thomas W. Casstevens*
Affiliation:
Oakland University
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Abstract

In legislative systems a bill is commonly considered and reported by an appropriate committee before it is considered on the floor of the house. Since motions on the floor frequently relate to such bills, it is often apposite to refer to a motion's relevant committee. This article presents a mathematical model of the relationship between the relevant committee's divisions on the floor and a motion's probability of passing. Let x be the proportion of the relevant committee voting yea on the floor, z be the proportion of the relevant committee voting nay on the floor, and y be the proportion of the relevant committee neither voting yea nor voting nay on the floor, then a motion's probability of passing is (x2 + y2)/(x2 + y2 + z2). The fit between theory and observation is quite good: six hundred eleven roll calls from the 90th and 91st Congresses have been analyzed; 0.628 of the motions actually passed; and 0.613 of the motions were expected to pass.

Type
Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 66 , Issue 1 , March 1972 , pp. 160 - 162
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1972

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Footnotes

*

I thank Harvey Arnold, Franklin Burkeen, Harold Casstevens II, Glenn Friedly, Richard Hahn, William Ice, John Lecznar, Roger Marz, Jan Ozanich, and Harvey Smith.

References

1 When they [the Appropriations Committee Members] stick together, you can't lick 'em on the floor.” (A remark attributed to an anonymous House leader and quoted by Fenno, Richard F. Jr., The Power of the Purse: Appropriations Politics in Congress [Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1966], p. 37.)Google Scholar “Now is it to lower the price of corn, or isn't it? It is not much matter which we [the Cabinet] say, but mind, we must all say the same.” (A remark attributed to Lord Melbourne and quoted by Bagehot, Walter, The English Constitution [London: Oxford University Press, 1961], p. 13n.)Google Scholar This essay adopts Bagehot's view that the British Cabinet is not only a committee but also the committee of Parliament and especially of the House of Commons.

2 There is nothing absolute about these desiderata, but they did guide the search for a function to be empirically tested. Our h(x, y) = g(x) when y = 0.

3 Congressional Roll Call (Washington: Congressional Quarterly Service, 1970)Google Scholar was used to determine each member's vote on all 177 roll calls and to ascertain the relevant bill for each motion; given the relevant bill, Digest of Public General Bills (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1970), 2 volumes, yielded the relevant committee for each of 145 roll callsGoogle Scholar; given the relevant committee, Congressional Directory: 91st Congress, 1st Session (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1969) gave its membershipGoogle Scholar. Motions requiring exceptional majorities were excluded. Changes in committee memberships during the Session were ignored, except when a member vacated his seat in the House (which was noted in Congressional Roll Call) and then his committee was considered to have been reduced in size.

4 For example, if a lobbyist can accurately forecast the committee members' reactions to his desired proposal (and this is a manageable job for a lobbyist), then the lobbyist can derivatively forecast its prospects on the floor (if it is introduced as an amendment).

5 The pertinent arithmetical fact is that (x + y)2/[(x + y)2 + z2] ≥ (x2 + y2)/(x2 + y2 + z2), when x, y, and z are non-negative real numbers.

6 Equal weights for yeas and nays are even more intuitively appealing than a symmetrical impact for nonvoting.

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