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Floor Behavior in the U.S. Congress: Committee Power Under the Open Rule

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Barry R. Weingast
Barry R. Weingast
Affiliation:
Hoover Institution
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Abstract

The open rule in the House is a complex set of restrictions, limiting, for example, the number of motions and the order of recognition. By incorporating constraints based on the actual set of rules into a model, I show that legislative outcomes appear more predictable than was previously thought. These rules nearly always allow the proponents of legislation to respond to an opponent's amendment, mitigating the potential damage of the latter. An advantage of the approach is that it provides a new interpretation of the changes in floor activity observed in the postreform period.

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Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 83 , Issue 3 , September 1989 , pp. 795 - 815
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1989

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