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Congressional Reform and Party Discipline: The Effects of Changes in the Seniority System on Party Loyalty in the US House of Representatives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Sara Brandes Crook  and
John R. Hibbing
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Extract

The US House of Representatives underwent a series of reforms in the 1970s which, on paper, changed the institution in fundamental ways. Often, however, institutional inertia is able to transform important ‘paper’ changes into barely discernible actual changes. Have the reforms really led to alterations in the way Congress operates and the policies it produces? To provide a partial answer to this question, we single out one of the reforms – a change in the application of the seniority system in the selection of committee chairmen – and analyse it with an eye towards one hypothesized effect – alterations in the level of party support among key representatives. But by restricting our study in this manner, we are able to provide specific empirical facts which should be of considerable assistance in the important task of formulating more generalized conclusions about the ability of legislative reform to produce real change in the governing process.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , April 1985 , pp. 207 - 226
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

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References

1 This point is made forcefully in Patterson, Samuel C., ‘Conclusions: On The Study of Legislative Reform’, in Welch, Susan and Peters, John G., eds, Legislative Reform and Public Policy, (New York: Praeger, 1971)Google Scholar, and in Jones, Charles O., ‘Will Reform Change Congress?’ in Dodd, Lawrence C. and Oppenheimer, Bruce I., eds, Congress Reconsidered, (New York: Praeger, 1977).Google Scholar

2 For excellent descriptive accounts of the many diverse changes, see Ornstein, Norman J., Congress in Change: Evolution and Reform, (New York: Praeger, 1975)Google Scholar; Dodd, Lawrence C. and Oppenheimer, Bruce I., ‘The House in Transition’Google Scholar, in Dodd, and Oppenheimer, , eds., Congress ReconsideredGoogle Scholar;, Rieselbach, Leroy N., Congressional Reform in the Seventies, (Morristown, N.J.: General Learning Press, 1977)Google Scholar; Welch, and Peters, , Legislative Reform and Public PolicyGoogle Scholar;, Rieselbach, Leroy N., Legislative Reform, (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1978)Google Scholar; Ornstein, Norman J. and Rohde, David W., ‘Political Parties and Congressional Reform’, in Fishel, Jeff, ed., Parties and Elections in an Anti-Party Age, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978)Google Scholar; and Dodd, Lawrence C. and Oppenheimer, Bruce I., ‘The House in Transition: Change and Consolidation’, in Dodd, Lawrence C. and Oppenheimer, Bruce I., eds., Congress Reconsidered, 2nd edn (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1981).Google Scholar

3 See Goodwin, George, ‘The Seniority System in Congress’, American Political Science Review, LIII (1959), 412–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Polsby, Nelson W., ‘The Institutionalization of the U.S. House of Representatives’, American Political Science Review, LXIII (1968), 144–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Abram, Michael and Cooper, Joseph, ‘The Rise of Seniority in the House of Representatives’, Polity, 1 (1968), 52–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Polsby, Nelson W., Gallaher, Miriam and Rundquist, Barry, ‘The Growth of the Seniority System in the U.S. House of Representatives’, American Political Science Review, LXIII (1969), 787–807CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Price, H. Douglas, ‘The Congressional Career: Then and Now’, in Polsby, Nelson, ed., Congressional Behavior, (New York: Random House, 1974)Google Scholar; and Price, H. Douglas, ‘Careers and Committees in the American Congress’, in Aydelotte, William O., ed., The History of Parliamentary Behavior, (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977).Google Scholar

4 See Hinckley, Barbara, The Seniority System in Congress, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1971).Google Scholar

5 See Galloway, George B., History of the House of Representatives, 2nd edn (New York: Crowell, 1976), p. 75, for an account of these events.Google Scholar

6 Ornstein, and Rohde, , ‘Political Parties and Congressional Reform’, p. 285.Google Scholar

7 Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, 5 01 1979, p. 64.Google Scholar

8 Ornstein, and Rohde, , ‘Political Parties and Congressional Reform’, p. 290.Google Scholar

9 See Ripley, Randall B., Congress: Process and Policy, 3rd edn (New York: Norton, 1983), p. 241.Google Scholar

10 Price, , ‘Careers and Committees’, p. 41Google Scholar. Also on this point see Polsby, , Gallaher, and Rundquist, , ‘The Growth of the Seniority System’, p. 790.Google Scholar

11 Hinckley, Barbara, ‘Seniority 1975: Old Theories Confront New Facts’, British Journal of Political Science, VI (1976), 383–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 Parker, Glenn R., ‘The Selection of Committee Leaders in the House of Representatives’, American Politics Quarterly, VIII (1979), 71–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For evidence on the criteria employed during an earlier time see Abram, and Cooper, , ‘The Rise of Seniority’, pp. 52–85.Google Scholar

13 See Fenno, Richard F. Jr., Congressmen in Committees, (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973)Google Scholar; Dodd, Lawrence C., ‘Congress and the Quest for Power,’Google Scholar in Dodd, and Oppenheimer, , eds, Congress ReconsideredGoogle Scholar;, and Jones, Rochelle and Woll, Peter, The Private World of Congress, (New York: Free Press, 1979).Google Scholar

14 See Ornstein, Norman J. and Rohde, David W., ‘Revolt from Within: Congressional Change, Legislative Policy, and the House Commerce Committee’Google Scholar, in , Welch and Peters, , eds. Legislative Reform and Public PolicyGoogle Scholar;, Ornstein, Norman J. and Rohde, David W., ‘Shifting Forces, Changing Rules, and Political Outcomes: The Impact of Congressional Change on Four House Committees’, in Peabody, Robert and Polsby, Nelson, eds, New Perspectives on the House of Representatives, 3rd edn (Chicago: Rand-McNally, 1977)Google Scholar; Berg, John, ‘The Effects of Seniority Reform on Three House Committees in the 94th Congress’Google Scholar, in Rieselbach, , ed., Legislative ReformGoogle Scholar;, and Rieselbach, Leroy N. and Unekis, Joseph K., ‘Ousting the Oligarchs: Assessing the Consequences of Reform and Change on Four House Committees’, Congress and The Presidency, IX (1981–1982), 83–118.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 Hinckley, , The Seniority System in Congress, p. 3.Google Scholar

16 Keefe, William J., Congress and the American People, (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1980), p. 78.Google Scholar

17 See (just to name a few of the many good studies in this area) Truman, David B., The Congressional Party, (New York: John Wiley, 1959)Google Scholar; Mayhew, David R., Party Loyalty Among Congressmen, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Turner, Julius and Schneider, Edward V. Jr, Party and Constituency Pressures on Congress, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1970)Google Scholar; Brady, David W., Congressional Voting in a Partisan Era, (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1973)Google Scholar; and Alford, John R., ‘Party Strength in the Electorate and Congress’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Iowa, 1981).Google Scholar

18 See especially Fenno, , Congressmen in CommitteesGoogle Scholar;, Rohde, David W. and Shepsle, Kenneth A., ‘Democratic Committee Assignments in the House of Representatives’, American Political Science Review, LXVII (1973), 889–905CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mayhew, David R., Congress: The Electoral Connection, (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1974)Google Scholar; and Jones, and Woll, , The Private World of CongressGoogle Scholar. For a good review and synthesis of this stream of research, see Sinclair, Barbara, ‘Purposive Behavior in the U.S. Congress: A Review Essay’, Legislative Studies Quarterly, VIII (1983), 117–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 See Ornstein, and Rohde, , ‘Political Parties and Congressional Reform’, pp. 290–1.Google Scholar

20 See Alford, , ‘Party Strength’, pp. 55–85Google Scholar, for a good discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of several alternative measures.

21 We only included standing committees that existed as standing committees for the entirety of our study. Committees, such as the House Budget Committee, that existed for only part of the time period were excluded. We did, however, make two excpetions to this rule. The Standards of Official Conduct (Ethics) Committee was not included due to its unique and non-legislative mission and due to the fact that it is one committee most members do not, want to chair. The Small Business Committee was included even though early in our time period it was a select committee. It was included because of its power and because of the membership stability that accompanied the shift in status from select to standing committee. We are left with twenty usable committees.

22 See Asher, Herbert B. and Weisberg, Herbert F., ‘Voting Change in Congress: Some Dynamic Perspectives on an Evolutionary Process’, American Journal of Political Science, XXII (1978), 391–425.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 The appropriate test for the significance level of the difference between two regression coefficients is described in Pedhazur, Elazar J., Multiple Regression in Behavioral Research, (New York: Holt, Reinhart, Winston, 1982).Google Scholar

24 Pedhazur, , Multiple Regression, p. 438.Google Scholar

25 The only problem with this test is that including an interactive term creates a substantial multicollinearity problem, as is often the case when an interactive term and the variables from which it was computed are entered as independent variables in the same equation. One solution to this problem is to test for the significance of the increment to R 2 gained by adding the interactive term to the equation after the time variable and the group variable have already been entered. This test is attractive because it is an extremely conservative test of the explanatory power of the interactive term. All variance shared with the first two variables is attributed to these variables and not the interactive variable. If the interactive term is statistically significant under these circumstances, there would be little doubt about the difference in slopes. The formula for computing the significance of an increment to R 2 is presented in Pedhazur, , Multiple Regression, pp. 463–6Google Scholar. When applied to our data, the F test of the increment to R 2 generated by the interactive term is 4·01, which is significant at the 0·05 level. That the finding withstands this very conservative test is quite encouraging.

26 See Hinckley, , ‘Seniority 1975’.Google Scholar

27 We ran the analysis with only committee bridesmaids in the experimental group and with committee chairs completely removed. The slope for the experimental group was still steeper than the control group's slope but, as expected, was not nearly as steep as the slope for committee chairs.

28 We pursued one other variant on the basic model. Given the substantial increase in the autonomy and power of the House subcommittees in the last ten to fifteen years, it may be that the party support scores of subcommittee as well as committee chairmen increased in light of changes in the seniority system. Testing this notion was fairly simple. We just restructured the composition of the experimental group once again. Instead of only committee chairmen, we include the chairmen of committees and, all standing subcommittees. This redefinition swells the numbers of the experimental group markedly – a tribute to the large number of subcommittees in the modern House. The average number of members in the experimental group (in other words, the average number of Democrats who chaired either a committee or subcommittee) over the twelve-year period is 119·2, nearly as many as the 129·7 Democrats who are in the control group, on average. Did the party support of this group go up at a faster rate than the party support scores of all Democrats who were not committee and subcommittee chairmen? Yes, but only by a very slim margin. The regression coefficients indicate that each congress brought, on average, a 2·11 percentage point increase in party support among committee and subcommittee chairmen, but an even smaller 0·51 percentage point increase among all other Democrats. The difference is in the direction we expected, but it is quite small.

We also analysed the behaviour of a special set of subcommittee chairmen – those chairing Appropriations Committee subcommittees – since these individuals are subject to a full caucus vote every two years. We found that, for the most part, chairmen of Appropriations subcommittees did not act very differently across this time (as far as extra boosts in party voting) to other subcommittees' chairmen.

29 See Dodd, and Oppenheimer, , ‘The House in Transition: Change and Consolidation’Google Scholar and Hibbing, John R., ‘Voluntary Retirement from the U.S. House of Representatives: Who Quits?’, American Journal of Political Science, XXVI (1982), 412–36.Google Scholar

30 We defined the South as including the following states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.

31 See Keefe, , Congress and the American People, p. 76Google Scholar; also see Ornstein, Norman J. and Rohde, David W., ‘Seniority and Future Power in Congress’Google Scholar, in Ornstein, , ed., Congress in Change: Evolution and ReformGoogle Scholar;, and Wolfinger, Raymond A. and Hollinger, Joan Heifetz, ‘Safe Seats, Seniority and Power in Congress’, American Political Science Review, LIX (1965), 337–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 The F-test for the interactive term does not meet traditional tests of significance when the analysis is confined to the South (F = 2·79) but does when the analysis is restricted to non-Southern regions of the country (F =5·34). This last finding, as much as anything, casts serious doubt on the ‘regional shift’ explanation.

33 In the 90th to 94th Congresses, Southern representatives chaired at least nine of the twenty committees, but in the 95th (1977–78) Southerners held only five chairmanships, and they were not able to increase that number in the 96th Congress. Obviously this shift came well after the trend toward higher party support scores for committee chairmen was under way.

34 It has been suggested to us that our hypothesis really anticipates a large change in party support scores immediately after the reforms in 1971 and then a levelling off in subsequent congresses. This would be in contrast to the gradual increase in party support among chairmen we have documented in this study. The sudden change hypothesis, however, ignores the fact that the reforms were not sudden. As our account of the history of the seniority reforms should make evident to any careful reader, the initial (1971) reforms were modest and tentative and were strengthened over the ensuing five or six years. Doubtless there were some chairmen in 1971 who very much doubted the changes would ever lead to outright violations of the seniority system. The gradual realization on the part of various chairmen of the seriousness of the changes should have given rise to gradual improvements in their party support scores, not some unusually abrupt deviation from previous behaviour. A more valid point pertains to the decline in party support among chairmen that occurred between the 96th Congress (1979–80) and the 97th Congress (1981–82). Although it is too early to draw firm conclusions, it is certainly possible that failure to remove a senior full committee chairman over the course of eight years (1975 to 1983) could embolden some chairmen, thereby producing a decline in party support among committee chairmen. Perhaps the fear the reforms instilled in some chairmen is beginning to lessen. Such thoughts, however, await the test of time.

35 Congressional Quarterly, Inside Congress, 2nd edn (Washington, D.C: Congressional Quarterly, 1979), p. 35Google Scholar, quoting Representative Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash).

36 None of what we have said here should be taken to mean party cohesion in Congress has undergone a major transformation. After all, the group registering major change in party support levels is quite small (approximately eighteen to twenty). For the vast majority of Democrats, party support over the fifteen-year period we analysed did not go up or down.

37 See American Political Science Association, ‘Toward A More Responsible Two-Party System’, American Political Science Review, XLIV (1950)Google Scholar; also see Rieselbach, , Congressional Reform in the Seventies, pp. 70–1.Google Scholar