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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 December 2008
Scott James is gutsy to attempt a refutation of the power of district-level constituency interests on regulatory policy voting in an arena like railroad policy. I believe that his case is weak, but I want to emphasize that party and district political economy interests are intimately interrelated. Party is, as the author argues, a powerful (the most powerful) coalitional mechanism. Representatives often support positions that represent the preferences of party colleagues and not their own, in order to win or maintain political control and support for critical policies, so long as those “vote trading” issues do not represent central concerns at home. Thus southern agrarians included important labor provisions in the 1914 Clayton Antitrust Act in order to get the support of Northern Democrats who had already loyally backed the (agrarian) Democratic position on the tariff bill of 1913. On such a vote, representing an intraparty, biregional coalition bargain, party will naturally “predict” voting positions better than region. But the legislative history leaves little doubt from whence each policy (labor, tariff, and antitrust) originated.
1. My own work used “trade areas” to define economic regions.
2. On the final 1913 House vote to repair the railroad regulatory net, 23 Northeast-Great Lakes Metropolitan Democrats dutifully followed the party line set by 105 agrarian Democratic railroad antagonists; but twice as many of the former abstained rather than back the “strong regulation” position.
3. Merrill, Horace S., Bourbon Leader: Grover Cleveland (Boston: Little Brown, 1957), p. 141Google Scholar; Link, Arthur, Wilson, V: Campaigns for Progressivism and Peace (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), pp. 39–48, pp. 108–109Google Scholar.
4. Merrill, ibid, pp. 124–33.
5. The enduring regional interests in railroad regulation may also be seen in their Civil War connections. Not only was John Reagan the former postmaster general of the Confederacy (in which role he subjected railroad operations to the interests of the Confederate state) but the 52 Confederate Veterans serving in the House voted unanimously for his bill in 1886. Union veterans opposed it by two to one, the bulk of the defectors coming from the midwest (16) and Pennsylvania (3). Bensel, Richard F., Yankee Leviathan, (NY: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 16Google Scholar.