Date of Award

7-25-2023

Author's School

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Author's Department

Political Science

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Degree Type

Dissertation

Abstract

This dissertation explores the transformation of Congressional politics away from traditional practices and the consequences of those changes. In the House of Representatives, I consider this with respect to the party and chamber rule changes introduced by the new Republican majority after the 1994 election, while in the Senate I use the lens of paired voting to evaluate how the Senate has evolved. The first chapter discusses the literature on party government and theorizes how parties have used committees to achieve their goals. Chapters 2 and 3 center how Speaker Newt Gingrich used rule changes to alter the relationship between parties and committees, as well as the consequences of those changes. Specifically, I theorize that the most consequential rule change regarding the relationship between parties and committees was the reconstitution of the Republican Steering Committee. The Republican Steering Committee was tasked with assigning members to committees and determining which members would receive. Gingrich remade the Steering Committee in a way that massively increased the voting power of the party leadership, with the intent to solidify party control over the committee process. Though not all at once, like the Republicans, the Democrats followed suit by adding party leadership members and appointees to their own steering committee. In the second chapter, I examine the consequences of that change with regard to what members are assigned to committees they ask to be on. Journalistic accounts show that leaders have emphasized loyalty as the main important criteria, however my statistical tests show that party leaders are still focused on accommodating most members most of the time. In the third chapter, I turn to the consequences of steering committee reform for legislative productivity in the House of Representatives. Committee and subcommittee chairs consistently produce the most legislation and laws of any members of Congress, but the degree varies tremendously. I argue that the degree changes based on the body that is charged with selecting committee chairs, and thus how free those chairs feel to push their own legislation. I compare chairs chosen by the seniority system, by the party caucus, and by the steering committee headed by the party leadership. I find that chairs are empowered under the seniority system and in the modern party leadership-led era. In the party era, the leaders are selecting committee chairs based on their congruence with the party leadership’s ideology, and so their legislation is party legislation. This holds for members of both parties. In the fourth chapter, I study the demise of paired voting in the Senate as a consequence of both political and practical changes. I find that paired voting occurred almost entirely within party. When parties became more ideologically homogeneous, there was no longer a reliably a copartisan with whom to pair. At the same time, absence rates were lowered, meaning there were less needs for pairs. In this study I note that while increased polarization and party centralization have been the dominant themes in congressional scholarship, these have happened alongside other changes in Congress and its environment, which must also be considered to fully characterize the evolution of the House and Senate. I conclude the dissertation by noting that the history of Congress is marked by periods of stasis punctuated by massive reforms. My dissertation has aims to consider the modern, partisan era both in terms of how it came about and how it has subsumed traditional practices.

Language

English (en)

Chair and Committee

Steven Smith

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