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Distributive theory is perhaps the dominant paradigm for understanding committee organization and behavior in Congress. Central to distributive theory is the assertion that members will self-select to committees based on constituency related concerns; however, few studies have tested this assumption and those that have focus primarily on the behavior of House Democrats. We use committee request data from both Democratic and Republican members, combined with district-level census data, to determine whether committee requests are empirically related to district-level characteristics. Our findings suggest mixed support for the self-selection hypothesis. While there is some support for the self-selection hypothesis, members’ requests for committee assignments often are not related to district-level characteristics. In addition, we examine the degree to which the party committees-on-committees accommodate requests, finding that the degree of accommodation has been overestimated by previous studies.

In the aftermath of the polarization that has taken hold in Congress, some have pointed to the changing social connectedness of Congressional members as a possible cause, effect, or both. In this article, we take an initial look at this element of the story by analyzing one aspect of change over time in what are known as CODELs. We outline our data collection of these foreign trips taken by House members in two distinct periods and show how the use, users, and locations of these trips have changed. Among other changes, we find that more members are traveling than in the past, but that these trips are on average much shorter in duration. As a result, members of Congress are spending less time together during foreign travel, potentially reducing the opportunities for building relationships among them.

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