Careerism, Committee Assignments, and the Electoral Connection

Abstract

A fost scholars agree that members of Congress are strongly motivated by their desire for reelection. This assumption implies that members of Congress adopt institutions, rules, and norms of behavior in part 1LYE. to serve their electoral interests. Direct tests of the electoral connection are rare, however, because significant, exogenous changes in the electoral environment are difficult to identify. We develop and test an electoral rationale for the norm of committee assignment "property rights." We examine committee tenure patterns before and after a major, exogenous change in the electoral system-the states' rapid adoption of Australian ballot laws in the early 1890s. The ballot changes, we argue, induced new "personal vote" electoral incentives, which contributed to the adoption of "modem" congressional institutions such as property rights to committee assignments. We demonstrate a marked increase in assignment stability after 1892, by which time a majority of states had put the new ballot laws into force, and earlier than previous studies have suggested.A common theme in research on congressional institutions is that members of Congress adopt institutions and rules that serve their desire for reelection. Important structural features of the committee system, for example, should be explicable in terms of their effects on reelection efforts. Often criticized, this Mayhewian reelection incentive premise is itself almost never put to the test, for the simple reason that significant changes in American electoral institutions have been quite rare.We shall develop and test an explicit, electoral explanation for one of the key features of the modern House committee system-the norm of reappointing incumbent members of Congress to their same committee assignments at the start of each Congress. We argue that this so-called property right norm of reappointment reflects personalistic reelection incentives arising from the single-member district, secret ballot electoral system used in U.S. states.The states' conversion from party-strip balloting to Australian (secret) ballots in the 1890s profoundly altered the electoral environment faced by incumbent members of Congress. The secret ballot allows voters to reward or punish each of their elected representatives (local, state, and national, all of whom might appear on the same ballot) individually. These reforms, we argue, made credit-claiming and other personal vote activities by members of Congress significantly more important for reelection, even at the very height of "strong party government" in the United States (Brady 1973).The changes in balloting, therefore, were a key pre- cursor to House adoption of a host of "modern" practices with important credit-claiming effects, from the reappointment norm to the expansion of professional staffs. Secure committee tenure allowed incumbent members of Congress to develop "careerist" patterns of behavior in the House (Price 1977)-including committee-related policy expertise-that provided fuel for increased legislative activity ...

Hitching a ride: omnibus legislating in the U.S. Congress

“…In contrast, recent studies of legislative development tend to eschew the organizational/informational approach based on collective institutional concerns and instead envision changes in procedures more as pure polit ical struggles (Binder 1996(Binder , 1997Binder and Smith 1997;Dion 1997;Gamm and Shepsle 1989;Katz and Sala 1996;Schickler 1998;Stewart 1989). 8 "Rational decision-making by institutional actors is of paramount importance, as the structure of institutions and the types of institutional change undertaken are means by which actors achieve particular ends" (Jenkins 1998,494).…”

“…The last few decades are an "on-again" period, beginning with Polsby s (1968) study of the institutionalization of the House and including many other scholarly works on the topic (Baumgartner, Jones, and MacLeod 2000;Binder 1997;Binder and Smith 1995;Binder, Smith, and Lawrence 1997;Dion 1997;Dodd 1997;Gamm and Shepsle 1989;B.Jones, Baumgartner, and Talbert 1993;Katz and Sala 1996;King 1997;Sinclair 1997;Wright 1997). However, studies of institutions are still scarce in comparison to the vol umes of research on individual member behavior.…”

“…When explanation has been attempted, it has often been in the form of anecdotal discussion rather than generalizable evidence. Despite this state of affairs, explanations of institutional change have developed, and several recent works have begun to systematically link explanations with changes (Baumgartner, Jones, and MacLeod 2000;Binder 1997;Binder, Smith, and Lawrence 1997;Hibbing 1988;Katz and Sala 1996;King 1997).…”

“…One of these approaches-the organizational theory of institutional change-holds that changes result from macro-level strains on the institution that require an adaptive response for the good of the institution to make it more efficient Polsby 1968). A second school of thought-the purposive theory of institutional change-posits that institutional changes are the result of short-term actions of purposive and goal-oriented individuals (Binder 1997;Binder and Smith 1997;Gamm and Shepsle 1989;Katz and Sala 1996;Mayhew 1974;Stewart 1989). In one approach, environmental factors lead to change based on institutional concerns.…”

“…[Institutions] are chosen by individuals to accomplish par ticular purposes" (Gamm and Shepsle 1989, 40). Purposive explanations are of two varieties: (1) pertaining to the politics of partisan advantage (e.g., Binder 1997) and (2) pertaining to the reelection motivation in the distrib utive tradition (Katz and Sala 1996;Mayhew 1974;Stewart 1989). 4 Partisan Theories.…”