The 1896 Election and Congressional Modernization: An Appraisal of the Evidence

Budgor, Joel; Capell, Elizabeth A.; Flanders, David A.; Polsby, Nelson W.; Westlye, Mark C.; Zaller, John

doi:10.1017/s0145553200014826

Cited by 5 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…We are not the first to critique the behavioral implications of the mid-1890s realignment. Indeed, Polsby's own work includes one effort to reject the supposed realignment as a causal factor in the 1910 revolt against Speaker Cannon (Budgor et al 1981). Some scholars go so far as to reject the realignment label altogether for the 1890s, at least as far as observable behaviors in Congress are concerned (see, e.g., Poole and Rosenthal 1993).…”

Section: Institutionalization and Realignment: Alternative Explanatiomentioning

confidence: 99%

Careerism, Committee Assignments, and the Electoral Connection

1996

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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 ...

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Section: Institutionalization and Realignment: Alternative Explanatiomentioning

confidence: 99%

Careerism, Committee Assignments, and the Electoral Connection

1996

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“…The Bugdor et al (1981) study does speak to the safe seats hypothesis, finding little evidence that the 1896 election created new safe seats. 4 Aldrich and Rohde (2001) argue that party homogeneity and polarization ultimately depend on constituency-level cleavages.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…Several scholars have argued that the election also played a pivotal role in congressional history. H. Douglas Price (1975) hypothesizes that the 1896 election helped foster the seniority system by creating numerous new ''safe seats'' from which members could build careers in Congress (see Bugdor et al 1981 for an opposing view). This was, according to Price, a necessary condition for congressional modernization.…”

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confidence: 99%

Constituency Cleavages and Congressional Parties

Jenkins¹,

Schickler²,

Carson³

2004

Social Science History

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We analyze the constituency bases of the congressional parties from 1857 through 1913 by focusing on two key concepts: party homogeneity and party polarization. With a few notable exceptions, prior efforts to assess these concepts have relied upon measures based on members’ roll call votes. This is potentially problematic, as such measures are likely endogenous: They reflect the party’s actual level of success as much as the party’s underlying homogeneity. To address this problem, we construct measures for party homogeneity and polarization that are based on constituency characteristics, using economic-based census data and presidential voting data as proxies. We then examine how these “exogenous” measures compare to roll call-based measures. We find that changes in party unity on roll call votes track shifts in constituency characteristics fairly closely. Substantively, we find that the congressional parties went through three distinct phases during these 56 years: first, a period of extremely high overlap and low party homogeneity during the Civil War and Reconstruction, followed by a period of moderate polarization and homogeneity from the mid-1870s through the early 1890s, and concluding with a period of sharp polarization and high homogeneity, which coincided with the realignment of 1894–96. While the status of the 1894–96 elections as a critical turning point remains controversial in the historical and political science literatures, our results suggest that these elections did lead to a substantial change in the underlying characteristics of the congressional parties.

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“…13 Although certainly not as committed to modernization theory as the text might suggest, the two most important works in this vein are Polsby 1968;Polsby et al 1969. See also Price 1971;Swenson 1982;Budgor et al 1981;Price 1977;and Bogue et al 1976. 14 Perhaps the archetypal reform, from the modernization perspective, was the 1946…”

Section: Of Rules and Speakers 363mentioning

confidence: 99%

Of Rules and Speakers

Bensel¹

2000

Social Science History

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The study of the institutional development of the U.S. House of Representatives, long a mainstay of traditional scholarship, has recently undergone a revival with the rise of rational choice approaches of interpretation. In earlier years, most research was highly formal and descriptive; the emphasis was on legislative offices and parliamentary rules. While scholars noted changes in the formal structure of the House of Representatives, their descriptions of these changes consisted mostly of anecdotal accounts in which theoretical explanations played little part. More recently, many scholars have defined institutions primarily or even solely in terms of procedural rules and, from that perspective, have focused on organizational form as an important factor in the empowerment of legislative coalitions and the expression of member preferences. However, because rules are frequently viewed as a rigid structural setting for legislative behavior, institutional change has often been downplayed as outside the scope of most research.

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The 1896 Election and Congressional Modernization: An Appraisal of the Evidence

Cited by 5 publications

References 10 publications

Careerism, Committee Assignments, and the Electoral Connection

Careerism, Committee Assignments, and the Electoral Connection

Constituency Cleavages and Congressional Parties

Of Rules and Speakers

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