The Analysis of Committee Power: An Application to Senate Voting on the Minimum Wage

Krehbiel, Keith; Rivers, Douglas

doi:10.2307/2111204

Cited by 93 publications

(45 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…In a few instances, scholars have used votes on bills and amendments arrayed on a dollar metric to estimate ideal points and place them on a substantively meaningful scale. Krehbiel and Rivers (1988) estimated an ordered probit model on minimum wage votes in the Senate to infer senators' ideal points on a dollar scale. Bartels (1991) likewise estimated an ordered probit model on defense appropriations votes in the House to obtain House members' ideal points on defense spending, measured in dollars.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Who Wins? Party Effects in Legislative Voting

Lawrence

Maltzman

Smith³

2006

Legislative Studies Qtrly

117

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Political scientists have long attempted to measure and describe the modest and contingent effects of party on the behavior of members of Congress. Recent efforts have extended the debate to the more specific question of whether or not party influences are sufficiently strong to move policy outcomes away from the median position. In this article, we specify four theories of legislative behavior. One is a preference‐based, or partyless, theory of behavior. This theory posits that there are no party effects independent of preferences and that equilibrium outcomes are located at the chamber's median. The other theories rely on different conceptions of the foundations of party effects and yield distinctive predictions about the legislators who will support bills on final passage votes. After testing, our conclusion is that strong party influences can be found in final passage voting in the House: the partyless theory receives little support, but a model based on majority party agenda control works well. Legislative outcomes are routinely on the majority party's side of the chamber median.

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Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Who Wins? Party Effects in Legislative Voting

Lawrence

Maltzman

Smith³

2006

Legislative Studies Qtrly

117

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“…Davidson (1981), too, notes several exceptions to his generalization. Finally, the empirical results of Cook (1983), Fowler, Douglass, andClark (1980) and Rivers and I (Krehbiel and Rivers 1988) raise deeper questions about whether assignment patterns are as important for legislators' electoral success and for committee power as much of the literature seems to presume. At the very least, a new empirical assessment seems worthwhile.…”

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confidence: 99%

Are Congressional Committees Composed of Preference Outliers?

1990

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diverse set of congressional studies portrays members of standing committees as more or less homogeneous "high demanders" or "preference outliers" relative to members of the larger legislature. Using interest group ratings of members of the Ninety-sixth to Ninety-ninth Congresses, I conduct conventional statistical hypothesis tests to discern whether standing committees are more extreme and more homogeneous than the legislature as a whole. With only a few exceptions, the tests do not allow confident rejection of null hypotheses of identical committee and chamber preferences. The absence of convincing evidence of preference outliers is broadly consistent with emerging incomplete information game-theoretic legislative research and difficult to reconcile with many previous formal theories of legislative politics.

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“…On the other hand, because party discipline is not as strict as Japan in the American Congress, legislators' voting has been fully and deeply examined in the US Congress studies, which has produced new and distinguished theories and analytical methods in political science. 15 As Bender and Lott (1996) argue, a majority of existing studies indicate that legislators present their constituents' interests for their reelection on each roll call (for example, Bloch, 1980;Ferejohn, 1986;Gilligan et al, 1989;Kalt and Zupan, 1984;Kau and Rubin, 1978;Krehbiel and Rivers, 1988;Peltman, 1984Peltman, , 1985Silberman and Durden, 1976), while few reveal that legislators deviate from their constituents' interests for their personal ideology (Kalt and Zupan, 1984;Kau and Rubin, 1979;Poole and Rosenthal, 1997: chapter 6). 15 Similarly, I analyze legislators' voting on the postal privatization bills of 2005 on the assumption that legislators' voting is a 14 Contrary to former commonly accepted theories that parties do not affect members' voting, it is observed that party leadership has become active and there has been a correlation between party affiliation and voting behavior of legislators since the 1980s.…”

Section: Hypotheses: Reasons For the Rebellionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Power Relationship between the Prime Minister and Ruling Party Legislators: The Postal Service Privatization Act of 2005 in Japan

Fujimura¹

2007

Jap Jnl of Pol Sci

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This article examines the power relationship between the prime minister and ruling party legislators. I theoretically explore the power relationship between the prime minister and ruling party legislators, and examine legislators' parliamentary voting, focusing on the political process of postal service privatization of 2005. This analysis presents three arguments. First, theoretically, when the prime minister attempts to achieve a project, risking his or her job, he or she can firmly control ruling party legislators. Second, empirically, the anti-Koizumi legislators' rebellion was based on their unfounded assumption about the prime minister's behavior or ultimate outcomes. Third, the anti-Koizumi legislators' electoral incentives to secure their reelection and ruling incentives to weaken or overthrow the Koizumi Cabinet drove them to rebel against the prime minister in the Lower House, while the ruling incentives alone caused the rebellion in the Upper House.I would like to thank Michael D. Folland, Hideki Kido, Jung A Kim, Akitaka Matsuo, Etsuhira Nakamura, Robert Pekkanen, Jan Reinsch, and three anonymous referees far their helpful comments on this paper. 233 the postal service privatization act of 2005 235reforms, such as reducing the size of government and cutting government expenditures. Also, he further reinforced party leadership by decreasing the influence of factions or zoku legislators. This article has three purposes. First, I discuss the structural power relationship between the prime minister and ruling party legislators. The Japanese prime minister has strong formal authority. In particular, the prime minister can dissolve the Lower House and, as the president of the ruling party, expel hostile party legislators on his or her own. Yet, earlier prime ministers have not exercised this right. Koizumi was the first prime minister to attempt to wield this authority. At the same time, under the parliamentary cabinet system, the Cabinet is built upon the confidence of the Diet. The Cabinet is dependent on support from a ruling party (or ruling parties) holding a majority of seats in the Diet. Therefore, the prime minister needs support from ruling party legislators in order to maintain his or her government and pass bills. When the prime minister and ruling party legislators conflict with one another, how do both sides attempt to control each other? What outcomes does their conflict eventually cause? By analyzing the power relationship theoretically and building its model, I aim to establish a general theory on the power relationship between the prime minister and ruling party legislators. Second, I examine the expectation and strategy of both Prime Minister Koizumi and the LDP legislators in the process. What result did both sides expect and desire? How did both sides try to control each other? How did they predict opponent strategy and behavior? Third, I explore the motives of the legislators who voted against or abstained on the postal privatization bills. I can point out several possible reasons that ...

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The Analysis of Committee Power: An Application to Senate Voting on the Minimum Wage

Cited by 93 publications

References 29 publications

Who Wins? Party Effects in Legislative Voting

Who Wins? Party Effects in Legislative Voting

Are Congressional Committees Composed of Preference Outliers?

The Power Relationship between the Prime Minister and Ruling Party Legislators: The Postal Service Privatization Act of 2005 in Japan

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