The Keys to Legislative Success in the U.S. House of Representatives

Anderson, William D.; Box‐Steffensmeier, Janet M.; Sinclair-Chapman, Valeria

doi:10.3162/036298003x200926

Cited by 177 publications

(161 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…Hence, a necessary condition for a bill's success (at any stage) is that it must first be considered. A significant factor that affects a bill's consideration is whether its sponsor holds institutional positions that provide influence over the legislative process (Anderson, Box-Steffensmeier, and Sinclair-Chapman 2003;Evans 1991;Hall 1996). A legislator's position within the hierarchy can be referred to as an agenda position, which should reflect a legislator's ex ante probability of obtaining a bill's consideration.…”

Section: Goals Agenda Positions Andmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Related research has also examined how much effort or participation is devoted to legislative entrepreneurship (Bratton and Haynie 1999;Matthews 1960;Schiller 1995;Sinclair 1989;Walker 1977;Wawro 2000) but not how that effort is spent on shaping proposals. Similarly, previous research studies how bill content or sponsor characteristics affect legislative success (Ainsworth and Hanson 1996;Anderson, Box-Steffensmeier, and Sinclair-Chapman 2003;Frantzich 1979;Krutz 2005; Moore and Thomas 1990) but does not take the next step to examine how bill content was chosen in the first place.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Bill Sponsorship in Congress: The Moderating Effect of Agenda Positions on Legislative Proposals

Woon

2008

The Journal of Politics

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Positions of influence over the legislative agenda provide greater opportunities for shaping policy outcomes. Do legislators take advantage of this? If they do, when the median is pivotal and legislators' goals reflect both position taking and policy seeking, greater influence over the agenda leads legislators to moderate their bills relative to legislators with lower agenda priority. Analysis of a formal game theoretic model provides rigorous justification for the proposition, and empirical analysis of House and Senate bills from the 101st to 108th Congresses using cosponsorship data to measure the ideological locations of bills largely supports it. Committee leadership and majority party status have moderating effects while the effect of committee membership is slight. The analysis also tentatively supports the pivotalness of the median over other alternatives. Contrary to the view that bill sponsorship is mere position taking, legislative organization significantly shapes early-stage legislative behavior. Specifically, greater legislative influence implies greater responsiveness to the median legislator.

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Section: Goals Agenda Positions Andmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Bill Sponsorship in Congress: The Moderating Effect of Agenda Positions on Legislative Proposals

Woon

2008

The Journal of Politics

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“…Membership in the majority party is the dominant explanation for legislative effectiveness (Frantzich, 1979;Meyer, 1980;Moore & Thomas, 1991;Weissert, 1991;Aldrich, 1995;Cox & Magar, 1999;Krehbiel, 1999;Anderson, Box-Steffensmeier, & Sinclair-Chapman, 2003;Miquel & Snyder, 2006;Hasecke & Mycoff, 2007;Cox & Terry, 2008). The power of the coalition legislators or majority party legislators allows them to cooperate with other legislators across affiliations, especially because they have the power to pass legislation.…”

Section: Coalition/opposition Membershipmentioning

confidence: 99%

Legislators' Patterns of Cooperation

Akirav¹

2017

IJSSS

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This study attempts to identify the patterns of cooperation between legislators. We argue that if legislators decide to cooperate, they prefer to do so first with their colleagues who share similar affiliations and then across affiliations. In order to examine this hypothesis, we devised a unique cooperation scale and tested it using a sample of the private member bills that were initiated in the 18 th Knesset (Israel's parliament) between 2009 and 2013. We then looked at each bill with regard to its initiators and co-sponsors to see if they were members of the same party, members of the opposition or coalition, or members of a minority group. Based on the quantitative analysis, we found that of all of the factors, only being a minority was significant. Based on the qualitative analysis, we determined that intra-party cooperation does exist. In three parties -Hadash, Meretz and Israel Beitenu --legislators tended to cooperate with each other. Finally, with regard to inter-party cooperation, Jewish and Arab MKs tended to cooperate, and Russian Jewish legislators tended to cooperate regardless of party affiliation. Our study is innovative in its creation of a cooperation scale that can be used in other legislatures and that is based on measures of co-sponsorship instead of analyses of dyadic or social networks used in previous studies.

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“…I also control for majority party status, which is a 11 dichotomous indicator, given the gatekeeping policy power retained by the majority party (Cox and McCubbins 2005). Additional controls include a legislator's seniority, which is continuous, given the effects of seniority on success (Anderson, Box-Steffensmeier and Sinclair-Chapman 2003), and also a legislator's ability to move legislation through the process, measured using Volden and Wiseman's (2014) legislative effectiveness scores. The quality of a legislator, captured in this measure, could certainly influence their propensity to sponsor legislation.…”

Section: Methods and Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring Responsiveness in the U.S. House of Representatives

Waggoner

2018

ARP

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Legislators are elected to be the voice of their constituents in government. Implicit in this electoral connection is the responsiveness of legislators to the preferences of constituents. Many past approaches only examine successful legislative behavior blessed by the majority party, not all legislative behavior, thereby limiting inference generalizability. I seek to overcome this limitation by considering bill sponsorship as an outlet in which all members are free to engage. Testing expectations on bill sponsorship in the 109th and 110th Congresses, I ﬁnd that legislators are responsive, though only on “safely-owned” issues. I compare these ﬁndings to roll call voting on the same issues in the same Congresses and ﬁnd a diﬀerent pattern, suggesting legislators leverage bill sponsorship diﬀerently than roll call voting as they signal legislative priorities.

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The Keys to Legislative Success in the U.S. House of Representatives

Cited by 177 publications

References 38 publications

Bill Sponsorship in Congress: The Moderating Effect of Agenda Positions on Legislative Proposals

Bill Sponsorship in Congress: The Moderating Effect of Agenda Positions on Legislative Proposals

Legislators' Patterns of Cooperation

Exploring Responsiveness in the U.S. House of Representatives

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