Gregory R. Thorson

Divided Government and the Passage of Partisan Legislation, 1947-1990:

Recent literature has provided some evidence that the presence of di vided government does not affect the amount of significant legislation passed by Congress and enacted into law (Mayhew 1991). In this article, I argue that although there may not be a difference in the absolute num ber of bills passed during unified and divided periods, there nevertheless may be an important difference in the formation of coalitions1 during divided and unified periods. Specifically, I argue that party unity votes that favor the dominant party 2 are more likely to form on final votes of passage during periods of unified government. I use regression analysis and probit analysis to determine if there is empirical support for this hypothesized difference in coalition formation. I find that the presence of unified government significantly increases the likelihood that a bill will pass through Congress with a party unity vote favoring the dominant party The estimates are statistically significant for both the House and the Senate.

Anti-Incumbency and the 1992 Elections: The Changing Face of Presidential Coattails

In its strictest sense, a coattail is the effect that one race has on a separate yet simultaneous race. Traditionally, the assumption is that mobilization coattails consist of two stages, mobilization and partisan voting. In this research, we examine the combination of mobilization with incumbency/anti-incumbent voting. We combine these to develop a nonpartisan, mobilization coattail model that we use to examine the 1992 elections. We then conclude that the mobilization effects of Ross Perot benefitted U.S. House challengers.

Rule Assignment in the Postreform House: A Test of Three Competing Theories of Legislative Organization

Each of the three major sets of competing theories of congressional organization makes different predictions about the behavior of the House Rules Committee. Several studies have examined which theory best explains the special rule assignments made by the House Rules Committee during the postreform period (Dion and Huber f996; Krehbiel 1997; Sinclair 1994). Each of these political scientists reaches different conclusions. As a result, we have a confused picture of how best to understand the behavior of the House Rules Committee. We argue that the lack of clarity in the literature is largely a byproduct of poor model specification. Our research extends the time period under consideration, introduces several models that we believe more accurately assess the predictions derived from partisan models of organization, and makes significant improvements to earlier indicators used in the literature. Our multivariate analysis includes variables from all of the prominent models of congressional organization. In our examination of bills voted out of committee with a roll call vote from 1981-94 and assigned a special rule by the House Rules Committee, we find that restrictive rules are more likely to be assigned to bills reported to the House by a committee with a party unity vote. Indicators derived from other models of congressional organization largely fail to achieve statistical significance.

Legislative Learning: The 104th Republican Freshmen in the House By Timothy J. Barnett. New York: Garland, 1998. 333p.

The 1994 elections were watershed elections in several respects. Perhaps most significantly, the Republicans gained control of both chambers of Congress for the first time since 1953. In the process, the 1994 elections also swept into office a large, relatively homogeneous group of 73 House Republican freshmen determined to change the political system. With size comes an opportunity for power in Congress, and the 73 Republican freshmen elected in 1994 were determined to exert considerable influence over the legislative process. Not since the 1974 elections produced the 76 freshmen Democrats (i.e., the Watergate Babies) have political scientists focused so much attention on a single class of legislators. Timothy Barnetts Legislative Learning is a nice complement to similar books already written about this interesting group of legislators, including Richard Fenno and Michael Armacosts Learning to Govern: An Institutional View of the 104th Congress (1997) and Nicol Raes Conservative Reformers: The Republican Freshmen and the Lessons of the 104th Congress (1998).