Jeffery A. Jenkins

Parties as Procedural Coalitions in Congress: An Examination of Differing Career Tracks

We examine the degree to which parties act as procedural coalitions in Congress by testing predictions from the party cartel theory (Cox and McCubbins 1993, 1994, 2002). We gain leverage on the question of party influence in Congress by focusing on three types of House members: reelection seekers, higher-office seekers, and retiring members. We argue that retiring House members are no longer susceptible to party pressure, making them the perfect means (when compared to higher-office seekers and reelection seekers) to determine the existence of party influence. Results from a pooled, cross-sectional analysis of the 94th through 105th Congresses (1975–98) suggest that party influence is indeed present in Congress, especially where the party cartel theory predicts: on procedural, rather than final-passage, votes. Moreover, we find that procedural party influence is almost exclusively the domain of the majority party. This latter finding is especially important because most prior studies have been limited to investigating interparty influence only.

Partisanship and Contested Election Cases in the House of Representatives, 1789–2002

Article I, Section 5, Clause 1 of the United States Constitution states: “Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns, and Qualifications of its own Members. . . .” With this simple statement, each chamber of Congress is granted complete authority over how its membership will be comprised.1 Thus, when a given election is contested, that is, when there is a dispute over who is the rightful occupant of a given seat after the ballots have been collected and tallied, each chamber acts as the sole arbiter without external constraint.2 This constitutional guarantee was an artifact of English and colonial rule, as fear of executive authority led the House of Commons and nearly every colonial legislature to adopt similar protections.3 In this article, I investigate the procedures and outcomes in contested election cases in one chamber of Congress, the House of Representatives, across time. The subject of contested elections has not received a great deal of scholarly treatment in recent years. While older studies by Henry L. Dawes, C. H. Rammelkamp, De Alva Alexander, and Vincent M. Barnett, Jr. provide excellent historical overviews and valuable contextual accounts, contemporary political scientists have virtually ignored the subject.4 In fact, no published studies focusing exclusively on contested elections have appeared in the post-WW II era to update our collective knowledge.5 Partisanship and Contested Election Cases in the House of Representatives, 1789–2002

Out in the Open: The Emergence of Viva Voce Voting in House Speakership Elections

We examine the internal politics that preceded the House adoption in 1839 of viva voce (voice) voting for Speaker and other House officers. First, we find that the struggles over the rules adoption actually centered on the election of the House Printer. These struggles were tied to attempts by the two major parties to establish effective newspaper networks to assist in national political campaigns. Democrats generally favored public election of House officers, whereas Whigs generally opposed. In the short term, the change to public voting for Speaker and other House officers had the expected effect of instilling greater partisan regularity among House members. As sectional divisions grew in the nation at large, however, the public election of the Speaker made it increasingly difficult for House leaders to forge the transregional coalitions necessary to organize the House.

Partisanship and Contested Election Cases in the Senate, 1789–2002

While the Founding Fathers included a number of checks and balances in the U.S. Constitution as a way of dispersing power across the various branches of the federal government, they made no such allowance regarding the internal makeup of Congress. Specifically, Article I, Section 5, Clause 1 of the Constitution states that “Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns, and Qualifications of its own Members. . . .” This clause, in effect, provides each chamber of Congress with the exclusive authority to determine how its membership will be comprised. Thus, when an election is contested, that is, when a dispute arises regarding who is the rightful occupant of a seat after all votes have been counted and a winner announced, the given chamber operates as the sole arbiter, insulated completely from Executive and Judicial pressures or constraints.

Setting the Agenda: Responsible Party Government in the House of Representatives – By Gary W. Cox and Mathew D. McCubbins

important questions to be tackled by future research. First of all, to what extent and under what circumstances are religiously-based lobbying groups important players in state politics and successful at obtaining their desired legislative outcomes? Each of the essays in the volume takes up this question to one extent or another, and several essays effectively tackle this question by drawing on data that compare the financial wherewithal of religious groups to non-religious political action committees, or by drawing on surveys of state legislators that gauge their impressions of the most effective lobbying groups active in the states. But other essays—no doubt due to the dearth of available data—rely on the leaders of religious interest groups to gauge their own success, or simply equate legislative outcomes with the success or effectiveness (or the failure or ineffectiveness, as the case may be) of groups advocating a position on the issue at hand. Another important question involves religious groups’ role in setting the legislative and political agendas at the state level. While certain essays discuss the proactive agenda-setting efforts of religious groups, others restrict their focus to analyzing the ways in which religious groups are often forced to be reactive in responding to the political agendas that have presumably been set by others. This topic is particularly important and worthy of further investigation in light of the finding reported here that, in many—though not all—cases, religiously-based interest groups do not oppose each other. As den Dulk and Hertzke summarize in the conclusion, “in most cases the work of the ‘social justice’ (religious) coalition does not come into direct conflict with the ‘social regulatory’ (religious) coalition. The liberal coalition’s focus on hunger, nutrition, health care, corrections, welfare, and environment is not opposed by conservative groups, just mostly ignored. The liberal coalition, in turn, does not directly oppose the conservative agenda on abortion and gay marriage” (233). But is this truly a sign of a general lack of conflict between religious groups? Or might there be real conflict among religious interests, albeit restricted to competing to define the political and legislative agenda? In short, this collection of essays makes a significant contribution to the scholarly literature concerned with the role of religion in American politics. It will prove highly useful to scholars of religion and politics, as well as to those concerned with interest group politics more generally.