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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Chris Cox (R-CA) … emphasized the importance of choosing aggressive chairpersons who would heed the Speaker's call: “Here in the house, this is a one man show: Gingrich went around the seniority system to get around people like the ones who are running the Senate. He tapped Livingston and what a difference that has made. If he hadn't done that, we would look just like the Senate…. You don't have to change the head of every committee when you change just a few. Gingrich has given them a renewed sense that chairs serve at the Speaker's pleasure.”
One of the primary building blocks of the committee government model is the idea that members, once appointed to a standing committee, are automatically ensured security of tenure and promotion by seniority. The role of seniority has of course changed considerably in the last generation. In the early postwar House, seniority was the “single automatic criterion for selecting chairmen” of the standing committees (Hinckley 1971, 6). Beginning in the 1970s, however, other criteria – in particular, the preferences of the majority party's caucus – became more salient. Three long-time chairs of the House were deposed by the Democratic Caucus in 1975, and by our count uncompensated violations of committee seniority occurred in six of the seven succeeding Congresses.
In this chapter, we first review the evidence from the early postwar era of the “Rayburn House” (Cooper and Brady 1981) and then turn to more recent developments.
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