Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-gtxcr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T09:07:26.804Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Modeling Committee Chair Selection in the U.S. House of Representatives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2008

Damon M. Cann
Damon M. Cann*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of Georgia, 104 Baldwin Hall, Athens, GA 30602-1615, e-mail: dcann@uga.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

For many years, committee chairs have been selected on the basis of seniority. Recent work has suggested that alternative factors, specifically financial support of party goals and party unity, have diminished the importance of seniority in committee chair selection. However, previous work has either failed to quantify these effects or has done so with inappropriate methods. This paper argues for the use of a Bayesian conditional logit estimator to correctly model committee chair selection in the U.S. House of Representatives. Results show a declining commitment to seniority throughout the Republican era and support the importance of fundraising as a determinant of committee chair selection. This paper shows that two other factors, financial support of party goals and party unity, have essentially replaced seniority as the central criteria for selecting committee chairs.

Type
Research Article
Information
Political Analysis , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , Summer 2008 , pp. 274 - 289
Copyright
Copyright © The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Political Methodology 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abram, Michael, and Cooper, Joseph. 1968. The rise of seniority in the House of Representatives. Polity 1: 52–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aldrich, John H. 1995. Why parties? The origin and transformation of party politics in America. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aldrich, John H., and Rohde, David. 1997-1998. Theories of party in the legislature and the transition to Republican rule in the House. Political Science Quarterly 112 (Winter): 541–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alvarez, R. Michael, and Nagler, Jonathan. 1998. When politics and models collide: Estimating models of multi-party elections. American Journal of Political Science 42: 55–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brewer, Paul, and Deering, Christopher. 2005. Interest groups, campaign fundraising, and committee chair selection: House Republicans play “Musical Chairs.” In The interest group connection: Electioneering, lobbying, and policymaking in Washington, eds. Herrnson, Paul S., Shaiko, Ronald G., and Wilcox, Clyde, 141–63. Washington, DC: CQ Press.Google Scholar
Brooks, S. P., and Gelman, Andrew. 1998. Convergence assessment techniques for Markov Chain Monte Carlo. Statistics and Computing 8: 319–35.Google Scholar
Cann, Damon M. 2008. Sharing the wealth: Member contributions and the exchange theory of party influence in the U.S. House of Representatives. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.Google Scholar
Cochran, William G. 1953. Sampling techniques. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Cox, Gary, and McCubbins, Mathew. 1993. Legislative leviathan: Party government in the House. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Cox, Gary, and McCubbins, Mathew. 1997. Toward a theory of legislative rules changes: Assessing Schickler and Rich's evidence. American Journal of Political Science 41: 1376–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cox, Gary, and McCubbins, Mathew. 2005. Setting the agenda: Responsible party government in the U.S. House of Representatives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deering, Christopher, and Wahlbeck, Paul. 2006. Determinants of house committee chair selection: Republicans play musical chairs in the 107th Congress. American Politics Research 34: 223–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Desposato, Scott W. 2005. A model of unordered multiple choice with unobserved choice set selection. Typescript. San Diego, CA: University of California.Google Scholar
Downs, Anthony. 1957. An economic theory of democracy. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Dubin, Jeffrey A., and Rivers, Douglas. 1989. Selection bias in linear regression, logit and probit models. Sociological Methods and Research 18: 360–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fenno, Richard. 1973. Congressmen in committees. Boston, MA: Little and Brown.Google Scholar
Gelman, Andrew, and Rubin, Donald. 1992. Inference from iterative simulation using multiple sequences. Statistical Science 7: 457–511.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geweke, John. 1992. Evaluating the accuracy of sampling-based approaches to the calculation of posterior moments. In Bayesian Statistics 4: Proceedings of the Fourth Valencia International Meeting, eds. Bernardo, Jos-Miguel, Berger, J. O., Dawid, A. P., and Smith, Adrian F. M., 169–93. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Gill, Jeff. 2002. Bayesian methods: A social and behavioral sciences approach. New York: Chapman and Hall/CRC.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greene, William H. 2003. Econometric analysis. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Heberlig, Eric S. 2003. Congressional parties, fundraising, and committee ambition. Political Research Quarterly 56: 151–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heberlig, Eric S., and Larson, Bruce. 2005. Redistributing campaign contributions by members of Congress: The spiraling costs of the permanent campaign. Legislative Studies Quarterly 30: 597–624.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heberlig, Eric S., Hetherington, Marc, and Larson, Bruce. 2006. The price of leadership: Campaign money and the polarization of congressional leadership. Journal of Politics 68: 989–1002.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herrnson, Paul. 2004. Congressional elections: Campaigning at home and in Washington. Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly.Google Scholar
Jackman, Simon. 2000. Estimation and inference via Bayesian simulation: An introduction to Markov Chain Monte Carlo. American Journal of Political Science 44(2): 375–404.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jacobson, Gary C. 2006. The politics of congressional elections, 6th ed. New York: Longman.Google Scholar
Krehbiel, Keith. 2000. Party discipline and measures of partisanship. American Journal of Political Science 44(2): 212–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McFadden, Daniel. 1974. Conditional logit analysis of qualitative choice behavior. In Frontiers in econometrics, ed. Zarembka, P., 105–42. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Polsby, Nelson W., Gallaher, Miriam, and Rundquist, William. 1969. The growth of the seniority system in the U.S. House of Representatives. American Political Science Review 63(3): 787–807.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quinn, Kevin M., Martin, Andrew D., and Whitford, Andrew B. 1999. Voter choice in multi-party democracies: A test of competing theories and models. American Journal of Political Science 43: 1231–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Renka, Russell, and Ponder, Daniel. 2005. Committee seniority violations in the U.S. House. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
Rohde, David W. 1991. Parties and leaders in the postreform House. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sala, Brian R. 2003. Party loyalty and committee leadership in the House 1921-1940. In Party, process, and political change in Congress: New perspectives on the history of Congress, eds. Brady, David W. and McCubbins, Mathew D., 166–94. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Schickler, Eric, and Rich, Andrew. 1997. Controlling the floor: Parties as procedural coalitions in the House. American Journal of Political Science 41: 1340–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schneider, Judy. 2002. House standing committee chairs: Rules governing selection procedures. Congressional Research Service Report for Congress, #RS21165.Google Scholar
Sinclair, Barbara. 1983. Majority leadership in the U.S. House. Baltimore, MA: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Stewart, Charles III, and Woon, Jonathan. 1998. Congressional committee assignments, 103rdto 105th Congresses, 1993-1998: US House. http://web.mit.edu/17.251/www/data_page.html#2 (accessed January 25, 2008).Google Scholar
Western, Bruce, and Jackman, Simon. 1994. Bayesian inference for comparative research. American Political Science Review 88: 412–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilcox, Clyde. 1989. Share the wealth: Contributions by congressional incumbents to the campaigns of other candidates. American Politics Quarterly 17: 386–408.CrossRefGoogle Scholar