House Committees and Leadership: Autonomy versus
Collective Action
By Jared Krejci Mentor: Dr. Joan M. Blauwkamp
Department of Political Science, University of Nebraska at Kearney
ABSTRACT
Old Chairman
New Chairman
Jamie L. Whitten
Committee on Appropriations
Chairman (1992)
William Huston Natcher
Committee on Appropriations
Chairman (1993)
The project seeks to explain how majority parties in the United States House of Representatives
use incentives and punishments to control committees and coax them into producing legislation that
satisfies the majority party’s legislative interests. Principal-agent theory is essential to understanding
the relationship between majority party leadership and the committees that are governed, so broad
applications of principal-agent theory are examined in the literature.
Previous research done by Cox and McCubbins has been some of the most respected in seeking
to describe the relationship between parties and committees, so this project expands on methods
used by Cox and McCubbins and tests their hypotheses of committee control. This project studies
three cases in which committee chairs were removed from power and analyzes the amount of
support the legislation reported from those committees received on the floor in the session before
the chairs were removed.
The analysis supports the ideas of Cox and McCubbins, that the majority party in the House of
Representatives can rationally, effectively manage its committees. The analysis also supports the
idea that political and practical context is essential in understanding why committee chairs are
removed from power.
LITERATURE REVIEW
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Political scientists differ on how important political parties are in the US.
David Mayhew: legislators are “single-minded seekers of reelection” whose only use for their
party is to mobilize voters (Quoted in Masket, 2009, p. 23).
Research by Cox & McCubbins supports the idea that the majority party in the US House of
Representatives is in control of its party members and uses a system of incentives and
punishments to induce House committees to produce legislation that is favorable to the party
as a whole.
Cox & McCubbins describe the relationship between the majority party in the House and the
congressional committees as a principal-agent relationship.
There is a principal-agent problem between House committees and majority party leadership
because the majority party expects committees to produce legislation favorable to the party
but individual legislators within the committees have incentives to pass legislation that satisfies
their personal preferences and their constituents’ preferences.
Loyal party members have more success in getting the majority party leadership to schedule
their bills to receive consideration on the House floor (Hasecket & Mycoff, 2007, p. 615).
Loyal party members receive higher-value committee assignments (Leighton & Lopez, 2002, p.
59).
METHODS
Research Design: Observational small-n design.
Cases: the House Committee on Appropriations in the second session of the 102nd Congress, the
House Committee on Veteran’s Affairs in the second session of the 108th Congress, the House
Committee on Energy and Commerce in the first session of the 110th Congress, and the House
Committee on Energy and Commerce in the second session of the 110th Congress.
Data Source: Library of Congress roll-call vote database.
Variables: Committee support scores for the majority and minority parties. Both variables are
interval/ratio level of measurement.
Measurement of Committee Support: The percentage of times each member of the House of
Representatives voted in favor of committee recommendations on bills reported out of my case
committees. Scores for all noncommitee Democrats and noncommitee Republicans are averaged
together separately to create committee support scores for each party.
DISCUSSION OF RESULTS
Whitten: Data shown in Table 1 support the hypothesis that Whitten was removed primarily for health reasons. Whitten ‘s
committee had 12.1 percent higher support from non-committee Democrats (the majority party) than the average support
received by the Appropriations Committees studied by Cox and McCubbins. Likewise his committee’s support among noncommittee Republicans was 6.5 percent lower than average for Cox and McCubbins’ Appropriations Committee cases. These
data suggest that Whitten’s removal was not performance-based, and media reports give the reason for his removal as
declining health.
Smith: Smith’s case was the only committee studied that received more support from non-committee minority party
members than non-committee majority party members. This supports the idea that Smith was more loyal to his clientele,
veterans, than to his party. Since it could be electorally disastrous for Republicans to cast roll call votes that are perceived to
be against the interest of veterans, a highly supportive group for Republicans, it seems rational for the Republican party to
remove Smith since he was allowing legislation that Republicans didn’t support to reach the floor.
Dingell: In Dingell’s case, I constructed committee support scores for the Energy and Commerce Committee the session after
Dingell was removed from the chairmanship, to compare the scores between the two sessions. While we have no baseline
to show that Dingell was shirking his duties as chairman, Table 2 shows that Henry Waxman referred bills that had .4 percent
more support from non-committee Democrats and 3.9 percent less support from non-committee Republicans than those of
his predecessor. These data support the idea that Henry Waxman assuming the chair of the Committee on Energy and
Commerce fits within a context of a post-realignment Democratic Party seeking to satisfy the needs of its more liberal wing.
Dingell, whose first term in the House began in 1955, may have been seen to the Democratic majority as a symbol of the old,
less polarized House of Representatives.
REFERENCES
Cox, G., & McCubbins, M. (1993). Legislative leviathan: Party government in the House. University of California Press.
Hasecket, E., & Mycoff, J. (2007). Party loyalty and legislative success: Are loyal majority party members more
jimmysuccessful in the U.S. House of Representatives? Political Research Quarterly, 60(4), 607-617.
Leighton, W., & Lopez, E. (2002). Committee assignments and the cost of party loyalty.
jimmyPolitical Research Quarterly, 55(1), 59-90.
Masket, S.E. (2009). No middle ground: How informal party organizations control nominations and
jimmypolarizexlegislatures. University of Michigan Press.
Table 1. Average Committee Support Scores by Party
for Committees in which Chairs were Removed
Christopher H. Smith
Committee on Veteran’s Affairs
Chairman (2004)
Steve Buyer
Committee on Veteran’s Affairs
Chairman (2005)
Committee
Appropriations:
102nd Congress
(2nd)
Veterans: 108th
Congress (2nd)
Energy and
Commerce: 110th
Congress (1st)
Democrats
Average
Standard
Score
Deviation
Republicans
Average
Standard
Score
Deviation
Difference
between Parties
19
D
86.7
.16
51.9
.23
34.8
5
R
100.0
.00
99.8
.02
-.2
22
D
98.3
.03
76.3
.10
22.0
Table 2. Comparison of the 110th Energy and Commerce Committee Support Scores,
by Party, by Session
Session
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
There are many people that were essential in this process. Chiefly I have to thank Dr. Blauwkamp
for all her guidance and support. She introduced me to this material and she was always a
pleasure to work with. I also have to thank everybody involved with the SSRP program. It was a
great way to spend a summer. I would like to thank all of the teachers I have had in my life
especially all those in the Political Science Department at UNK. Lastly I have to thank my family
and friends for repeatedly listening to me explain what I have been doing all summer.
Number Majority
of Bills
Party
John Dingell
Committee on Energy and Commerce
Chairman (2007)
Henry Waxman
Committee on Energy and Commerce
Chairman (2008)
Number
of Bills
Majority
Party
Democrats
Republicans
Average
Score
Standard
Deviation
Average
Score
Standard
Deviation
Difference
between
Parties
First Session
(Dingell)
22
D
98.3
.03
76.3
.10
22.0
Second Session
(Waxman)
22
D
98.7
.07
72.4
.15
26.3