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Observations on a Post-Gingrich House

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Gary J. Andres
Gary J. Andres*
Affiliation:
Dutko Group
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Extract

The U.S. House of Representatives is in the midst of its second operational transformation in five years. Compared to the post-1994 “Gingrich-led revolution” (Drew 1996), Republican leadership strategies are considerably different in the 106th Congress under the direction of Speaker J. Dennis Hastert and his team.

This essay outlines five strategies the new House leadership team has implemented to correct past problems, shape members' behavioral norms (Weingast 1979), and manage their razor-thin majority. While it's still too early to gauge the ultimate success of these strategies, my conversations with members of the House Republican leadership, other members of Congress, House staffers, and political operatives involved with the day-to-day functioning of the U.S. House, reveal a pattern of strategic changes and accompanying modifications in member norms aimed at managing the legislative majority in the 106th Congress.

Type
Research Article
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 32 , Issue 3 , September 1999 , pp. 571 - 574
Copyright
Copyright © The American Political Science Association 1999

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Don Goff, Teresa Youngblood, Keith Kirk, Kimberly Spaulding, and Ben Sands for their comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript.

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