Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- Acknowledgments
- Legislative Leviathan
- Introduction
- PART ONE THE AUTONOMY AND DISTINCTIVENESS OF COMMITTEES
- PART TWO A THEORY OF ORGANIZATION
- PART THREE PARTIES AS FLOOR-VOTING COALITIONS
- PART FOUR PARTIES AS PROCEDURAL COALITIONS
- PART FIVE PARTIES AS PROCEDURAL COALITIONS
- Conclusion
- Appendix 1 Uncompensated Seniority Violations, Eightieth through Hundredth Congresses
- Appendix 2 A Model of the Speaker's Scheduling Preferences
- Appendix 3 Unchallengeable and Challengeable Vetoes
- Appendix 4 The Scheduling Power
- Bibliography
- Author Index
- Subject Index
PART FOUR - PARTIES AS PROCEDURAL COALITIONS
COMMITTEE APPOINTMENTS
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- Acknowledgments
- Legislative Leviathan
- Introduction
- PART ONE THE AUTONOMY AND DISTINCTIVENESS OF COMMITTEES
- PART TWO A THEORY OF ORGANIZATION
- PART THREE PARTIES AS FLOOR-VOTING COALITIONS
- PART FOUR PARTIES AS PROCEDURAL COALITIONS
- PART FIVE PARTIES AS PROCEDURAL COALITIONS
- Conclusion
- Appendix 1 Uncompensated Seniority Violations, Eightieth through Hundredth Congresses
- Appendix 2 A Model of the Speaker's Scheduling Preferences
- Appendix 3 Unchallengeable and Challengeable Vetoes
- Appendix 4 The Scheduling Power
- Bibliography
- Author Index
- Subject Index
Summary
In articulating our view of parties, we have thus far discussed the incentives of party leaders (Part II) and the behavior of parties as floor coalitions (Part III). In this and the next part of the book, we focus on the extent to which parties – the majority party in particular – can control the standing committees of the House. To put the question in another way, we are interested in whether committees function to some degree as agents of the majority party.
The literature presents at least three different views on the question of agency: committees have been considered as agents of no one but themselves, as agents of the House, and as agents of the majority party. The first of these views, in which committees are agents of neither the House nor the majority party, is associated with the purer versions of the “committee government” model. From this perspective, committees are autonomous agents, acting to further the interests of their own self-selected and “tenured” members. The second view, in which committees are agents of the House, finds clearest expression in historical surveys of the early development of the committee system (e.g., Cooper 1970), but it is also apparent in, for example, Robinson's description of the Rules Committee (Robinson 1963) and Fenno's description of the Appropriations Committee (see, for example, Fenno 1966; Oppenheimer 1977). The last view of committee agency appears mostly in descriptions of Congress at the turn of the twentieth century, during the era of strong Speakers.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Legislative LeviathanParty Government in the House, pp. 149 - 152Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007
- 1
- Cited by