From Committee to the Floor: Consistency in Congressional Voting

Abstract

INTEREST IS GROWING in the use of comparative techniques to study congressional committees, particularly committee decision making behavior.1 To test comparative hypotheses properly, it is necessary to obtain data on decision making that are comparable across all committees. However, the bulk of committee work, until 1973, was done in executive session, where informal bargaining determined decisions.2 Committee reports seldom indicate a division within the committee, and committee roll call votes are only now becoming available in sufficient quantity for analysis. Faced with the need to determine congressional committee partisanship and integration without access to committee deliberations, researchers turned to floor activity, specifically floor roll call votes. In general, committee voting patterns on the floor are used to infer