House Appropriations After the Republican Revolution

Abstract

This article applies the theory of “conditional party government” (CPG) to the interaction between the majority party and the Appropriations Committee in the period following the Republican Revolution of 1995. We extend the analysis of Aldrich and Rohde (2000b) by examining how actions within the committee have changed over time and analyzing whether behavior and outcomes continue to match the expectations of CPG theory, particularly with respect to the times in which power in Congress switched from the Republicans to the Democrats and back. The conditions of the CPG theory continued to be met so that we can continue to test the theory's predictions. We show that following the Republican Revolution, the role of the party remained paramount and the party leadership maintained its influence over the direction of policy. While in the majority, both parties used the Appropriations Committee as a vehicle for policy change and the party leadership monitored committee actions, either by blocking policy shifts away from what the majority party wanted or facilitating changes in the desired direction.