Parties, committees, and rules in the U.S. House of Representatives

Abstract

OF THE DISSERTATION Parties, Committees, and Rules in the U.S. House of Representatives by Hong Min Park Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science Washington University in St. Louis, 2010 Steven S. Smith, Chair This dissertation project aims to build upon the literature of positive theories of legislative politics, and provide three more nuanced stories about various stages in the U.S. House of Representatives: rules making, committee composition, and floor voting. The chapter, Conditional Nature of Rules Changes, examines why the U.S. House of Representatives has changed its standing rules regarding the principle of majority rule and minority rights. I begin by taking a critical look at previous studies on this subject, after which I propose an alternative theory on the conditional nature of rules changes. The empirical findings reveal that different combinations of factors are required for the two distinct types of rules changes. In particular, the size and homogeneity of the majority party are the main factors for promoting majority rule while the size of the majority party and the dimensionality of policy space are the main factors for creating minority rights. The chapter, Minority Party Members on Committees, questions why a generic legislature allows minority party members on committees. If the majority party considers the minority a burden, then it could choose to exclude minority party members entirely from the committee system. This has, however, rarely happened in history. This chapter provides one possible explanation to this puzzle via a simple signaling game. In equilibrium, I show that the majority party has an incentive to include the minority party delegation