Party Government in the House Reconsidered: A Response to Cox and McCubbins

Abstract

In their response to our essay, Gary Cox and Mathew McCubbins offer a helpful elaboration on the implications of their partisan model of House institutions. We particularly appreciate their effort to detail the relationship between changing party homogeneity and House rules changes. We nonetheless believe that our findings raise serious questions for Cox and McCubbins' party cartel model, and cast considerable doubt on the notion that the 1920s70s period is aptly characterized as an era of party government. In our rejoinder, we first consider this general issue of whether House institutions are designed to suit majority party interests. We then respond to several specific criticisms made by Cox and McCubbins of our analysis and evidence. Our analysis of House rules changes discloses two central features of institutional development in the 1920s-70s that undermine claims of party government: first, major features of House institutions, such as rules concerning committee jurisdictions, were shaped far more by cross-party and universalistic coalitions than by party-based coalitions; and second, House rules respond more to changes in the ideological balance of forces on the floor (i.e., the relative numbers of liberals and conservatives) than to changes in the preferences of a majority of majority party members. One major claim made by Cox and McCubbins in Legislative Leviathan, and developed in considerable detail in their 1994 Legislative Studies Quarterly essay, is that the majority party usurps the rule-making power of the House and stabilizes House institutions by imposing firm discipline on its members when it comes to votes on important House rules (1993, 2, 278, 1994, 215-23). Cox and McCubbins (1994, 218) assert that the majority party binds its members to support caucus decisions in the House on a variety of key structural matters. They argue that as a result, major rules changes opposed by a majority of majority party members will not take place (1994, 223). Yet we discuss several rules changes that were opposed by a majority of majority party members. In each case, dissidents from the majority party united with minority party members to make the changes.' How does one interpret these changes? Cox and McCubbins' party cartel model, which