Rule Assignment in the Postreform House: A Test of Three Competing Theories of Legislative Organization

Abstract

Each of the three major sets of competing theories of congressional organization makes different predictions about the behavior of the House Rules Committee. Several studies have examined which theory best explains the special rule assignments made by the House Rules Committee during the postreform period (Dion and Huber f996; Krehbiel 1997; Sinclair 1994). Each of these political scientists reaches different conclusions. As a result, we have a confused picture of how best to understand the behavior of the House Rules Committee. We argue that the lack of clarity in the literature is largely a byproduct of poor model specification. Our research extends the time period under consideration, introduces several models that we believe more accurately assess the predictions derived from partisan models of organization, and makes significant improvements to earlier indicators used in the literature. Our multivariate analysis includes variables from all of the prominent models of congressional organization. In our examination of bills voted out of committee with a roll call vote from 1981-94 and assigned a special rule by the House Rules Committee, we find that restrictive rules are more likely to be assigned to bills reported to the House by a committee with a party unity vote. Indicators derived from other models of congressional organization largely fail to achieve statistical significance.