Committee Assignments Research Articles

When equality ends: stories about race and resistance

Introduction Rodrigos Bookbag: Recent Conservative Thought and the End of Equality Rodrigos Roadmap: Is the Marketplace Theory for Eradicating Discrimination a Blind Alley? Whats Wrong with Neoliberalism: The Problem of the Shanty Rodrigos Chromosomes: Race, Biology, and the Replication of Elites Latinos and the Black-White Binary Conflict as Pathology: Whats Wrong with Alternative Dispute Resolution Rodrigos Book of Manners: How to Conduct a Conversation on Race Rodrigos Committee Assignment: A Skeptical Look at Judicial Independence The Problem with Lawyers Rodrigos Notebook: Race, Resistance, and the End of Equality

How Much Is Majority Status in the U.S. Congress Worth?

A key premise of partisan theories of congressional organization is that majority status confers substantial procedural advantages. In this article, we take advantage of changes in party control of the House and Senate, such as that following the Republicans' historic victory in the midterm elections of 1994, to assess the value of majority status in terms of contributions from access-seeking political action committees (PACs). We estimate that majority status in the House was worth about $36,000 per member in receipts from corporate and trade PACs circa 1994—even controlling for the usual factors cited in the literature as affecting members' ability to raise money (such as committee assignments and voting record). The value of majority status in the Senate is even larger in absolute terms, although smaller in proportion to the total amount of money raised. Our results show that majority status is a valuable asset, one worth considerable collective effort to attain.

An analysis of PAC contributions and legislator quality

This paper empirically examines the influence of three legislator attributes on political action committee campaign contributions. In particular, the study investigates the roles that committee assignment, committee leadership, and majority party membership play on campaign contributions from political action committee representing firms from the four well-defined industries of aerospace, airline, automobile, and oil. The empirical results indicate that committee leadership is a key variable that drives contributions. However, membership on a seemingly relevant committee does not appear to carry as much weight. Furthermore, majority party membership appears to have a significant influence over the level of contributions. These patterns appear to be consistent over the eight election cycles studied.

The Political Ecology of Representation in English Canada: M.P.'s and Their Constituencies

Introduction: A Political Ecology of Representation? Members of Parliament are at the center of the theory and practice of parliamentary representation in Canada. M.P.'s are expected to perform a variety of roles and activities. These include tasks related to their membership in a parliamentary party caucus, related to their responsibilities as legislators in the House of Commons (committee assignments, policy work, and so on), and tasks done for their constituents. Because of the strength of party discipline in Canada, M.P.'s are given relatively little opportunity to pursue constituents' interests in the formal policy-making process (Kilgour and Kirsner 1989, 36). However, the amount of time M.P.'s are required to spend in formal session in Ottawa has diminished in recent years, with the average sitting time of the House of Commons now being approximately 135 days a year. This creates greater opportunities for members to spend time in their constituencies if they so desire. Shorter sessions provide time that is relatively free of legislative assignments or the party's whip, time which M.P.'s can deploy according to their own preferences and, if they are so inclined, time to cultivate and serve their constituents. Anecdotal evidence from Canadian M.P.'s suggests that constituency service is one of the most satisfying tasks members perform, and that it constitutes an important component of a representative's activities. Miller's informal survey of a number of backbench M.P.'s, for example, found that constituency service accounted for between 50 and 80 percent of their time (Miller 1986, 3); other, more systematic, research suggests somewhat lower figures are the norm (Docherty 1996). Similarly, in their review of published research on the Canadian parliament, for example, Kornberg and Campbell (1978, 565) note that regular consultation with and performance of services for constituents is an important (indeed, probably the most important) dimension of the activities performed by both federal and provincial Members of Parliament. By way of illustration, their firmest expectation for the role of legislator--before they ever take office--is that they will carry out `representative' and `ombudsmen' types of functions. In this respect, Canada appears to parallel the experience of other settings in which representation is constructed around single member districts. In the United States and Britain, for example, the constituency service activities of legislators have historically been, and show signs of becoming increasingly more, important (for American evidence, see Fenno 1978 and Parker 1986; for British evidence, see Norton and Woods 1990, 196-99; 1993; Norton 1994). Relatively little effort has been forthcoming in Canada, however, to document and explain patterns in the constituency service behavior of M.P.'s (for exceptions, see Clarke et al. 1975; Clarke 1978; Halligan et al. 1988; Hoffman 1987; Price and Mancuso 1991. Docherty 1996 also makes a major contribution in this area). Existing work seeking to explain variations in representational styles in other countries tends to emphasize one or some combination of three approaches, labeled structural, interactional, and motivational by Donald Searing (1985, 351; 1994, 10-30). According to Searing, structural approaches focus on the roles that are built into an institution's structure, independent of the personalities of role incumbents. Interactional approaches depict the representation process as involving a series of social negotiations and exchanges that take place between representative and constituents. Motivational approaches, in turn, emphasize the impact of personal goals and institutional incentives in accounting for the adoption of representational roles or styles. Here, the focus is on representatives choosing how to organize themselves as legislators, reflecting such factors as their political ambition, position in the life-cycle, and other primarily personal factors. …

The Value of Committee Seats in the House, 1947-91

We construct a rational choice model of House members' preferences for committee assignments and use it to construct a new method that provides quantitative measures of the value members place on different legislative committees. The procedure improves upon previous techniques proposed by Bullock and Sprague and by Munger, both theoretically and empirically. The resulting estimates have cardinal properties, which make them superior measures of committee value when used in statistical analysis of legislative behavior. We illustrate the usefulness of our technique by testing whether mid1970s reforms of the House committee system upset the value that members ascribed to committee service.

The industrial structure of the California Assembly: Committee assignments, economic interests, and campaign contributions

This paper examines the provision of campaign contributions made by economic interests to incumbents seeking reelection in the 1984, 1986, and 1988 California Assembly elections. The study tests whether the distribution of campaign contributions by specific industrial sectors corresponds to legislator possession of the policy property rights associated with membership on relevant Assembly standing committees. A non-parametric statistical model compares the distribution of campaign contributions from groups within a given industrial sector to members of relevant policy committees with the distribution of contributions from all other contributor classes. The empirical analysis confirms that committee assignments significantly affect the allocation of special interest resources in Assembly elections, substantiating the importance of institutional considerations in influencing special interest activity.

Women of Congress: a twentieth-century odyssey

Women of Congress introduces us to the pioneering women who've been elected to the U.S. Congress. In telling their individual stories, Kaptur highlights their achievements and charts their steady progress toward longer tenure, greater seniority, and more influential committee assignments.

Change and Continuity Among Women State Legislators: Evidence From Three Decades

Previous literature documents the steady increase in the number of women serving in state legislatures as well as the lingering differences in demographic characteristics and policy priorities between male and fe male officeholders. Yet, this research does not address the question of evo lutionary change among women state legislators themselves. Are women serving in contemporary state legislatures different from their female col leagues of previous decades in the personal and political characteristics and legislative agendas they bring to office? To answer this question, we use data collected on all women state legis lators serving in 15 states in 1972, 1982, and 1992 and a stratified random sample of male legislators serving in the same chambers during the same time periods. This two-stage analysis allows us first to focus on the chang ing profile of women state legislators; and secondly, to consider whether these changes are unique to women or common to all state legislators. The analyses confirm the hypothesis that the profile of the "typical woman state legislator" has changed significantly in the last three decades. 1 The states are California, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Nevada, New Jersey, Okla homa, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia, and Wisconsin. 2 The fifteen states represent all three classifications of legislatures formulated by the National Council of State Legislatures. California, Illinois, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin are considered to be full-time, professional legislatures. Iowa, Okla homa, Oregon, South Carolina, and Virginia are classified as transitional legislatures, moving from amateur to professional status. Georgia, Idaho, Nevada, South Dakota, and Vermont are considered part-time, amateur legislatures. 3 Readers might suggest that the change in the number of women serving on the "pres tige" committees may be due to institutional changes such as an expansion in the num ber of seats available on these committees. A check of eight of the states in this analysis indicates that this is probably not the case. Six of the eight states had no change in the size of their committees between 1972 and 1992. One state decreased the number of seats on all committees and only one increased them (adding 2-3 seats on some com mittees). Even without these supporting data, we would point out that the notion that women's increasing numbers on prestige committees is explained by institutional forces assumes that states all increased the size of their committees (and that they did so in both chambers) during the time period under study Indeed, since the 1970s, the greater likelihood is that states would shrink the size of their committees. 4 Because of space limitations, we do not present the regression models for committee assignments or leadership positions. However, we would be happy to make them avail able upon request. 5 Regression analysis indicates that, for men, tenure is significant in the model while the variable measuring time period of service is not. This would suggest that men are serv ing on prestige committees and in leadership positions as a function of their increased tenure. Because of space limitations, we do not present the regression models. How ever, we are happy to make them available upon request.

Finance industry PAC contributions to U.S. Senators, 1983?88

In this paper, I examine the relationship between campaign contributions from PACs representing the finance industry and membership on sixteen standing committees in the Senate. I hypothesize that finance industry PACs will contribute more to the Banking committee, the Senate committee with the greatest responsibility for developing public policy that affects the finance industry. My results indicate that committee assignment does influence the distribution of finance industry PAC money; the finance industry does give significantly more to members of the Senate Banking committee. This is the first study to find this relationship between PAC contributions and committee membership in the Senate.

Bill sponsorship and legislative success among freshmen senators, 1954–1986

Freshmen senators of the 1980s are often portrayed as more individualistic and activist than the freshmen of the 1950s. Freshmen today possess greater resources and appear much more likely to use those resources in whatever policy areas are of interest to them. One indication of this increased activism in the Senate is the dramatic increase in floor activity. Freshmen senators tightly bound by formal and informal restrictions in the 1950s have since gained important committee assignments and increased their staff. Despite their enhanced resources and increased activism in some areas, we found that freshmen senators from the 1980s were no more likely to sponsor legislation and were no more successful at passing their own legislation than the freshmen Senators of the 1950s.

Committee Assignments in the U. S. Senate

Because fundamental control over the legislative process occurs not on the floor but in standing committees, and because assignment to important standing committees increases members' power to control the legislative agenda, congressional committee assignments are important in determining the political and electoral success of incumbents. Changing membership patterns of committees over time provide some clues on the importance of seats on the committees. Using data on committee membership for the U.S. Senate for congresses from World War II to the 103d Congress, we measure the relative value of seats on Senate committees. We assume that senators who transfer from one committee to another are increasing their political and electoral capital. Two different measures developed by Bullock and Sprague and Munger are employed to create an ordering of Senate committee membership prestige. Committee assignment allocation processes in the House of Representatives and the Senate produce similar, expected rankings of legislator preferences among seats on standing committees.

Careerism, Committee Assignments, and the Electoral Connection

Most scholars agree that members of Congress are strongly motivated by their desire for reelection. This assumption implies that members of Congress adopt institutions, rules, and norms of behavior in part to serve their electoral interests. Direct tests of the electoral connection are rare, however, because significant, exogenous changes in the electoral environment are difficult to identify. We develop and test an electoral rationale for the norm of committee assignment “property rights.” We examine committee tenure patterns before and after a major, exogenous change in the electoral system—the states' rapid adoption of Australian ballot laws in the early 1890s. The ballot changes, we argue, induced new “personal vote” electoral incentives, which contributed to the adoption of “modern” congressional institutions such as property rights to committee assignments. We demonstrate a marked increase in assignment stability after 1892, by which time a majority of states had put the new ballot laws into force, and earlier than previous studies have suggested.

House Committee Assignments of Women and Minority Newcomers, 1965-1994

This paper examines the effects of gender and race on the prestige of House newcomer committee assignments since 1965. Due to the advancement of women and minorities in other areas of social life as well as the changing internal character of Congress, there should be increasing equity in the prestige of their congressional committee assignments. Findings generally confirm my expectations, although periodic surges and declines in the data, particularly for women, point up the impact of short-run political conditions. More generally, the data highlight linkages between Congress and the larger social system; continued equity depends on the nature of these linkages.

Redistricting and the Congressional Black Caucus

In this article I explore the impact of the new Black-majority House districts on the power of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) and the nature of Black representation in those districts. These districts are controversial, largely because they are viewed as an embodiment of a "politics of difference" (i.e., Blacks must represent Blacks), rather than a "politics of commonality." My preliminary research contradicts this common view. I conclude that (a) the new size of the CBC has substantially increased its political clout while simultaneously pushing it into the political mainstream; and (b) newly elected African Americans in Congress are more likely to promote the politics of commonality than the politics of difference. These conclusions are based on an examination of the CBC's role in passing legislation, their patterns of roll call voting, committee assignments, and participation in the Democratic party leadership.

The Organizing of the European Parliament: Committees, Specialization and Co-ordination

This article addresses the issue of specialization and committee formation in the European Parliament in the light of the largely US-centred debates on these issues. Clear evidence is found of specialization of behaviour, both with regard to committee assignment and the use of parliamentary questions. This is also accompanied by a trend towards a greater role for the party groups in co-ordinating and controlling behaviour across these specializations.

Congressional dynamics: structure, coordination, and choice in the first American Congress, 1774-1789

In 1774 delegates from twelve English colonies in North America assembled in congress. This assemblage laid the foundation for the first national political body in the United States. The basic institutional identity of the Continental Congress never changed over its fifteen-year history. Nonetheless, perceived deficiencies in its structure and performance helped forge the Federal system founded in 1789. This book focuses on the origins, evolution, and demise of the Continental Congress, reinterpreting its successes and failures from the perspective of the 'new institutionalism'. The authors analyse the behavioural record of the delegates - their votes, voting coalitions, work load, committee assignments - and conclude that norms, rules, and structures were as much to blame for the Congress's failure as the twelve represented states' reluctance to support and finance it.

The demand for local government goods

Abstract. This paper analyses the spending preferences of local government elected politicians. It is argued that the median voter model is inappropriate in multi‐party systems that provide multiple government services, and that the preferences of the representatives are consequential to local resource allocation. We develop a micromodel in which service demand is conditioned by exogenous public revenue, prices, and demographic factors. We hypothesise that politicians demands are affected by party affiliation, public sector occupation and committee assignment. The estimates of the micro demand functions are based on data pertaining to Norwegian local governments. It is found that the estimated income elasticities correspond approximately with elasticities of output studies. Party affiliation has an impact on demand patterns, while government occupation and committee appointment are major determinants of politicians desired allocation of public services. Further analyses reveal that the numerical strength of parties impacts weakly on the actual service allocation, whereas the representation of government employees has occasional effect. The budgetary allocations are imperfect expressions of the elected council's underlying preferences.

Legislative committees as loyalty-generating institutions

The current debate over models of self-selection in Congress — whether Congressmen by-and-large find themselves on committees which most closely correspond to their constituents' interests — has implications for theories of Congressional organization. Building on recent findings which question a categorical self-selection process, in this paper we present a theory of committee function based on loyalty to party leaders. As a rationale for leadership privilege, and to provide context for our argument, we first present a theoretical framework based on a modified model of cooperation. We then focus on certain specifics of our leadership theory; that rank-and-file members vote leadership interests in exchange for leader support in gaining choice committee assignments and aid in passing legislation. This leads to predictions about voting patterns across committees. Static tests of these relations are performed, as well as those incorporating changes in voting patterns with seniority.

An Empirical Investigation of the Dynamics of PAC Contributions

We study the extent to which PACs target the members and chairs of particular congressional committees, by estimating the effects of changes in a representative's committee and leadership assignments on changes in the pattern of PAC contributions received by the representative. We find strong evidence that ties exist between certain types of PACs and congressional committees. In addition, the analysis reveals interesting asymmetries in the propensity of PACs to add or drop members who change their committee assignments.

Does Mentorship among Social Workers Make a Difference? An Empirical Investigation of Career Outcomes

For more than a decade there has been much ado about mentors (Roche, 1979, p. 20) in both the popular media and the professional literature. Studies from the fields of business and education and organizational and developmental psychology currently predominate in the scholarly literature on mentorship (for example, Kanter, 1977; Kram, 1985; Levinson, Darrow, Klein, Levinson, & McKee, 1978; Phillips-Jones, 1982). In contrast, little information exists about mentor relationships among social workers. What is known is largely from anecdotal or conceptual accounts (for example, Berger, 1990; Faver, Fox, & Shannon, 1983; Richey, Gambrill, & Blythe, 1988; Taibbi, 1983) and a few empirical investigations (for example, Ezell & Odewahn, 1980; York, Henley, & Gamble, 1988). Nonetheless, there has been remarkable consistency across the literature in reporting that mentor relationships are facilitative of--if not essential to--the career development of both men and women. Given the diversity in the literature, it is not surprising that there has been a plethora of definitions of mentorship (Merriam, 1983; Speizer, 1981). For this study, mentorship is conceptualized as an interpersonal helping relationship between two individuals who are at different stages in their professional development. The mentor--the more professionally advanced of the two--facilitates the development and advancement of the protege--the junior professional--by serving as a source of social support beyond what is required solely on the basis of their formal role relationship. Because of the attention it has garnered in recent years, mentorship has become common enough that most professionals have little trouble relating to the term and reporting on their own mentorship experiences or, in some cases, recognizing that they have not experienced such relationships. The following are typical comments regarding mentorship experiences volunteered by social work professionals who participated in the pretest phase of the study: My mentor was my work supervisor. He encouraged me to have high expectations for myself and provided me with administrative opportunities and committee assignments that were beyond my job duties--then made sure I got credit for my work. My mentor was my field liaison when I first met her. She really took the time to get to know me. She has very high standards, and I know that I've learned to handle myself better by watching how she handled things. I was a mentor for a social worker who first began at the agency as a social services aide. With my encouragement she got up the nerve to go back to school and eventually got her MSW [master of social work degree]. I became a mentor for an exceptional student who did his field practicum here. On my recommendation he was hired after graduation. We have since presented at conferences together, and I have introduced him around to the who's who of the profession. Such anecdotal accounts as these, which abound in the qualitative literature on mentorship, provide rich evidence for the importance of mentor relationships. However, there is a lack of empirical evidence that more directly addresses whether mentorship has a differential impact on career outcomes. This study explores whether the careers of social workers who have been involved in mentor relationships are measurably different from the careers of those who have not been involved. The study's approach is noteworthy. First, although most mentorship studies have presumed that mentor relationships facilitate professional careers, this premise has remained largely untested up to this point. Second, the study goes beyond the scope of previous studies by exploring the relationship between mentorship and three career outcome measures: (1) career success, (2) career satisfaction, and (3) income level. Third, the study does not limit itself to just the protege experience; instead, it also investigates the mentor experience, specifically the difference between the career outcomes of those who have been both a mentor and a protege, a mentor but not a protege, a protege but not a mentor, and neither a mentor nor a protege. …