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Political Science 345: The Legislative Process Class 13: Agenda-Setting and Roll calls. Professor Jon Rogowski. Parties and the agenda. Legislatures commonly face collective action problems Parties as one solution Floor voting coalitions
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Political Science 345:The Legislative ProcessClass 13: Agenda-Setting and Roll calls Professor Jon Rogowski
Parties and the agenda • Legislatures commonly face collective action problems • Parties as one solution • Floor voting coalitions • Parties discipline their parties to ensure a cohesive voting bloc on the floor • Procedural coalitions • More important that parties control the legislative agenda • Agenda = the set of bills considered and voted on the floor
Forms of agenda control • Positive agenda control • Ability to push bills through the legislative process to reach a final passage vote • “proposal rights” • Negative agenda control • Ability to block bills from reaching a final passage vote on the floor • “veto rights”
How agenda control works • Positive agenda control • Members of a majority coalition of legislators are more likely to be recognized and thus have increased ability to make a proposal. Has already been preapproved by other members of coalition. • Negative agenda control • Majority parties allocate veto power to committee chairs (for instance) and thus reduce the proposal power of any particular MC
Parties as cartels “The key resource that majority parties delegate to their senior partners is the power to set the legislative agenda; the majority party forms a procedural cartel that collectively monopolizes agenda-setting power.” – Cox and McCubbins 2005, 24
Cartelizing the agenda • Majority party chooses occupants of seats with agenda-setting powers (Rules, committee chairs, etc) • Party members entrust party officeholders with acting in best interests of party • Rank-and-file support the agenda-setting decisions of its officeholders • In all, much less costly than enforcing discipline
Testing this theory • Party roll rates • How often is a majority of the majority party on the losing side? • How often is a majority of the minority party on the losing side? • Negative agenda control and the majority party
Amending legislation in the House • One general procedure • MC can offer an amendment to a bill • Another MC can offer an amendment to the amendment • While first amendment is pending, another MC can offer a substitute to the amendment • Another MC can offer an amendment to the substitute
Voting on Amendments in the House • (1) Amendment vs. amendment to the amendment • (2) Substitute vs. amendment to the substitute • Winner (1) vs. Winner (2) • Should the amendment be added to the bill?
Voting on Amendments in the Senate • In theory, anywhere between 2 and 12 amendments could be pending at once • Simplest rule is the one used most often: • Amendment • Amendment to the amendment Vote them against each other, and then decided whether the (potentially amended) amendment should be attached to the bill.
New York Times, 3/13/2013 “The debate [on the Assault Weapons Ban] in the Judiciary Committee will end Thursday, moving consideration of gun legislation to the Senate floor and perhaps the House, where members have indicated they might consider any legislation that the Senate passes. But any legislation that comes to the Senate floor could be undermined by riders on appropriations bills like the one being debated on the floor now, which would keep the government running through the end of September. The Senate is trying to pass a short-term measure to prevent the government from shutting down, as members from both parties and chambers go about the business of creating actual budgets. For the last two years, Republicans and Democrats have fought over these short-term spending agreements, over the amount in them and the policy riders that Republicans often attach to them as part of the deal. These riders are a boon to Senate Republicans, particularly those who are strong advocates of Second Amendment rights, and a bit of an embarrassment to some Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee, who are trying to avoid policy riders and also not handcuff their colleagues who are active in creating new gun legislation.”
Explaining Roll Call Behavior • Preferences • Partisanship • Constituency opinion • Vote trading • Lobbying • Other members • Interest groups • President
Characterizing Roll Call Behavior • Interest Groups pick votes to “rate” legislators’ ideological “positions” • Groups tend to pick divisive roll call votes, ratings tend to look bimodal • Academic ratings abound: • Poole-Rosenthal, Heckman-Snyder, etc.
Difficulties of roll call ratings • Votes are recorded selectively • Voting is known to be important by members for reelection purposes • Position-taking: Appearing different • Sophisticated voting: Voting so as not to “waste one’s vote” • Agenda setting by parties alters the set of choices the legislators actually have
Ideological divisionsMore than One Dimension 80th Cong. (1943-45) 52nd Cong. (1891-1893)
Agenda setting and polarization • Amendments can allow minority party to divide the majority party • Small majorities are more vulnerable to this tactic • Closed rules can present members with all-or-nothing position-taking opportunities • Actions in the Committee of the Whole (i.e. votes on amendments) become more visible in the late 1970s
Increased partisanship? • Maybe…relative to the 1950s • Congressional leaders are more involved in voting and agenda setting than before • Electoral landscape is more competitive in more places now than before • But measures based on roll call votes tell only part of the story
Poole-Rosenthal ScoresLeft-Right Difference Between Republicans and Democrats
The Second Dimension and Voting Patterns in the 109th Senate
