 |
Deference to Committees in the Antebellum House of Representatives
| |
| | Unformatted Document Text:
Deference to Committees in the Antebellum House
Chris Den Hartog
Department of Political Science
University of California, San Diego
## email not listed ##
Abstract
According to all theories of congressional organization, House committees exercisesubstantial discretion over bills within their jurisdictions. Studies of committees early inthe House’s history, however, portray a diametrically opposite role for committees: theywere agents of the floor, expected to draw up bills implementing prior floor decisions andto report back to the House any bill referred to them. Somewhat surprisingly, there islittle work connecting these very different pictures to one another, or identifying thetiming of the change. I address this puzzle by examining committee deference in theantebellum period. I find evidence consistent with the hypothesis that deference tocommittees emerged almost as soon as the standing committee system itself. I alsoexamine the extent to which decisions on the floor conflicted with the wishes of majorityand minority party committee contingents; I find that majority party contingents lostinfrequently on the floor, while minority party contingents fared worse.
Paper prepared for presentation at the annual meeting of the American Political ScienceAssociation, September 2-5, 2004, Chicago, IL. I thank Cheryl Boudreau, Nate Monroe,and Erik Engstrom for helpful comments.
|
| | Authors: Den Hartog, Chris. |
|
| |
|
|
Deference to Committees in the Antebellum House
Chris Den Hartog
Department of Political Science
University of California, San Diego
## email not listed ##
Abstract
According to all theories of congressional organization, House committees exercise
substantial discretion over bills within their jurisdictions. Studies of committees early in
the House’s history, however, portray a diametrically opposite role for committees: they
were agents of the floor, expected to draw up bills implementing prior floor decisions and
to report back to the House any bill referred to them. Somewhat surprisingly, there is
little work connecting these very different pictures to one another, or identifying the
timing of the change. I address this puzzle by examining committee deference in the
antebellum period. I find evidence consistent with the hypothesis that deference to
committees emerged almost as soon as the standing committee system itself. I also
examine the extent to which decisions on the floor conflicted with the wishes of majority
and minority party committee contingents; I find that majority party contingents lost
infrequently on the floor, while minority party contingents fared worse.
Paper prepared for presentation at the annual meeting of the American Political Science
Association, September 2-5, 2004, Chicago, IL. I thank Cheryl Boudreau, Nate Monroe,
and Erik Engstrom for helpful comments.
|
|
 Convention | | Need a solution for abstract management? All Academic can help! Contact us today to find out how our system can help your annual meeting. | | Submission - Custom fields, multiple submission types, tracks, audio visual, multiple upload formats, automatic conversion to pdf. | | Review - Peer Review, Bulk reviewer assignment, bulk emails, ranking, z-score statistics, and multiple worksheets! | | Reports - Many standard and custom reports generated while you wait. Print programs with participant indexes, event grids, and more! | | Scheduling - Flexible and convenient grid scheduling within rooms and buildings. Conflict checking and advanced filtering. | | Communication - Bulk email tools to help your administrators send reminders and responses. Use form letters, a message center, and much more! | | Management - Search tools, duplicate people management, editing tools, submission transfers, many tools to manage a variety of conference management headaches! | | Click here for more information. |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Page 1 of 34 
