Majority Party Reliability: Explaining Majority Party Stacking and
Ideological Outliers in House Committees
In The Giant Jigsaw Puzzle Kenneth Shepsle identifies five sequential aspects of
committee assignment practices in the House. The first three stages are the structure of
the preceding Congress, an election that “shocks” this structure, and requests from
freshman and returning members. The fourth stage is “the negotiation of the new
committee-structure—the establishment of committee sizes and party shares—by party
leaders,” and the fifth stage is “committee assignment by … each party” (Shepsle 1978).
Previous research on House committee representativeness has largely centered on the
outcomes which are produced in the fifth stage. Researchers have used various measures
of central tendency to compare committees with the floor (or sometimes party
contingents with their respective caucuses) using either ideological or constituency-based
measures. This paper contends that the largely overlooked fourth stage is critical to a
proper understanding of the results produced in the fifth stage. The paper will examine
three aspects concerning Shepsle’s last two stages. First, the conventional wisdom for
that stage will be discussed. Second, there will be a presentation of theoretical reasons
for why the conventional wisdom may need revision. The theoretical foundation for each
of these objections is based on a partisan theory of congressional organization. Finally,
the theoretical objections will be supported with empirical evidence. A discussion of the
results follows.
SHEPSLE’S FOURTH STAGE: ESTABLISHING PARTY RATIOS ON
COMMITTEES
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Much of this discussion on Shepsle’s fourth stage is a summary and extension of Kloha
(2003). More empirical evidence on committees and subcommittees is presented there.
Convention