Our argument begins with the procedure by which a House bill becomes a law.
The typical bill originates in a House committee. If a majority of the committee’s members, and
then a majority of the entire chamber, passes the bill, it can become a law – but only if outside
actors respond in particular ways. If, for example, the House and Senate pass different versions of
the bill, all differences must be eliminated before sending a bill to the President. Unless one of the
chambers is willing to accept the other chamber’s version of the bill, or both chambers can agree
on a set of unifying amendments, lawmaking requires the chambers to reconcile their differences
in conference committees. If these negotiations yield a bill, and the President signs it, then the
conference bill – and not the original House bill -- becomes law. If the chambers do not resolve
their differences, or if the president vetoes the bill and two-thirds of each chamber is unwilling to
override the veto, then no new law is produced.
These aspects of the Constitution imply that the House must bargain with other actors to
achieve key legislative objectives. The negotiations may be explicit or implicit, they may be
public or private, but they are unavoidable. So regardless of whether partisan, informational, or
distributional concerns influence House members, all know that the legislative consequences of
their organizational decisions depend on subsequent interactions with the Senate and President.
We examine the logical and substantive implications of this fact by introducing a
constitutional theory of legislative organization. The theory clarifies how constitutional
requirements to build lawmaking coalitions with outside actors affect House members’
organizational incentives. Its null hypothesis is that the changes in the partisan balance of the
Senate, or in the identity of the President, do not affect legislative organization in the House. We
reject this hypothesis. We find that who occupies the Presidency and who controls the Senate can
radically affect the negotiating leverage of key House members. As a result, changes in the
Senate or Presidency can change the House’s balance of power.
We build our argument from prior theoretical work on legislative organization, an
examination of the rules and norms of inter-branch relations, and lessons from studies of coalition
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Convention