Legislative Shirking in the Pre-Twentieth Amendment Era: Presidential Influence, Party Power, and Lame-Duck Sessions of Congress, 1877–1933

2008 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffery A. Jenkins ◽  
Timothy P. Nokken
Keyword(s):  
Agency Problem ◽  
Legislative Process ◽  
Democratic Accountability ◽  
Majority Party ◽  
Legislative Agenda ◽  
Lame Duck ◽  
Presidential Influence ◽  
Party Power

In 1933, the Twentieth Amendment to the Constitution was adopted. Otherwise known as the Lame Duck Amendment, it reorganized the congressional terms of office and dates of annual convening, eliminating the short (or “lame-duck”) session that had existed up to that time. The amendment was the brainchild of Sen. George W. Norris (R-NE), who argued that lame-duck sessions posed a grave threat to democratic accountability and responsiveness, as they convened after the elections to the next Congress and thus were populated in part by members who were retiring or had lost their reelection bids. As a result, according to Norris, the potential for an agency problem in representation was great in lame-duck sessions. Using the literature on legislative shirking—especially the subliterature on last-term effects—as our theoretical backdrop, we investigate Norris's arguments in detail, examining whether his concerns regarding lame-duck sessions were justified. Using a variety of data and a number of tests, we find little systematic evidence to suggest that exiting members altered their behavior significantly (i.e., shirked) in their last terms in office. In short, the concerns that Norris expressed, such as excessive presidential influence in the legislative process and increased majority-party manipulation of the legislative agenda, were not in fact major problems in lame-duck sessions.

3 European Community Legislative Procedures After Amsterdam

1998 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 25-38
Author(s):  
Alan Dashwood
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
European Community ◽  
Decision Procedure ◽  
Legislative Process ◽  
Democratic Accountability ◽  
Legislative Procedures ◽  
Treaty Of Amsterdam

When it enters into force on 1 May 1999, the Treaty of Amsterdam will bring amendments to, among other things, the legislative process of the European Community. There will be no change as far-reaching as the introduction of the so-called “co-decision procedure” by the Treaty on European Union (TEU), but a genuine attempt is made to streamline the process, to render it more transparent and to enhance democratic accountability. Inevitably, though, not all the changes will be for the better. Two steps forwards and one back is, as ever, the favoured locomotive style of the Union’s constitution-makers.

Uncovering Evidence of Conditional Party Government: Reassessing Majority Party Influence in Congress and State Legislatures

2005 ◽  
Vol 99 (3) ◽  
pp. 361-371 ◽  
Author(s):  
WILLIAM T. BIANCO ◽  
ITAI SENED
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Models ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
Legislative Process ◽  
Real World Data ◽  
Majority Party ◽  
Party Government ◽  
One Dimensional ◽  
Uncovered Set ◽  
Dimensional Version ◽  
Search Program

This paper aims at enriching the debate over the measurement of majority party influence in contemporary American legislatures. Our use of a new analytic technique, a grid-search program for characterizing the uncovered set, enables us to begin with a better model of legislative proceedings that abandons the simple one-dimensional spatial models in favor of the more realistic two-dimensional version. Our conclusions are based on the analysis of real-world data rather than on arguments about the relative merits of different theoretic assumptions. Our analysis confirms that when legislators' preferences are polarized, outcomes will generally be closer to the majority party's wishes, even if the majority-party leadership does nothing to influence the legislative process. This conclusion notwithstanding, our analysis also shows that at the margin of the majority party's natural advantage, agenda setting by the majority party remains a viable and efficacious strategy.

Legislative Reform and the Decline of Presidential Influence on Capitol Hill

1979 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 465-479 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric L. Davis
Keyword(s):  
Jimmy Carter ◽  
Legislative Reform ◽  
Party Control ◽  
Legislative Agenda ◽  
Capitol Hill ◽  
Positive Action ◽  
Lyndon Johnson ◽  
Legislative Proposals ◽  
Political Scene ◽  
Presidential Influence

Observers of the American political scene might at times wonder why the 95th Congress, with nearly two-to-one Democratic majorities in both houses, did not take positive action on many of President Carter's important legislative proposals in 1977 and 1978. After all, it was argued when Carter was inaugurated at the beginning of 1977, the return of common party control to both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue would bring to an end the legislative-executive confrontations of the Nixon-Ford years. Thus, was not the unwillingness of Congress to approve his major programs an indication that Carter was inept, or even perhaps incompetent, as a legislative leader? If Lyndon Johnson could obtain swift approval of an extensive legislative agenda from the 89th Congress (1965–66), which in partisan composition was quite similar to the 95th Congress, why could Jimmy Carter not achieve comparable results?

scholarly journals Crossing Over: Majority Party Control Affects Legislator Behavior and the Agenda

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
NICHOLAS G. NAPOLIO ◽  
CHRISTIAN R. GROSE
Keyword(s):  
Natural Experiment ◽  
Revealed Preferences ◽  
Crossing Over ◽  
Agenda Control ◽  
Majority Party ◽  
Legislative Session ◽  
Party Control ◽  
Legislative Agenda ◽  
Floor Control ◽  
Legislative Policy

Does majority party control cause changes in legislative policy making? We argue that majority party floor control affects legislator behavior and agenda control. Leveraging a natural experiment where nearly one tenth of a legislature’s members died within the same legislative session, we are able to identify the effect of majority party floor control on the legislative agenda and on legislator choices. Previous correlational work has found mixed evidence of party effects, especially in the mid-twentieth century. In contrast, we find that majority party control leads to (1) changes in the agenda and (2) changes in legislators’ revealed preferences. These effects are driven by changes in numerical party majorities on the legislative floor. The effects are strongest with Republican and nonsouthern Democratic legislators. The effects are also more pronounced on the first (economic) than the second (racial) dimension. Additional correlational evidence across 74 years adds external validity to our exogenous evidence.

Extreme Reversion Points and Party Leadership from 2011 through 2016

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin Buchler
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Unified Model ◽  
Divided Government ◽  
Collective Action Problem ◽  
Party Leadership ◽  
Majority Party ◽  
Legislative Agenda ◽  
Debt Ceiling ◽  
Sincere Voting

When a majority party works on normal legislation, it faces a collective action problem of sincere voting, and must prevent legislators from centrist districts from voting against noncentrist legislation. From 2011 through 2016, though, Republican Party leadership faced a different challenge, and leaders were pitted against the extremists in their caucus. This occurred because of a change to the legislative agenda resulting from the combination of extreme polarization and divided government introduced by the 2010 election. With no incentive to work on normal legislation, the agenda did little but avoid reversion points, like debt ceiling breaches, which the extreme elements in the caucus actually found acceptable. Speaker Boehner was forced to solve a new collective action problem, then, convincing a group of Republicans to join with Democrats on bipartisan deals to avoid these reversion points. While historically unusual, the dynamic is what would be expected from the unified model.

The Signaling Role of Politician Stock Ownership: Effects on Lobbying Intensity

2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (5) ◽  
pp. 2116-2141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason W. Ridge ◽  
Aaron D. Hill ◽  
Amy Ingram
Keyword(s):  
Political Action ◽  
Signaling Theory ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Stock Ownership ◽  
Majority Party ◽  
Legislative Agenda ◽  
Using Data

Adopting a signaling theory perspective, we argue that politician stock ownership sends signals of positive predispositions to firms, thereby alleviating some necessity for firms to emphasize lobbying expenditures to influence political action. Using data on congressional stock ownership, we find support for our arguments. We find that as the proportion of Congress owning stock in a firm increases, the firm decreases the intensity of lobbying. Furthermore, we find that the signals associated with stock-holding politicians with greater ability to affect the legislative agenda (i.e., affiliation with the majority party) relates to lobbying intensity. Our findings add to the literature on lobbying while also offering implications for practice and avenues for future research.

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