scholarly journals Unification of Powers: When Effective Lawmakers Sponsor Presidential Proposals in Congress

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig Volden ◽  
Samuel Kernell ◽  
Roger Larocca ◽  
Alan Wiseman
Keyword(s):  
Strong Evidence ◽  
Executive Branch ◽  
Strategic Partnerships ◽  
Majority Party ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Congress Party ◽  
Party Members

While scholars have long noted presidential powers over congressional lawmaking arising through persuasion, veto bargaining, and public appeals, we argue that an important tool is missing from this list. Specifically, presidents who are strategic in their choices of early coalition partners in Congress – such as effective sponsors of administration bills – significantly enhance their chance of legislative success. We identify more than 1,400 executive branch proposals appearing as bills in Congress between 1989 and 2006. We examine which members of Congress sponsor these bills, finding strong evidence of disproportionate sponsorship by effective champions, such as majority-party members, committee and subcommittee chairs, lawmakers with proven effectiveness in the previous Congress, party leaders, and senior lawmakers, all else equal. Analyzing the fate of these proposals, we find that much of the success of the president’s agenda in Congress depends on these critical and strategic partnerships with effective congressional proponents.

The Speaker's Task Force in the Post-Reform House of Representatives

1981 ◽  
Vol 75 (2) ◽  
pp. 397-410 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Sinclair
Keyword(s):  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Task Force ◽  
Central Element ◽  
Majority Party ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Task Forces ◽  
The Family ◽  
Patterns Of Behavior ◽  
Party Members

Because of changes in the issues at the center of controversy, changes in rules and norms and high membership turnover, the current House majority party leaders operate in a much less predictable environment than their predecessors did. In response to the changed environment, Speaker O'Neill has developed the strategy of leadership by inclusion, a central element of which is the Speaker's task force, an ad hoc group appointed by the Speaker and charged with passage of a specific bill. The leaders believe task forces help them perform both of their primary functions—building winning coalitions and “keeping peace in the family.” By increasing the number of people working in an organized way to pass the bill at issue, the task force increases the probability of a bill's success on the floor. Work on a task force satisfies junior members' expectations of participation and fosters cooperative patterns of behavior among party members.

Tariff politics and congressional elections: exploring the Cannon Thesis

2016 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 382-414 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew J Clarke ◽  
Jeffery A Jenkins ◽  
Kenneth S Lowande
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Executive Branch ◽  
Congressional Elections ◽  
Significant Loss ◽  
Majority Party ◽  
Business Interests ◽  
Political Effects ◽  
Party Members ◽  
Market Instability ◽  
The U.S

While a number of studies have examined the politics of tariff decision-making in the United States, little work has examined the subsequent political effects of tariff policy. We help fill this gap in the literature by analyzing—both theoretically and empirically—the electoral implications of tariff revision. Specifically, we investigate the veracity of the Cannon Thesis—the proposition advanced by Speaker Joe Cannon in 1910 that the majority party in the U.S. House was punished when it made major revisions to the tariff. We find that from 1877 to 1934 major tariff revisions were, on average, associated with a significant loss of votes for majority-party members—both regionally and nationally—that translated into a loss of House seats. We find support for the notion that major tariff revisions generated inordinate uncertainty among various business interests, which the opposition party could then use (by leveraging fear and market instability) to mobilize its base and gain ground in the following election. Our results provide a new explanation for the delegation of tariff policymaking to the executive branch.

Mexico

2021 ◽  
pp. 572-593
Author(s):  
Eric Magar
Keyword(s):  
Multiple Regression ◽  
Word Length ◽  
Regression Models ◽  
Term Limits ◽  
Majority Party ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
Single Term ◽  
Multiple Regression Models ◽  
Party Members

This chapter describes the institutions of legislative debate in the Mexican Cámara de Diputados and assesses predictors of floor participation. Multiple regression models are fit on more than 23,000 speeches between 2006 and 2020. They show that majority party members get privileged floor access, in both the number of speeches delivered and their word length, even after accounting for larger parties having more potential speakers. Other status indicators, such as committee chairs, party leaders, and seniority, have more modest but also positive effects in debate. Women speak more than men. And the removal of single-term limits in 2018, which tend to personalize elections, associate with a significant surge in floor participation.

Democratic Procedures in the CCP's Cadre Selection Process: Implementation and Consequences

2015 ◽  
Vol 225 ◽  
pp. 73-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qingjie Zeng
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Selection Process ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Democratic Reform ◽  
Process Implementation ◽  
Depth Study ◽  
Research Interviews ◽  
Party Members ◽  
Informal Practices ◽  
Formal Procedures

AbstractSince the early 1990s, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has put in place a series of measures to allow more Party members to participate in the cadre selection process. “Intra-party democracy” was promoted as a remedy to solve the corruption and social tension that resulted from overly concentrated personnel power. How effective are these formal procedures in constraining the appointment power of core Party leaders and institutionalizing the influence of a larger group of cadres? Drawing on archival research, interviews and quantitative data, this paper examines two components of intra-party democratic reform: “democratic recommendation,” which serves as a gateway to cadre promotion, and the semi-competitive elections at Party congresses. This in-depth study finds that the efforts to expand bottom-up participation are hindered by loopholes in formal regulations, informal practices and the frequent rotation of Party officials. Meanwhile, the reform measures have brought changes to the personnel system by complicating the Party secretaries' exercise of appointment power and altering the incentives of ambitious cadres. The implementation of intra-party democracy could improve the vitality of one-party rule, and its ebbs and flows imply a divide within China's top leadership over the direction of political change.

scholarly journals Members versus Experts: The Perceptions of Party Leadership Styles in New Democracies

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (5) ◽  
pp. 810-825
Author(s):  
Sergiu Gherghina
Keyword(s):  
Leadership Styles ◽  
New Democracies ◽  
Party Leadership ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Party Members

Party leaders are highly relevant for contemporary political arenas. Their leadership styles have been often investigated relative to their behaviour and attitudes, but rarely through the lenses of those who observe them closely. This article aims to fill this gap in the literature and compares the ways in which party members and experts evaluate leaders on the transactional–transformational continuum. It uses individual-level data from a survey conducted in 2018 with a modified version of the MLQ. The analysis focuses on eight parliamentary parties in Romania and Bulgaria, covering 19 party leaders and 33 terms over a period of 15 years (2004–2018). The results indicate important differences in the assessment of party leaders, with members having more heterogeneous opinions and seeing them more transformational in comparison to experts.

Partisan agenda control in the US house: A theoretical exploration

2012 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 555-570 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffery A Jenkins ◽  
Nathan W Monroe
Keyword(s):  
Agenda Setting ◽  
Median Voter ◽  
Voter Model ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
Agenda Control ◽  
Majority Party ◽  
Party Government ◽  
The Us ◽  
Median Voter Model ◽  
Party Members

While a number of scholars have focused on the importance of partisan agenda control in the US House, few have examined its uneven consequences within the majority party. In this paper, we explore ‘counterfactual’ utility distributions within the majority party, by comparing policy outcomes under a party-less median voter model to policy outcomes under party-based positive and negative agenda control models. We show that the distribution of policy losses and benefits resulting from agenda control are quite similar for both the positive and negative varieties. In both cases, moderate majority-party members are made worse off by the exercise of partisan agenda control, while those to the extreme side of the majority-party median benefit disproportionately. We also consider the benefit of agenda control for the party as a whole, by looking at the way changes in majority-party homogeneity affect the summed utility across members. Interestingly, we find that when the distance between the floor and majority-party medians decreases, the overall value of positive and negative agenda control diminishes. However, we also find support for the ‘conditional party government’ notion that, as majority-party members’ preferences become more similar, they have an increased incentive to grant agenda-setting power to their leaders.

Year of refusal: crisis and ideology in the Communist Party of Canada, 1956-7

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (21) ◽  
pp. 55-89
Author(s):  
Mack Penner
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
The Other ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
The World ◽  
Party Members ◽  
Soviet Invasion ◽  
Precipitous Decline ◽  
The One ◽  
Communist Party Of Canada

Just as they did for other communist parties around the world, events in 1956 brought a crisis to the Communist Party of Canada (CPC). Khrushchev's Secret Speech and the Soviet invasion of Hungary produced a reckoning with what exactly it meant to be a communist and a marxist-leninist. In Canada, this reckoning would lead to a mass exit of party members and to a precipitous decline in the general fortunes of the party after 1956. In existing histories, this crisis has been presented as though it played out in quite strictly bipolar fashion as a conflict between a growing minority of independent marxists on the one hand and, on the other, a larger group of party leaders and their supporters who remained committed to a Soviet-aligned marxist-leninist politics in Canada. In fact, the ideology of the crisis was more complex. Ideological reactions to 1956 could range, at least, across stalinist, liberal, marxist-leninist, or independent-marxist iterations. Taking 1956 to constitute a year of refusal in the CPC, this essay follows the trajectories of these ideologically distinct 'modes of refusal' and suggests an alternative history.

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