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The literature on congressional decision-making has largely ignored the influence of the minority party in the legislative process. This follows from the widely held belief that the majority party dominates the agenda-setting process. Though the minority party rarely achieves major policy success in Congress, we argue that the minority has significantly more influence over the legislative agenda than is commonly believed. We posit that, under some conditions, the minority has enough bargaining leverage to get floor votes on their proposals, in the form of both amendments and bills. We test our theoretical expectations with a novel design utilizing whip count data from the House and show that when a whip count on a bill occurs, the likelihood of a minority amendment disappointment and a majority amendment roll increases, respectively. This suggests that the more leverage the minority party has, the more we see their legislative proposals on the floor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do the outcomes of government action differ between periods of unified and divided government? Using “event study” methodology, this articles addresses the question by looking at sudden shifts between divided and unified government—Bush v. Gore, the Jeffords switch, and the 2002 election. The results show that oil and gas stocks (i.e. Republican “constituent firms”) rose abruptly as Republicans took unified control, while renewable energy stocks (i.e. Democratic “constituent firms”) fell. The pattern reversed, however, when Democrats took back control of the Senate. These outcomes call into question non-partisan theories of law making.

INTRODUCTION Over the past 30 years, a number of states have instituted election reforms aimed at lowering the costs associated with voting. With the expansion of various alternative voting options, [...]

House rules allow the Speaker to choose any conferees he wishes, suggesting he might use conference delegations to advance partisan goals. In practice, the Speaker nearly always selects members of the bill's jurisdictional committee(s). The authors propose a theory of conferee selection that endogenizes both partisan goals and committee participation. They argue that the Speaker's incentives lead him to appoint committee members, but he anticipates cases in which they would produce an outcome unfavorable to the majority party. In these cases, the Speaker appoints other conferees in addition to those from the jurisdictional committee, thereby 'packing' the delegation in favor of the majority party position. The authors derive and test hypotheses regarding when the Speaker packs conference delegations, and what delegations look like when packed. The tests support the theory. Keywords; Congress; House of Representatives; parties; Speaker of the House; leaders; conference committees

In this analytical essay, we advance a simple but powerful claim: scholars can better understand outcomes of international organizations (IOs) by developing theories that explicitly make assumptions about legislative process. Because process assumptions powerfully explain domestic legislative outcomes and many international assemblies demonstrate similarities to domestic legislatures, scholars could usefully employ legislative-process-centric approaches when theorizing about outcomes in world politics. Following an explication of why scholars might focus on legislative procedure, we describe several legislative procedures and highlight variance across those procedures within several well-known IOs. We also suggest that this variance and the shadow of power politics cast over IOs provides fertile ground for comparative legislative scholars—including scholars of the U.S. Congress—to develop and test new theories of legislative procedure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the author talks about the agenda control and electoral success in the U.S. House. It mentions about the relationship between the popularity of the U.S. Congress or the popularity of a particular political party. It mentions agenda control would have a mediated impact on electoral returns by clarifying ideological expectations; and predicted relationship is that majority candidates will win more votes as their spending relative to their minority competition.