Towards a Theory of Minority-Party Influence in the U.S. Congress

Transcription

1 Towards a Theory of Minority-Party Influence in the U.S. Congress Jeffery A. Jenkins Department of Politics University of Virginia jajenkins@virginia.edu Tessa Provins School of Social Science, Humanities, and Arts University of California, Merced ksmith42@ucmerced.edu Nathan W. Monroe School of Social Science, Humanities, and Arts University of California, Merced nmonroe2@ucmerced.edu November 19, 2016 The literature on congressional decision-making largely ignores the influence of the minority party in the legislative process, particularly in the U.S. House of Representatives. This omission follows from the widely held belief that the majority party dominates the agenda-setting process, and thus is primarily responsible for determining legislative outcomes. Though we agree that 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 and we begin establishing a foundation for a broader theory of minority-party influence. 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. To investigate this claim, we first examine minority-party disappointments and majority-party rolls across the post-war era. We then test our hypothesis using 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.

2 The best system is to have one party govern and the other party watch. Rep. Thomas B. Reed (R-ME), 1880 Introduction Partisan theories of congressional decision-making consider party influence to be the sole domain of the majority party. More specifically, the two foundational theoretical perspectives on parties in Congress, cartel theory (Cox and McCubbins 1993, 2005) and conditional party government (CPG) theory (Rohde 1991; Aldrich 1995; Aldrich and Rohde 2001), assume that the majority party is the unique source of party power in Congress; the minority party, by comparison, has no role in governing at all. As a result, scholars conception of party power in Congress is in keeping with the quote by Thomas Reed above 1 the majority party rules, while the minority party (if it is even mentioned) is left to sit and watch (and perhaps complain). Yet to many political observers, this characterization is unsatisfying. While there is overwhelming evidence that the majority party possesses a significant legislative advantage, it seems unlikely that its advantage is absolute. Rather, the minority party likely plays some role, at least under some conditions, which renders the outcome of the process different than it would have been in their absence. Consider an example from the 111th Congress ( ) where H.R. 3962, a bill regarding access to medical care for Medicare beneficiaries and pension relief, passed on the floor by a very small margin ( ). At the time, medical care was a highly continuous 1 The 1880 quote by Reed occurred when he was a minority-party member in the House. The Republicans would regain the majority following the 1888 elections, and Reed would be elected Speaker in 1889 (51st Congress). He would institute his Reed Rules a series of internal changes that effectively shut the minority out of the policy making process in The Democrats would return to power in 1891 and attempt to rescind the Reed Rules but Reed himself forced them to rethink their strategy by gumming up their agenda using a variety of dilatory tactics. By 1893, the Democrats had effectively come to terms with Reed s argument that in order to get anything done in the House, the majority had to rule effectively and thus minority rights had to be infringed. Reed would be elected Speaker again in 1895 and 1897 (54th and 55th Congresses), and his institutional legacy of iron-fisted control would allow the GOP to dictate policymaking in the House through 1910 when Speaker Joe Cannon (R- IL) was stripped of various powers by a cross-partisan alliance of Democrats and progressive Republicans. 1

3 partisan issue, due to the passage of H.R 3590, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), three months earlier. While H.R was being considered on the floor, Republicans (the minority party) introduced an amendment sponsored by Minority Leader John Boehner (R- OH) that (1) expanded the protection of high-risk groups and reinsurance programs to prevent individuals from having lifetime spending caps or their policies canceled and (2) allowed small businesses the legal ability to pool in order to reduce the cost of health coverage for employees. The GOP s amendment forced Democrats (the majority party) to take a position that was potentially valuable for the Republican Party. The amendment focused on two specific groups, seniors and small business owners, which tend to vote at high rates and support Republicans. And while the amendment failed, , the GOP still gained in the process. That is, the Republicans opportunity to propose an amendment and leverage a floor vote forced the Democrats to take a stance that was (to some degree) electorally harmful. 2 This example, of course, does not demonstrate the unraveling of majority-party power at the hands of the minority. But it does show that the minority s ability to make proposals on the House floor is not as rare as we might suspect. Yet, the extant literature offers us no way to think about this theoretically. While we largely agree with contemporary theories of party power in Congress that the majority party dominates the agenda process we also believe that completely ignoring the minority party goes too far, and leaves us unable to explain a substantial part of what happens in the U.S. House. While we have some sense of what it means for outcomes if the minority can make these type of proposals namely, that systematically considering minority-party proposals on the floor should have a moderating effect on final 2 In the context of the U.S. Senate, Reynolds (2016) notes the value of forcing the other party to make uncomfortable decisions. Similarly, Lee (2016, 145) discusses gotcha messages as a form of partisan warfare. 2

4 outcomes (Krehbiel, Meirowitz, and Wiseman 2015) we have no sense how, why and when the majority leaves the door open for minority proposals. In this paper, we begin to fill this gap by conceiving of ways that the minority party might be able to wield some influence in the House, and consider what they might seek to achieve as a result. In looking for evidence of minority-party influence, we first examine two indicators: (1) minority disappointment rates (how often a majority of the minority party supports a bill/amendment that ultimately goes down to defeat) and (2) majority roll rates (how often a majority of the minority party supports a bill/amendment that passes over the objections of a majority of the majority party). A close look at these data suggests that the amendment stage is where most of the minority party s leverage is realized. We then take some initial steps toward building a theory of minority-party influence in Congress by assuming that plenary time is scarce, that the minority party can sometime deliver or withhold critical votes for the majority party, and that the majority has a variety of policies that they wish to pursue. Minority-party power, then, is based on the minority s ability to pursue dilatory tactics and other procedural devices that waste (expend) valuable plenary time, as well as withhold marginal votes necessary for passage. The minority can potentially leverage this temporary blocking power into either policy gains (by forcing final-passage votes on policies that they care about) or electoral gains (by forcing amendment votes, and thus subjecting the majority to difficult votes in front of constituents). 3 Finally, we test our hypothesis that greater minority leverage leads to more minority proposals on the floor using whip count data. That is, we assume that House bills that receive whip counts are in the minority leverage treatment condition, such that we expect these bills to give them the best opportunity to extract agenda concessions from the majority. We find that 3 See Egar (2016) for a discussion of the effects of the minority party forcing roll-call votes. 3

5 whip counts have a positive effect on minority amendment disappointments and majority amendment rolls in the House, and these results are robust to the inclusion of a variety of covariates. The Role of the Minority Party in the Existing Theoretical Literature As noted, the dominant partisan theories (cartel and CPG) of congressional decisionmaking are structured entirely around the majority party. In cartel theory, it is assumed that the agenda process is dictated by a small group of majority-party leaders who act on behalf of the median House member (Cox and McCubbins 1993; 2005). Here, the heart of party power comes by installing multiple veto points in the agenda process, so that the majority of the majority party is never rolled on the floor (i.e., a majority of the majority never opposes a bill that subsequently goes on to pass). In CPG theory, when the parties are internally homogenous and distinct (polarized) from one another, members of the majority party delegate power to their leaders to structure the agenda such that policy initiatives that a majority of the majority support are pursued (Rohde 1991; Aldrich 1995; Aldrich and Rohde 2001). While cartel theory is about the majority party seeking to avoid harm, and CPG theory is about the majority aggressively seeking to pass new policy, both are majority party-centric. Neither affords the minority a meaningful role in the agenda process. The minority is treated as little more than a bystander, an entity to be ignored at best and steamrolled at worst. The other dominant theoretical approach is distinctly non-partisan, in that congressional decision-making is driven entirely by majoritarian or supermajoritarian voting rules, and the aggregation of legislator preferences through these procedures. In these treatments, pivotal actors the floor median in the House (Krehbiel 1991), and the filibuster and veto overrides pivots in a more general inter-branch formulation (Krehbiel 1998) make important decisions, 4

6 and parties are treated as epiphenomenal. When parties are considered in more depth, their exclusion stems from a belief that the majority and minority parties cancel each other out. As Krehbiel (1998, 171) notes in his study of lawmaking: The point is not that majority-party organizations and their deployment of resources are inconsequential. Rather it is to suggest that competing party organizations bidding for pivotal voters may roughly counterbalance one another, so final outcomes are not much different from what simpler but completely specified nonpartisan theory predicts. Thus, in these nonpartisan theories, neither party organization possesses disproportionate agenda power. In effect, the minority is ignored just like in the party cartel and CPG theories but the majority is ignored as well. 4 If we move beyond these foundational theoretical works, we do find some explanations that hint at but do not fully identify this minority agenda access. Jenkins and Monroe (2014), for example, examine how cartel theory can be extended to include multiple veto coalitions the standard majority party coalition as well as a cross-party coalition. They examine the Conservative Coalition (CC) a coalition of Southern Democrats and Republicans in the mid- 20th Century House, when the Democrats controlled the chamber, and find that the CC also effectively wielded negative agenda control. As such, the minority Republicans were an important factor in CC blocking power during this time. Schickler (2001) and Schickler and Pearson (2009) also examine whether the CC exercised positive agenda control in the House during this period that is, whether the Rules Committee, controlled by Southern Democrats and Republicans, sought to actively move policy in a conservative direction by opening the gates on legislation that would roll the Democratic majority (and the Northern Democrats, in particular). Their results which are meant to question the extent of majority-party blocking during this 4 For a critique of Krehbiel s counterbalancing party argument, see Aldrich and Rohde (2000). 5

7 period (and thus the unconditional nature of the party cartel theory) also suggest a meaningful supplemental role for the minority. 5 More recently, a theory that more fully appreciates the minority party s role has emerged: Krehbiel, Meirowitz, and Wiseman s (2015) competitive theory of partisan lawmaking. Here the basic premise is that both parties play a role in the policy making process. That is, the majority and minority parties are able to offer amendments and use transferable resources to assemble winning or blocking coalitions. The result of these additions to canonical partisan models is the production of more moderate policy outcomes. However, their added assumptions beg the question of how, why, and when the majority ever lets the minority party have access to the agenda to offer amendments. In order to take the next step forward, we need to develop a theory that elucidates the conditions under which the majority might allow the minority to play a role in the policy making process. Minority Influence in Congress: Empirical Regularities To assess whether the minority party may in fact generate influence by leveraging procedural power, we first examine two indicators: minority-party disappointments and majorityparty rolls. Minority-party disappointments when a majority of the minority party supports an amendment or bill (on final passage), but it ultimately fails on floor are, by definition, proposals that are opposed by a majority of the majority party; thus, they effectively separate the 5 Research on the Senate, where institutional features limit the extent to which the majority can control the agenda (relative to the House), also provides a role for the minority party. Procedural rights are more plentiful in the Senate, so the minority has more avenues to pursue a dilatory strategy with holds and filibusters being the most wellknown methods. Historically, filibusters were used to kill legislation, and many reforms efforts were aimed at circumventing these obstacles in order to pass languishing legislation (Binder 1997; Dion 1997; Koger 2010; Wawro and Schickler 2006). However, the days of Mr. Smith-style blockades have given way to a more complex bargaining environment, and in the modern Senate these tactics have become the foundation of the minority party s leverage. Sinclair (2006), for example, argues that Senate filibusters and holds are used more often to extract policy concessions on unrelated matters. Den Hartog and Monroe (2011) conceptualize these dilatory tactics as costs that the minority can impose on the majority in trying to set the Senate agenda, which affect the likelihood that majority proposals and minority counter-proposals will be considered on the Senate floor. 6

8 party positions in many cases. Given that disappointments (1) have the support of half or more of the party but (2) fail to pass, and thus cannot lead to new law, they are perhaps a better indicator of proposals that are broadly intended for position-taking (electoral) benefits but not policy change. Majority-party rolls when a majority of the minority party supports an amendment or bill (on final passage) and it passes, despite opposition from a majority of the majority party also effectively separate the party positions but represent potential policy change rather than position-taking, since the bills pass and do raise the possibility of new law. Thus, comparison between minority disappointments and majority rolls will be instructive vis-àvis minority-party strategy and majority-party response over time. We generated majority-roll and minority-disappointment data using the Political Institutions and Public Choice (PIPC) House Roll-Call Database, which spans the 83rd ( ) through 111th ( ) Congresses (Rohde 2010). We tallied the number of minority-party disappointments and majority-party rolls on amendment (final-passage) votes, and then divided that number by the total number of roll-call votes on amendment (final-passage) votes for each Congress this produced minority-party disappointment rates and majority-party roll rates for the House in each Congress. We present these data (in four line graphs) in Figure 1. [Figure 1 about here] The final-passage vote data line up closely with the monolithic partisan theories the majority final-passage roll rate and minority final-passage disappointment rate remain at or very near zero for the entire time series. (Indeed, the modal outcome for the minority final-passage disappointment rate is zero.) This suggests that the majority effectively keeps the minority from being able to leverage procedural power to (potentially) change policy outcomes. 7

9 If we look at the amendment stage, however, the picture is significantly less clear. The minority amendment disappointment rate steadily increases over time from about 10% to nearly 50% (in the 111th Congress). This upward trend stands in stark contrast to the majority amendment roll rate, which fluctuates greatly; it remains mostly above 20% through the 91st Congress with a high of more than 50% in the 90th Congress and then drops off considerably thereafter. The early years overlap with the period when the Conservative Coalition was present and active, while the post-91st years roughly match the post-reform era of party resurgence described by Rohde (1991) and others. Overall, the minority party appears to have little influence on final-passage votes, in line with partisan theories, but plays a much larger role on amendments. We observe a significant difference in the rates of minority-party disappointments across final-passage and amendment votes, which suggests that the minority is able to leverage votes on amendments that they support. Further, the minority party is able to influence policy outcomes more often during the amendment process by rolling the majority party, which rarely happens on final-passage votes. Minority Influence in Congress: Theoretical Foundations With these empirical regularities in hand, we now begin to construct a theory of minority party influence in the U.S. Congress. We first need to establish the source of the minority s leverage, and then consider what they will seek to achieve with that leverage. We take these topics in turn, outlining major assumptions and connecting with a logical framework that yields our key hypothesis. The Source of Minority-Party Leverage First, we argue that the minority party s leverage in the modern House is tied to plenary time. 8

10 Assumption: Plenary time in the House is scarce and thus valuable, especially to the majority party. Plenary time or the time available to process legislation through the chamber is limited in the House, and is perhaps the majority s most valuable resource (Cox and McCubbins 1993; Den Hartog and Monroe 2011). Without sufficient plenary time, the majority cannot change policy, take positions, advertise, distribute pork, or demonstrate its ability to steward government in the eyes of the public. It is truly proximate to all of their collective party goals. Assumption: The minority has the ability to prevent efficient use of plenary time. The combination of scarcity and import leaves the majority open to some degree of exploitation. Where the minority can chew up plenary time through various procedural motions (and modest dilatory tactics), or prevent or delay its moderate members from supporting majority-party proposals, they can generate leverage to bargain with the majority over the use of plenary time. 6 Moreover, the dynamics of this delay-produced leverage are ripe for the minority to push for plenary time of their own. If faced with the choice between losing x+1 units of plenary time to the minority party s dilatory tactics or withholding of critical moderate votes or giving the minority party x units of plenary time to have their own proposals considered, the majority (we assume) prefers the latter, all else equal. And while there may be other negative externalities associated with allowing minority proposals onto the floor, the majority can simply figure these into the price of floor time for the minority. In other words, the minority may have to promise reduce its dilatory consumption by, for example, more quickly providing key moderate votes for a majority 6 This dynamic mirrors some of the processes and incentives that surround veto bargaining (Cameron 2000). In future work on this topic, we plan to build more specifically on that theory to inform our own. 9

11 proposal by x+5 units of plenary time in order to get x units of time for their proposals, to compensate for negative electoral externalities (for example) that could accrue from the minority s use of their plenary time. And, certainly, the majority may restrict what the minority is able to use its plenary time on (i.e., certain proposal may be off limits). But the basic bargaining environment exists such that if the minority can credibly threaten to slow down the process, they can demand some plenary time of their own. So can the House minority party credibly threaten to delay? The answer varies over time. In the antebellum House, for example, filibusters and other procedural delays were relatively common (Koger 2012; Den Hartog 2014). More recently, the minority-party Republicans in the 1950s House obtained leverage from the dual veto created by Conservative Coalitioncontrolled committee chairs (Jenkins and Monroe 2014). Over time, the ability to delay in the House has eroded substantially, yet the conventional wisdom that the minority in the modern era is entirely powerless to slow down the legislative process is, we think, overstated. In the contemporary House, dilatory tactics are less often displayed but still provide context for deliberation: the minority party can move to recommit bills prior to final passage; all non-closed rules are subject to minority-party amendment proposals; and enterprising minorityparty members can expend time challenging chairs interpretations of House procedure (in some circumstances). Perhaps most importantly, Minority-party leaders are able to insist that their moderate members who would prefer to vote with the majority on pure policy grounds on some issues instead withhold their support, for at least some time. This in turn forces majority-party leaders to spend time whipping their own moderates into casting difficult votes in support of the party s proposals. 10

12 In short, though we have become accustomed to equilibria in the House that avoid the demonstration of minority delay, its potential certainly informs the negotiated distribution of plenary time. Achieving Minority-Party Goals We argue that the minority party uses its leverage in pursuit of goals. Assumption: The minority party s primary goal is to pass policy consistent with their platform. The minority party s first goal is to change and/or pass policy. Shared policy beliefs and the pursuit of common policy goals are essential forces that draw co-partisans together in most legislatures, and the U.S. Congress is no different. For members of Congress, the benefits of achieving those policy goals are both a means of fulfilling their representational contract with their constituents (including the special interests that help to fund their campaigns for election and reelection) and an end in and of themselves, inasmuch as legislators have personal policydriven motives for seeking office in the first place. Assumption: The minority party seeks to change policy in current and future Congresses (though they would prefer policy change in the current Congress all else equal). The minority party values policy change not only in the present Congress but in future Congresses. Given the institutional barriers that make policy change costly for the minority party, it is difficult for them to pass significant legislation without a majority of seats in the House. Therefore, we assume that the minority party is necessarily farsighted with regard to creating and changing policy. This long-term view influences the way in which the minority attempts to achieve policy change. 11

13 Assumption: The minority party sees regaining majority status as their best opportunity for policy. Naturally the minority party aspires to become the majority party, and in a sense we might view this as a purely electoral goal. That is, in order to recapture the majority, the minority must persuade enough voters in enough critical districts to replace majority-party members with their members. But, in fact, recapturing the majority simply for the sake of doing so is a not a particularly useful way to think about this goal. Instead, we argue that it is more useful to envision the minority party s desire to achieve majority status as a desire to obtain a less expensive avenue for producing policy change in future Congresses. 7 That is, the cost of changing policy as the minority party is likely to be quite expensive on a per item basis, relative to changing policy as the majority party. Thus, for the minority, the choice to invest in recapturing majority status is also an investment, of sorts, in cheaper policy change. This calculation becomes clearer if considered in dynamic terms. Envision a minority party, at the beginning of a given Congress, whose policy aspirations span a number of Congresses into the future. The minority s decision to invest resources in effectuating immediate policy change (during the current Congress) versus investing those resources in trying to increase their probability of achieving majority status in a future Congress hinges on (1) the relative cost differential in changing policy as the minority party vs. the majority party and (2) how much they can increase their probability of recapturing majority status. To see how these factors interact, imagine a hypothetical world that is three Congresses long. In this world, the minority party can pursue two different strategies. The minority can 7 A number of other benefits also follow from majority status. Most notably, members have an easier time raising campaign dollars (Cann 2008; Cox and Magar 1999) and get a larger share of the particularistic projects allocated by Congress (Crespin and Finocchiaro 2008). However, we argue that the major policy benefit of majority status outweighs and overshadows these secondary benefits. 12

14 spend the first two Congresses forcing numerous votes on things that will never change policy in their preferred direction, but will set them apart from the majority electorally effectively attacking/exposing vulnerabilities in the majority s electoral prospects with the hope of becoming the new majority party in the third Congress. Alternatively, the minority can work towards changing a few policies in each of the three Congresses but never achieve enough to significantly increase their probability of recapturing the majority. 8 How do these two strategies compare? For simplicity, assume that the latter strategy yielded precisely three major policy changes for the minority per Congress, for a total of nine minority policy goals achieved over our hypothetical three-congress period. The essential question then becomes how many policy changes the party could achieve in one Congress as the majority, if they successfully pursue the former strategy and regain majority control in the third Congress. In our example, where the minority can change three policies per Congress, if the majority party can achieve more than nine policy changes in one Congress, then the latter strategy is preferred. Put in slightly more general terms, if (# of Congresses spent in the minority before capturing the majority + 1) x (# of major policy goals achievable as the minority in a Congress) < (# of major policy changes achievable as the majority in a Congress) then the minority should invest their resources and leverage towards recapturing majority status, even when policy change is the primary goal. Our observation of congressional policymaking leads us to assume that the discrepancy between the number of policy goals that can be achieved as the minority and the number of policy goals that can be achieved as the majority is very large. 8 Of course, there are exogenous trends and shocks that will affect this probability, but from the perspective of the minority strategy, these exogenous factors cannot be accounted for and thus we omit them from our discussion here. 13

15 Therefore, if the recapture strategy has even a modest impact on the likelihood of achieving majority status, then the minority party is highly likely to invest in this strategy. If this is the case, then we should observe the minority forcing many votes on floor proposals in the form of amendments or bills but with relatively little success at changing policy. From this logic, we derive the following: Hypothesis: The minority party will be more likely to have its proposals considered on the floor as their leverage over the floor agenda increases. In the next section, we move on to a systematic test of our hypothesis, using whip count data from the U.S. House to operationalize minority-party leverage. Data and Research Design The key causal concept which will inform the treatment in our research design, is leverage. As we have articulated in our theoretical discussion above, minority leverage can come from two sources (1) obstruction, which eats up plenary time, and (2) providing/withholding votes when the majority does not have enough to pass things that they care about. Empirically, obstruction is always possible; should the minority party choose to use it even if in a limited form relative to, say, the Senate it could be used virtually anytime. It does not require that the majority have any problems corralling enough votes to get things done. So it is hard to show minority-party influence vis-a-vis obstruction. Because you never observe the case when the minority does not have leverage to obstruct. What we can show, though, is (2) above. That is, we can look for those cases in which the minority can provide or withhold marginal votes to the majority that are likely to be pivotal to the success of a majority party initiative. In doing so, the minority is able to gain extra leverage and extract benefits. Empirically, then, we will seek evidence for the part of our theory 14

16 of minority-party influence that conceptualizes leverage as minority vote trading. Our research design uses a whip count (i.e., whether a bill received a whip count or not) as the indicator of whether the majority party feels vulnerable on an important piece of legislation and, if so, the minority receives the high leverage treatment. Specifically, whip counts are polls conducted by the majority party whip to gauge how members plan to vote on a piece of legislation. The majority party uses whip counts to give leadership a sense of whether there are enough votes in in favor of the majority-party position on a given piece of legislation, and to learn how to garner sufficient support (if it is lacking) before a floor vote (Burden and Frisby 2004). Whip counts are not used for all pieces of legislation, however. They occur only when the majority is uncertain about the outcome. As a result, the number of whip counts has fluctuated between eighty and a hundred per Congress over the last 50 years (Sinclair 1995; Evans et. al. 2003). Whip counts fulfill two distinct and pertinent conditions necessary for operationalizing instances in which the minority party has extra leverage. First, there are items on the agenda that the majority party cares about passing. Second, there must be uncertainty about whether the bills that the majority cares about will pass. Majority-party leaders would not conduct a whip count if (a) they did not care about the bill passing and (b) they were certain that it would pass. Further, in many instances, majority-party leaders use whip counts to pressure co-partisans towards positions they prefer due to uncertainty of the outcomes of legislation (Burden and Frisby 2004). Employing whip counts as an indicator of high minority-party leverage may be critiqued in several ways. First, consider a scenario where the majority party is overly cautious. More specifically, the majority is risk averse and thus conducts more whip counts. If this is the case, 15

17 then we expect the treatment variable should wash out because the minority party is not using leverage for policy gains. 9 Alternatively, consider a scenario where the majority party is internal conflicted. For example, during the Conservative Coalition era, Southern and Northern Democrats often had different policy preferences, which caused the party to sometimes be split. In this case, whip counts on bill may not signal a high leverage situation but rather the minority taking advantage of the majority s lack of cohesion. We believe that even if the minority seizes the opportunity to propose more amendments due to a divided majority party, whip counts still reveal bills that are in a high leverage treatment. To evaluate our hypothesis, we use House roll-call data discussed above, compiled in the PIPC Database (Rohde 2010), and whip count data from the Congressional Whip Count Database (Evans 2012) from the 85th ( ) through 99th ( ) Congresses. We choose this time period because it is the only one in which whip count data are available. However, we believe that it works well for our analysis for two reasons. First, the Democrats are the majority party during the duration of the period, allowing us to analyze parties that have similar policy and party goals. Second, this allows us to differentiate between Southern Democrats voting against Republicans, showing true minority-party disappointments during the period of the Conservative Coalition. Throughout the remainder of our discussion, the unit of analysis is a House bill with at least one amendment that received a floor vote. We look at the bill level, rather than at individual roll calls, to assess minority-party leverage on a given piece of legislation. We argue that the minority party will be allowed to propose amendments when the majority party is 9 Another way of looking at this is that the pool of whip counts is contaminated by control cases which would dilute the results that we obtain from out analysis. 16

18 worried about the final outcome of the bill. Thus, by looking at all of the amendment votes that accompany a bill, we can cast a wider net to capture the leverage that does or does not exist for the minority party on that bill. Connecting this to our hypothesis more explicitly, we focus on minority-party-favored legislation (specifically amendments) rather than individual votes to examine trends in minority leverage. We code our first dependent variable 1 if there is a minority-party disappointment on any amendment pertaining to a given bill, and 0 otherwise. However, we also require that these minority (Republican) disappointments be at odds with Southern Democrats, such that a majority of Southern Democrats opposes a majority of Republicans in each case. We use this variable construction to avoid conflating the effect of cross-party Conservative Coalition proposals with true minority-party proposals. 10 We code our second dependent variable 1 if there is a majorityparty roll on any amendment pertaining to a given bill, and 0 otherwise. 11 Each of these dependent variables captures a form of the concept in our hypothesis: a minority proposal considered on the floor. 10 See appendix for robustness checks using three variations of the minority-party disappointments variable: (1) binary variable coded as 1 if for a given bill if there was at least 1 amendment where there was a minority disappointment and the majority of southern democrats voted against the minority party; 0 otherwise; (2) proportion of amendments for which there was a minority disappointment and the majority of southern democrats voted against the minority party for a given bill; (3) number of amendments for which there was a minority disappointment and the majority of southern democrats voted against the minority party for a given bill. We report the results of models using each of these dependent variables in Appendix Table 1. All of the results remain in the expected direction for our main independent variable, whip count, and are statically significant at the p <.05 level and the p <.01 level in the models including the binary and count versions of the dependent variables respectively. 11 See appendix for robustness checks using three variations of the majority-party roll variable: (1) binary variable coded as 1 if for a given bill if there was at least 1 amendment where there was a majority-party roll; 0 otherwise; (2) proportion of amendments for which there was a majority-party roll for a given bill; (3) number of amendments for which there was a majority-party roll for a given bill. We report the results of models using each of these majority-party roll dependent variables in Appendix Table 3. Similar to the results for different variations of the minority disappoints variable, all of the results remain in the expected direction for our main independent variable, whip count, and are statically significant at the p <.01 level in the models including the binary and count versions of the dependent variables. 17

19 We code our main treatment variable, Whip, as 1 when a whip count has been taken at least once on a bill, and 0 otherwise. 12 Although we are confident is this design, we also include several Congress- and bill-level controls to alleviate some potential concerns. Specifically, we control for (a) the difference in majority- and minority-party DW-NOMINATE score means (Poole and Rosenthal 2007) and (b) the difference in the numbers of seats held by the majority and minority parties, 13 as we expect that ideological differences and relative party size may affect the minority s leverage and the likelihood that minority proposals show up on the floor. In addition, we include bill-level controls for (a) whether the president took a position on the bill, 14 (b) the number of days in session when the bill is introduced, 15 and (c) the issue area to which the bill corresponds. 16 Results Given our hypothesis, we expect that there will be a positive relationship between minority disappointments and the incidence of a whip count. We also expect that there will be a positive relationship between majority rolls and the incidence of a whip count. We test this hypothesis using a traditional multivariate (regression) analysis as well as a matching analysis. 12 See appendix for three versions of the whip count independent variable: (1) a binary indicator coded as 1 if whip count is conducted, and 0 otherwise; (2) a binary indicator coded as 1 if the count indicates a winning number of votes (218 votes or more), and 0 otherwise; (3) a count indicator coded as the number of votes between the whip count and the amount needed to win a vote. The results using these different versions of our main independent variable of choice are reported in Appendix Table 2 and Table Party Margin is coded as the difference between the number of majority party members and minority party members in a given congress. Party Margin was created using information available by the Office of the Clerk of the House of Representatives. 14 President position is coded as 1 if the president took a position on a given bill; 0 otherwise. President Position is included as a measure in the PIPC House Roll Call Data (Rohde 2010). 15 We operationalize plenary time as number of days in session. We assume that plenary scarcity is positively correlated with the number of days in a session that have occurred. This is because each party has policies that it would like to pass but as the session goes on there is less time with which to get those policies on the agenda. 16 These issue areas include symbolic, appropriations, defense, foreign policy, economy, taxes, and budget, energy and environment, government operations, welfare and human services, and miscellaneous domestic affairs. In Table 1, Table 2, and Table 3 each of these areas is a dichotomous indicator. An example of how these variables are coded is 1 if a bill issue type is symbolic, internal, and procedural, and 0 otherwise for bills dealing with areas of symbolic, internal, and procedural matters. 18

20 Multivariate Analysis Table 1 displays the results of our linear probability models predicting minority party disappointments. 17 In Model 1, we observe that our main independent variable of interest, Whip, is in the expected (positive) direction and statistically significant (p <.05). When a whip count occurs, there is a 10.2 percentage point increase in the likelihood of a minority-party disappointment on some amendment vote during the consideration of the bill. [Table 1 about here] In Model 2, we include control variables for the number of days in session when the bill was introduced, difference in mean party DW-NOMINATE scores, the margin of seats between the parties, and whether the president took a position on the bill. Consistent with Model 1, Whip is positive and statistically significant (p <.05). There is an 8.62 percentage point increase in the likelihood of a minority-party disappointment on some amendment when a whip count is taken on a bill. Days in Session has a negative relationship with minority-party disappointment and is statistically significant (p <.10), while President Position washes out. In contrast, Party Mean and Party Seat Margin are both positive and statistically significant (p <.01). Finally, in Model 3, we also incorporate bill issue areas, including Appropriations, Defense, Foreign Policy, Economy, Taxes, & Budget, Energy & Environment, Government Operations, Civil Rights & Justice, Welfare & Human Services, and Miscellaneous Domestic. 18 Again, Whip is statistically significant (p <.05). When a whip count occurs, there is a 9.2 percentage point increase in the likelihood of a minority-party disappointment on some amendment vote during the consideration of the bill. Like Model 2, Party Mean and Party Seat 17 Given the dichotomous nature of our dependent variable, we also estimate logit models. The results are consistent with those of the linear probability model (OLS) results displayed in Table The Symbolic, Internal, & Procedural issue type was the excluded category. 19

21 Margin are both statistically significant (p <.01), as is Days in Session (p <.05), but President Position is not. In terms of the issue area dummies, we find that Defense and Foreign Policy are the only issues that have a statistically significant effect on the incidence of a minority disappointment. Table 2 displays the results of our linear probability models predicting majority-party rolls. These models follow the same structure as those used in Table 1 for minority-party disappointments. In Model 1, our main independent variable, Whip, is in the expected (positive) direction and statistically significant (p <.01). When a whip count occurs, there is a 19.6 percentage point increase in the likelihood of a majority-party roll on at least one amendment vote while a given bill is being considered on the floor. [Table 2 about here] Next, in Model 2, we include the same control variables as Model 2 in Table 1. Again, Whip is positive and statistically significant (p <.01). Here, when a whip count occurs, there is an 18.4 percentage point increase in the likelihood of a majority-party roll on at least one amendment vote while a given bill is being considered on the floor. Of the control variables, only President Position is statistically significant (p <.01), exhibiting a positive relationship with majority party rolls. Finally, in Model 3, we include bill issue areas. Once again, Whip is positive and statistically significant (p <.01). When a whip count occurs, there is an 18.7 percentage point increase in the likelihood of a majority-party roll on at least one amendment vote while a given bill is being considered. Like in Model 2, Days in Session, Party Mean, and Party Seat Margin wash out, while President Position is positive and statistically significant (p <.01). And, unlike 20

22 the minority disappointment analysis in Table 1, none of the issue-area variables prove to significant. In sum, in a set of multivariate analyses with or without various controls, the results are clear our high-leverage treatment variable yields a positive and significant effect. The likelihood of a minority-party disappointment (Table 1) and a majority-party roll (Table 2) on an amendment increases following a whip count on a bill. Matching Analysis Our regression analysis provides evidence in support of our theoretical argument, and the results are in line with the expectation presented in our hypothesis. However, these results are only correlational (between whip counts and minority disappointments & majority rolls, respectively). Although the multivariate analysis also includes controls to account for obvious threats to inference, they do not reflect a strong test of causality. In order to better understand the degree to which minority leverage causes minority floor proposals to be considered, we take a matching approach in a second round of analyses. In Table 3, we present t-test results where we match bills on a variety of covariates. In this analysis, the goal is to look at the difference in the mean rate of minority amendment disappointments (as measured in the previous section) across bills that did and did not receive a whip count, respectively. In other words, this analysis shows whether the whip count treatment predicts a different rate of minority amendment disappointments, even when many confounding factors are eliminated by creating matched samples of whipped and not whipped bills. [Table 3 about here] Column 1 reflects a standard t-test without matching and indicates that there is a statistically significant difference (p <.05) in the minority disappointment rate between bills that 21

23 receive a whip count and those that do not. The average treatment effect (ATE) reported in Column 2 and Column 3 reflects the t-test results after using propensity score matching. 19 We matched bills based on days in session until the bill was brought to the floor, the difference in party means, and the margin of members between the majority and minority party. Column 2 uses basic propensity score matching and shows a statistically significant difference (p <.01) between bills that received a whip count and those that did not. Column 3 uses propensity score matching using nearest neighbors (with up to three matches), where again there is a statistically significant difference (p <.01). 20 In Table 4, we present a similar set of t-test results, but now split the groups by whether there was at least one majority amendment roll on a given bill. Column 1 displays the results of a standard t-test without matching and indicates a statistically significant difference (p <.01) in the majority roll rate between bills that receive a whip count and those that do not. Again, like in Table 3, Column 2 and Column 3 display the results for the ATE using propensity score matching (based on days in session until the bill was brought to the floor, the difference in party means, and the margin of members between the majority and minority party). Column 2 uses basic propensity score matching while Column 3 uses propensity score matching using nearest neighbors (with up to three matches). The results in both columns reflect a statistically significant difference (p <.01) between the majority amendment roll rate of bills that received a whip count and those that did not. 21 [Table 4 about here] 19 We matched on other variables including president position and issue areas. The results from these different matches were mixed. 20 Propensity Score Matching creates sets of cases based on the similarities of the distributions of covariates but does not require exact matches on all covariates. When using nearest neighbors, we are able to find multiple proficient matches for each treated case. For more information on propensity score matching see Stuart (2010), Caliendo and Kopeinig (2008) and Dehejia and Wahba (2002). 21 Due to the matching methods that we use there is no loss of observations across tests. 22

24 The results of these matching analyses provide greater causal support for our argument that the majority party will let the minority party have an amendment on a bill, even though it will not likely pass, when the majority is concerned about their ability to efficiently use plenary time. That is, when the minority party has leverage that may inhibit the majority party s ability to achieve their desired policy outcome, the majority will allow the minority a concession in this case a vote on an amendment in order to make the most of their scarce floor time. Conclusion In this paper, we begin to construct a theoretical framework for thinking about minorityparty influence in Congress. In short, we argue that the minority derives leverage by delaying (or threatening to delay) legislative action, which consumes very scarce (and thus valuable) plenary time. To avoid this loss of plenary time, the majority is willing to offer the minority opportunities to have their own proposals considered on the House floor. We argue that, with the goal of recapturing majority status in mind, the minority uses these proposal opportunities to schedule roll calls that help separate them from the majority and force majority-party members into casting difficult votes. Our data which include minority-party disappointment rates and majority-party roll rates for the House show trends that are consistent with this explanation. Specifically, the minority party seems to use its leverage to get floor votes on many amendment proposals that fail, but with the support of the minority party and the opposition of the majority party. This pattern shows up in the House, and stands in contrast to voting on the final passage of bills, which shows very little evidence of any kind of minority proposal. And in more systematic multivariate and matching analyses, we find that when a whip count occurs on an amendment, the likelihood of a minority-party disappointment increases significantly. 23