Progressive Ambition and Legislative Organization

1
Progressive Ambition and Legislative Organization

• Gregory Robinson
• Department of Political Science
• Michigan State University

2
Theoretical Framework

• Insights from Schlesinger (1966), Fenno (1973),
  Mayhew (1974), etc.
• What goals do we assume drive elected officials?
• What activities do they engage in to pursue these
  goals?
• How do they use (and/or shape) political
  institutions to aid their ambitions?

3
The Argument

• Legislatures are principally organized to help
  members pursue reelection
• Organization also reflects the desire of members
  to pursue higher office.
• The pursuit of one goal vs. the other presents a
  tradeoff
• Most institutional structures aid reelection, but
  some aid progressive ambition.

4
Progressive Ambition Committee Membership in
the House of Representatives

• Mayhews Legislative Activities
• Credit Claiming
• Position Taking
• Advertising
• Higher aspirations seem to produce...a
  distinctive mix of activities. For one thing
  credit claiming is all but useless. It does
  little good to talk about the bacon you have
  brought back to a district you are trying to
  abandon Office advancement seems to require a
  judicious mix of advertising and position taking
  (75-6).

5
Progressive Ambition Committee Membership in
the House (cont.)

• Does Mayhews statement describe a particular
  committee?
• Cant be a distributive committee. And the
  exclusive and control committees are party
  committees
• Judiciary Committee High demand, but no
  distributive value

6
Progressive Ambition Committee Membership in
the House (cont.)

• Why Judiciary?
• Controversial issues
• Abortion
• Busing
• Constitutional Amendments
• Flag burning, etc.
• Impeachment politics

7
Progressive Ambition Committee Membership in
the House (cont.)

• Hypothesis
• House Members on the Judiciary Committee are more
  likely to run for Senate than Members not on the
  Judiciary Committee.
• Preliminary analysis finds support

8
Progressive Ambition Partisan Theories of
Congressional Organization

• If the majority party uses special rules to
  control the floor agenda in the House of
  Representatives to produce non-median outcomes

9
Progressive Ambition Partisan Theories of
Congressional Organization (cont.)

• And if even members running for higher office
  benefit from the party reputation created and
  sustained (in part) by the partys agenda in the
  House

10
Progressive Ambition Partisan Theories of
Congressional Organization (cont.)

• Then members running for higher office have an
  incentive to support their partys attempts to
  control the agenda
• But higher office ambition ?
• move toward the preferences of a new
  constituency

11
Progressive Ambition Partisan Theories of
Congressional Organization (cont.)

• Can members do both? Yes
• By supporting the party when they must, and
  moving toward the preferences of their new
  constituents when they can
• Hypothesis
• A change in constituency preference consistent
  with a run for higher office produces static
  behavior on rules votes but a change in behavior
  on final passage votes proportional to the change
  in constituency preferences.

12
Progressive Ambition in a Fused Executive System
The Select Committee System and the Government in
the British House of Commons

• 1979 Reform in the House of Commons established a
  set of departmentally-aligned select committees
  to oversee, investigate, and provide
  recommendations to the government departments
  with which they were aligned.
• A new path for ambition?

13
Progressive Ambition in a Fused Executive System
(cont.)

• Proposition 1 The most important dimension in
  predicting a members success in moving up the
  career ladder in the British system is party
  loyalty.

14
Progressive Ambition in a Fused Executive System
(cont.)

• Proposition 2 All else equal, a member who has
  demonstrated knowledge and expertise in a given
  policy area is more likely to be given governing
  responsibility within that policy area.

15
Progressive Ambition in a Fused Executive System
(cont.)

• Proposition 3 One place to demonstrate knowledge
  and expertise in a policy area is on a committee
  charged with oversight of that policy area.

16
Progressive Ambition in a Fused Executive System
(cont.)

• Hypothesis
• In a fused executive system, a member who
  participates in a committee with responsibility
  over a particular policy area is more likely than
  other members to receive an executive position in
  the department that makes policy in that area.

17
Progressive Ambition in a Fused Executive System
(cont.)

• Intuition In a system with so much party
  loyalty already built in, members should seek
  ways to distinguish themselves from their
  colleagues (if they want to move up the career
  ladder). The Select Committee represents one
  such way.

18
Conclusion

• Static ambition explains much of legislative
  behavior and legislative organization
• I hope to convince that considering progressive
  ambition as a factor in our theories is worth the
  added complexity

19
Data needs Committees Essay

• Who ran (I have this from 101st-108th Congress)
• Committee membership (ditto)
• Initial committee requests, transfer requests
• More individual House member data (Age,
  background, prior offices, etc.)
• Profiles of gubernatorial races (maybe)

20
Data needs Parties Essay

• W-NOMINATE scores on special rules votes versus
  scores on final passage votes (and perhaps other
  vote types)
• Measures of District and State preferences
  (two-party presidential vote?)
• Who ran (already have some of this)
• When they announced (maybe)

21
Data needs UK Essay

• House of Commons membership
• Select Committee membership
• Government membership
• Measure of party loyalty?

22
Schlesinger (1966) Quotes

• The direction of ambitions fostered by an office
  depends upon the way in which officeholders
  typically treat the office (p. 11).
• The ambitions of any politician flow from the
  expectations which are reasonable for a man in
  his position (p. 9).
• The structure of political opportunities in the
  United States, of course, has grown out of
  existing institutional arrangements. But it also
  affects these arrangements, modifying and
  reinforcing the relationships among institutions
  (p. 200).

23
Schlesinger (1966) Quotes (cont.)

• A man in an office which may lead somewhere is
  more likely to have office ambitions than a man
  in an office which leads nowhere. (p. 8).
• It makes little difference to the theory of
  ambitions whether men adopt the ambitions
  suitable to the office or attain the office
  because of their ambitions. (p. 9).
• The constituency to which the legislator is
  responding is not always the one from which he
  has been electedIt is more important to know
  what he wants to be than how he got where he is
  now (p. 5).

24
Labour Party Leader Jo Grimond (1979), quoted in
King (1981)

• MPs becoming an amalgam of civil servant and
  researcher with a dash of welfare officer thrown
  in.
• More and more MPswanted to be members of the
  Government. Even before they were members they
  wanted to be in touch with government policies.
  They were by nature insiders not critics.