The theoretical debate over the ability of parties and leaders in the House of Representatives to influence legislative decision-making is at the center of much of the literature on Congress. On the one hand, the Procedural Cartel perspective argues that while the tools used by the majority party leadership to assure the triumph of its preferences may vary depending on the institutional context, the basic ability of the leadership to impact legislative outcomes remains consistent. In contrast, Conditional Party Government (CPG) theory posits that any power the majority party and its leadership possesses over legislative decision-making is directly conditioned upon the amount of agreement within the majority party caucus as to collective goals, as well as the amount of ideological polarization that exists between the majority and minority parties. This thesis provides an original test of these two theoretical perspectives by evaluating their comparative ability to account for the proposal and passage of limitation riders on the House floor during the annual appropriations process since the 1980s. Limitation riders provide a good vehicle to test theories of congressional voting as they often have important policy implications in areas of significant controversy. In addition, the extent to which the individual members or legislative parties are able to successfully utilize limitation riders as a means of making substantive policy is indicative of larger patterns of committee or party domination of the floor process. After reviewing the relevant literature on congressional decision-making, this analysis proceeds to outline the theoretical predictions that the Procedural Cartel and CPG perspectives make regarding limitation riders. An original dataset comprised of over 800 limitation riders from the 97th through the 110th Congresses is analyzed both with respect to overall proposal and passage rates as well their party of origin. This study finds that while the CPG perspective is best able to account for what occurs during periods of low polarization and cohesion, Procedural Cartel provides the most accurate prediction of what occurs when polarization and cohesion are high. These findings suggest that, although these theories both have some ability to account for congressional decision-making on the House floor, both of these frameworks need to be revisited so that they can accurately account for what occurs during floor phase of the legislative process.

This is a biography of Roger Quarles Mills and his contributions to Texas history.

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Boston University. University Professors Program Senior theses. / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / 2031-01-02

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Elections are seldom covered in detail below the level of the national contests. Regional, district, and local elections often appear to be too provincial to be worth the time and effort to research and analyze in any detail."Taking the Fifth" is about a contested congressional race that was in dispute between various local and forces longer than any other House race on record.The Fifth District of Indiana leaned Republican, but it swung to the Democrats about once a decade. The 1960 election broke that historic pattern.Since 1960 was a pivotal election year for both political parties, and since the U. S. Congress was divided by various regional and philosophical factions, it is the contention of the dissertation that the Indiana Fifth District took on more importance than it would have under normal circumstances.Pursuit of power by local and national figures became inextricably involved with the struggle of the candidates in the Fifth District of Indiana. Intraparty grudges between district and state Democratic leaders, scars from Republican battles for congressional leadership posts, Dixiecrat versus urban Democrats maneuvering for dominance on key congressional committees, and an energetic young President and his allies -- bent on making a lasting mark on history -- all influenced the outcome of the race.As the gap widens between election day in Indiana and final settlement of the contest, the two candidates fade into secondary roles, and eventually appear to be little more than pawns for the congressional and national figures who had pre-empted the contest for their own political purposes.

This study examines individual roll call votes on energy issues taken in Congress during the years 1973 to 1983. Logit analysis is used to compare the influence of partisan identification; personal ideology, as measured by support and opposition to the conservative coalition; and district or state energy characteristics, including energy consumption and production. The potential for misleading results due to the multicollinearity of party and ideology is eliminated through the use of a residual variable representing the non-party component of ideology. The results indicate that members of Congress demonstrated considerable variability in voting on energy matters. The House of Representatives was more responsive to variations in energy constituencies. Both the House and the Senate showed a different response when the substantive character of energy issues varied. Questions with an economic impact were more influenced by partisanship, while environmentally related issues were more strongly influenced by ideology. The gross impact of changes in public opinion and changes in the presidency are noticeable throughout, but most especially after the election of Ronald Reagan, when many of the policy changes made previously were dismantled. The results of this study support the basic proposition that individual roll call votes are a product of constituency influence. The results also indicate that the political partisanship and ideology of members are representative of a member's supportive and reelection constituency. The statistical methods used allowed a direct comparison of the influence of party, ideology, and variables representing the characteristics of member's districts. The results obtained substantiate the importance of constituent influence in congressional voting.

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While I do not dispute the pivotal role played by party leaders in setting and shifting a party position, I argue that the impetus for party shifts sometimes comes from the "bottom-up"--that is, from party members themselves. At times, the party position held by the leadership conflicts with some members' constituency interests. Faced with this conflict, backbench members use the legislative process to signal their intention to defect from the party on policy unless the leadership modifies the party's existing position. Party members' party-splitting votes under constituency pressures, however, do not always lead the party into a new brand. If one party, particularly a majority party, is divided but the other party is united over a policy issue, this issue drives a wedge within the majority party. If this wedge issue continues to split the majority party and unite the minority party, the majority party is likely to shift its policy position to solve its dilemma of party division. To test my theory of party position shifts, I explore three historical cases in which there was position change by one or both parties over immigration, national security, and trade. More specifically, these include: the switch of congressional Republicans from anti- to pro-exclusion on Chinese immigration in the post-Reconstruction period; the shift of congressional Democrats from a party of "guns" and "butter" to a party of only "butter" in the post-Vietnam War era; and Republican and Democratic flip-flopping on China and MFN in the post-Cold War period. My findings suggest that policy change in these cases is driven by the shifting preferences of members as they try to resolve tension between the party and the constituency. Sometimes party rank-and-file members are in the driver's seat in defining the parties' positions. This is as true for foreign policy as it is for domestic policy. My dissertation shows that in a representative democracy, the transition from voters' preferences to lawmakers' votes occurs through the politics of procedural voting strategies in Congress. / text

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