A Reevaluation of Realignments in American Politics: Evidence from the House of Representatives

1985 ◽  
Vol 79 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
David W. Brady
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Policy Change ◽  
House Of Representatives ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Political Leadership ◽  
Structural Features ◽  
Policy Changes ◽  
Majority Party

This article reevaluates American realignment literature based on Clubb, Flanigan, and Zingale's (1980) admonition to focus on control of government and political leadership rather than electoral results. I put forward a theory of policy change in the House of Representatives which shows, like Sinclair (1977), that the effect of electoral realignments is to create a strong and unified majority party in the Congress. However, unlike other work that focuses on electoral courses, I show that structural features of elections created the new majority party in both the Civil War and the 1890s realignments. Specifically, I argue that in these two realignments a strong regional seats-to-votes distortion created the Republican majorities that enacted the policy changes associated with these realignments.

Institutional Development and Participation on House Roll-Call Votes, 1819–1921

2021 ◽  
pp. 106591292110179
Author(s):  
John Baughman ◽  
Timothy P. Nokken
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Institutional Development ◽  
Participation Rates ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Institutional Reforms ◽  
Majority Party ◽  
Party Members ◽  
Civil War Era ◽  
Participation Decisions

An emerging body of literature seeks to understand the determinants of roll-call participation in the early U.S. House of Representatives. A multitude of factors—electoral, institutional, and partisan—exerted significant influence over members’ participation decisions during the time we analyze. We analyze roll-call abstention rates from the 16th to 66th Congress (1819 to 1921) to determine whether electorally at-risk members differed in their attentiveness to their congressional responsibilities than members who faced less or no risk. By examining a century of congresses, we compare both the post-Civil War era immediately prior to adoption of the Australian ballot as well as the pre-Civil War congresses to identify those factors that affected members’ decision to participate on roll-call votes. The time series encompasses important electoral and institutional reforms, including the emergence of strong party caucuses and the enhanced agenda setting prerogatives of the majority party. Our results show that members responded to changes in the political environment, including to electoral concerns, and this effect is present prior to the Civil War. We also find that during the era of the strong Speaker, majority party members significantly increased their roll-call participation rates.

Fighting for the Speakership

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffery A. Jenkins ◽  
Charles Stewart
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Majority Party ◽  
Coalition Politics ◽  
Antebellum Era ◽  
Speaker Of The House ◽  
History Of ◽  
Conservative Coalition ◽  
Regional Interests ◽  
Selection Of

The Speaker of the House of Representatives is the most powerful partisan figure in the contemporary U.S. Congress. How this came to be, and how the majority party in the House has made control of the speakership a routine matter, is far from straightforward. This book provides a comprehensive history of how speakers have been elected in the U.S. House since 1789, arguing that the organizational politics of these elections were critical to the construction of mass political parties in America and laid the groundwork for the role they play in setting the agenda of Congress today. The book shows how the speakership began as a relatively weak office, and how votes for Speaker prior to the Civil War often favored regional interests over party loyalty. While struggle, contention, and deadlock over House organization were common in the antebellum era, such instability vanished with the outbreak of war, as the majority party became an “organizational cartel” capable of controlling with certainty the selection of the Speaker and other key House officers. This organizational cartel has survived Gilded Age partisan strife, Progressive Era challenge, and conservative coalition politics to guide speakership elections through the present day. This book reveals how struggles over House organization prior to the Civil War were among the most consequential turning points in American political history.

Composite Congress. On Dispersal Patterns in Mathew Brady's Political Imagery

2014 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulich Meurer
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
House Of Representatives ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Dispersal Patterns ◽  
Subsequent Work ◽  
Us Senate

Based on the ›patchwork‹ as a concept of (political) heterarchy, the paper explores the formal and medial space of M. Brady’s collaged group portrait of the 36th US-Senate and House of Representatives (1859). Poised between unity and decomposition, the image constitutes a congenial map of American politics, its specific relationism and ›proximal distances.‹ However, Brady’s subsequent work sees this lose patchwork disintegrate during the Civil War and then solidify under Lincoln’s paternal rule.

Parties on the Left, Parties on the Right: Electoral Competition and Citizenship Policy Change in Europe

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
John Graeber
Keyword(s):  
Policy Change ◽  
Spatial Competition ◽  
Electoral Competition ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Policy Changes ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Left Party ◽  
Political Spectrum ◽  
The Right ◽  
Restrictive Policy

Abstract In recent decades, citizenship policies in Europe have changed significantly: some governments have introduced restrictive new requirements for citizenship, while others have made citizenship more accessible. What explains this variation? Despite a burgeoning literature on both comparative citizenship and spatial competition among parties, scholarship on this question remains in its infancy and primarily focused on the influence of the far right. Expanding on this growing research, this article argues that citizenship policy change results from electoral competition on both sides of the political spectrum, in conjunction with governments’ ideological orientation. Using new data on citizenship policies across sixteen European countries from 1975 to 2014, the author demonstrates that left-of-center governments facing increasing levels of left party competition are associated with more accessible policy changes, while increasing levels of party competition from the far right yield more restrictive policy changes under not only right-of-center governments, but also centrist and left-of-center governments as well.

Majority Party Leadership and the Committee System in the House of Representatives

1974 ◽  
Vol 68 (4) ◽  
pp. 1593-1604 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis P. Westefield
Keyword(s):  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Steady Increase ◽  
Party Leadership ◽  
Majority Party ◽  
Leadership Strategy ◽  
Explicit Theory

In this paper one party leadership strategy with respect to the committee system of the House is examined. Building on several relatively clear concepts such as compliance, quality of assignment, expectation, scarcity, and exchange, a very elementary, yet explicit, theory is constructed. It is shown that the leaders pursue a strategy of accommodation. The leaders increase the number of positions on those committees prized by the members in order to guarantee a steady supply of resources to gain leverage with the members. But a steady increase in the supply of positions reduces the scarcity of positions and hence their value to the leaders. Thus, a consequence of the strategy is the need periodically to reorganize or make adjustments in the committee system.

Domestic Constraints on Foreign Policy Change in Belarus

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-55
Author(s):  
Paul Hansbury
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Policy Change ◽  
Interest Group ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Policy Changes ◽  
Group Competition ◽  
Domestic Constraints ◽  
Foreign Policy Change ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Policy Shifts

Abstract After 2014 the relationship between Russia and its ally Belarus was strained. Russia was dissatisfied with Belarus’s foreign policy and sought to influence the latter’s international affairs. This article considers the extent of change and continuity in Belarus’s foreign policy, and thus whether Russia’s criticisms reflect consequential shifts, covering the period 2016–2019. The analysis begins with the removal of EU sanctions, which afforded Belarus new opportunities, and ends before the protest movement that emerged ahead of the election in 2020. The study considers three policy areas: international trade; diplomacy more broadly; and foreign policy concerns for prestige. The article argues that Belarus made appreciable policy changes in response to structural pressures in the period 2016–2019, but the parameters of these foreign policy shifts were necessarily highly constrained by domestic interest group competition which prevents Belarus distancing itself from Russia. It concludes with a brief reflection on how the 2020 election protests and repressions affect the dynamics described.

Financial incentives and psychiatric services in Australia: an empirical analysis of three policy changes

2007 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. P. Doessel ◽  
Roman W. Scheurer ◽  
David C. Chant ◽  
Harvey Whiteford
Keyword(s):  
Policy Change ◽  
Financial Incentives ◽  
Psychiatric Services ◽  
Separate Determination ◽  
Policy Changes ◽  
Special Cases ◽  
Medicare Benefit ◽  
Commonwealth Government ◽  
The Government ◽  
New Item

Australia has a national, compulsory and universal health insurance scheme, called Medicare. In 1996 the Government changed the Medicare Benefit Schedule Book in such a way as to create different financial incentives for consumers or producers of out-of-hospital private psychiatric services, once an individual consumer had received 50 such services in a 12-month period. The Australian Government introduced a new Item (319) to cover some special cases that were affected by the policy change. At the same time, the Commonwealth introduced a ‘fee-freeze’ for all medical services. The purpose of this study is two-fold. First, it is necessary to describe the three policy interventions (the constraints on utilization, the operation of the new Item and the general ‘fee-freeze’.) The new Item policy was essentially a mechanism to ‘dampen’ the effect of the ‘constraint’ policy, and these two policy changes will be consequently analysed as a single intervention. The second objective is to evaluate the policy intervention in terms of the (stated) Australian purpose of reducing utilization of psychiatric services, and thus reducing financial outlays. Thus, it is important to separate out the different effects of the three policies that were introduced at much the same time in November 1996 and January 1997. The econometric results indicate that the composite policy change (constraining services and the new 319 Item) had a statistically significant effect. The analysis of the Medicare Benefit (in constant prices) indicates that the ‘fee-freeze’ policy also had a statistically significant effect. This enables separate determination of the several policy changes. In fact, the empirical results indicate that the Commonwealth Government underestimated the ‘savings’ that would arise from the ‘constraint’ policy.

Nepal in 2002: Emergency and Resurrection of Royal Power

Asian Survey ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 208-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karl-Heinz Kräämer
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil War ◽  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
State Of Emergency ◽  
Royal Power ◽  
Congress Party ◽  
Uncertain Time ◽  
Council Of Ministers

Under a nine-month state of emergency amid civil war, violence escalated and the human rights situation deteriorated. Dissent over extension of the emergency, and personal aversions between Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba and party president Girija Prasad Koirala, led to a split in the ruling Nepali Congress Party. King Gyanendra dissolved the House of Representatives on the recommendation of the prime minister and called new elections for November 13. Gyanendra dismissed Deuba on October 4, as Deuba proved unable to hold the elections in time. The king assumed executive powers himself, nominated a new council of ministers, and delayed elections for an uncertain time.

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