The Changing Influence of Committees in Congress

Abstract

Congressional committees are central legislative units within Congress. They facilitate the legislative business in Congress and have the power to decide which bills and resolutions in their jurisdiction move forward to votes on the floor. Given the importance of congressional committees to Congress, understanding the dynamics and influence of committees is crucial to understanding congressional politics. Along these lines, I provide new explanations of the influence of committees in Congress -- whether committees achieve consensus when parties disagree, if committees affect their members' voting behavior, and how the power distribution within Congress shifts between committees and party leaders. To answer these questions, I use new empirical approaches with a variety of data sources: text data from committee hearings and committee reports, PAC contributions, newspaper coverage, and roll call voting records. First, I explore whether committees successfully achieve consensus in the presence of partisan conflict. I find that regardless of the level of committee-stage disagreement between the two parties, minority committee members still vote against their party on the floor in their committee's jurisdiction, to achieve high levels of bipartisanship among committee members. Then, I investigate whether a member's deviation (or lack of deviation) from his or her party on the floor is caused by committee service itself. Results from a within-member design show a precise, near-zero effect of committee membership on a member's rate of deviation from the party line on issues within the committee's jurisdiction. Finally, how much power do committees actually wield in Congress, compared to party leaders? Two new measures that capture the valuable behavior of two astute observers of Congress -- political action committees and newspapers -- reveal shifts in power from committees to party leaders following institutional reforms in the early 20th century and the 1970s.