MAJORITARIANISM, PARTISANSHIP, AND THE CANNON SPEAKERSHIP:

COMMITTEE ASSIGNMENTS DURING THE PARTISAN ERA OF THE U.S. HOUSE

Charles J. Finocchiaro

Department of Political Science Michigan State University

303 S. Kedzie Hall East Lansing, MI 48824

Phone: 517.432.2622 Fax: 517.432.1091

E-mail: finocchi@msu.edu

Abstract

This paper replicates and extends the analysis of one study in the growing body of research testing theories of congressional politics historically—Keith Krehbiel and Alan Wiseman’s “Joseph G. Cannon: Majoritarian from Illinois,” Legislative Studies Quarterly 26, 3 (August 2001): 357-389. Krehbiel and Wiseman examine House members’ committee portfolio values for evidence that (1) members of the majority party were better off than their minority counterparts and (2) that Speaker Cannon appreciably sanctioned members for defecting on key votes. They find support for neither hypothesis, and instead put forward the notion of Cannon as majoritarian. Using Krehbiel and Wiseman’s data, I present a number of issues concerning their analysis and challenge their characterization of Cannon. The absence of significant effects for party status and member behavior in their estimates is largely a result of model specification, exceptionally high levels of collinearity among the central variables of interest, and the construction of their hypothesis tests in such a way as to predispose their results to Type II errors. My findings reveal general benefits in committee portfolio values accruing by virtue of majority party status and specific member sanctions resulting from defection from Cannon’s coalition. Thus, the pattern of behavior during the Cannon era appears to be more plausibly linked to the expectations of partisan theory, developed here and elsewhere, as opposed to those of majoritarian theory. Author’s Note: An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2002 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in San Francisco, CA. Keith Krehbiel and Alan Wiseman generously provided the data employed in their article. The comments and suggestions of Jamie Carson, Sarah Fulton, Tom Hammond, Pat Hurley, Jeff Jenkins, Eduardo Leoni, Keith Poole, Jason Roberts, Dave Rohde, Steve Smith, Mark Souva, and anonymous reviewers are gratefully acknowledged, though none bears responsibility for what follows.

1

MAJORITARIANISM, PARTISANSHIP, AND THE CANNON SPEAKERSHIP: COMMITTEE ASSIGNMENTS DURING THE PARTISAN ERA OF THE U.S. HOUSE

It’s a damned good thing to remember in politics to stick to your party and never attempt to buy the favor of your enemies at the expense of your friends. 1 The assault upon the Speaker of the House by the minority, supported by the efforts of the so-called insurgents, shows that the Democratic minority, aided by a number of so-called insurgents, is now in the majority, and that the Speaker of the House is not in harmony with the actual majority of the House, as evidenced by the vote just taken. 2

1. Introduction

These two quotations of Joseph G. Cannon, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from

1903 to 1911, illustrate the ebb and flow of centralized leadership power in what is traditionally

considered the era of strong congressional parties. They also indicate two seemingly contradictory

views of the speakership of this period, at least in the eyes of “Uncle Joe” Cannon. While the

historical and political science accounts are fairly unified in their assessment of the Cannon era as one

of intense partisanship, Krehbiel and Wiseman (2001) challenge the universality of czar rule in the

turn-of-the-century House. Much of the existing research on this period focuses on the Speaker’s use

of his prerogatives with regard to committee assignments to punish members of his party who

challenged him on the floor. Scholars have noted that beyond a few well-known cases, Cannonism in

its fullest and most arbitrary form was much less acerbic than the received wisdom would have us

believe. However, Krehbiel and Wiseman (2001: 383) propel this argument one step further, arguing

that their evidence suggests that Cannon was more a majoritarian serving the interests of the median

House member than a strong party leader serving the interests of the Republican caucus and seeing to

1 Joseph G. Cannon, quoted in Busbey (1927), p. 269. 2 Joseph G. Cannon, from the Congressional Record, March 19, 1910, pp. 3436-37.

2

his own ideological proclivities. In this paper, I examine a number of Krehbiel and Wiseman’s claims

and present results that highlight some methodological and theoretical limitations of their analysis.

2. Speaker Cannon and Majority Party Government

Krehbiel and Wiseman (2001) explore the question of whether the conventional account of

the Cannon era is truly a representative depiction of his practices as Speaker. They concentrate most

of their attention on determining if his supposedly partisan dealings with defecting members extended

beyond a few well-known cases that have been described extensively in the historical and political

science literature. In a thoughtful application of the Groseclose-Stewart (1998) method of assessing

committee seat values based on patterns of transfers between committees, Krehbiel and Wiseman aim

to establish whether there is any systematic evidence demonstrating that Cannon used committee

assignments in ways that might be consistent with theories of a strong majority party. Of course,

failure to expose such effects in what is traditionally considered the period most consistent with

majority party government theories would pose important questions for party theorists.

Their tests examine two primary questions: (1) whether members’ committee portfolio values

(based on the set of committee seats they held) differed dramatically based on factors such as party

affiliation and ideological proximity to Cannon after controlling for other factors such as seniority, and

(2) whether loyalty to Cannon on a series of actions they term “ripe for defection or discipline” carried

over into changes in members’ portfolio values from one Congress to the next. In both cases, Krehbiel

and Wiseman discover few consistently significant strong party or strong speaker effects and as such

they are unable to reject their null hypotheses of a weak majority party and of Cannon as non-tyrant.

In this paper, I reconsider the theoretical foundations of Krehbiel and Wiseman’s tests along with a

number of issues related to the specification of their models, both of which suggest the presence of the

type of significant party results they fail to uncover in their analysis.

3

3. Party Effects in Portfolio Values: The Hunt for Majority Party Benefits

In the first part of their analysis, which relates committee portfolio values to member status in

the House, Krehbiel and Wiseman (hereafter, KW) present a number of interesting and in some cases

counterintuitive results. Their first set of estimates suggests that majority party status, along with

seniority in the House, tends to carry with it increasing committee benefits.3 That is, longer service,

as well as membership in the majority party, tends to increase committee portfolio values. While the

result for the seniority variables seems plausible in light of existing theories of committee assignment

behavior, the conceptualization and operationalization of the majority party status variable deserves

further consideration, which may help to shed light on subsequent results. KW claim that “in a

partisan era under so-called Czar Rule, being a member in the party of the czar who appoints

committees should translate into a net benefit in committee portfolio value. If this were not the case,

the salience of committees and asymmetric influence of the majority party would have to be

questioned” (369). Thus, they conjecture that a corollary of party government in a strong era (such as

that of Cannon) is that members of the majority party will receive a disproportionate share of the

benefits of the committee system. If this does not hold true, KW argue that we should question both

the “salience of committees” and the significance of majority party effects.

However, just what it is about majority party government that KW are trying to establish is

somewhat ambiguous. Most partisan theories relating to the committee system hold that majority party

benefits accrue in two primary ways.4 First, through controlling the ratio of majority to minority

members on individual panels, the majority is able to stack the committee system in its favor. This is

particularly important in those instances in which there is a narrow margin between the parties in the

chamber as a whole. Second, the majority party is likely to have a special interest in seeing the

3 This model is reported in Krehbiel and Wiseman (2001) Table 2, Column 1 (and is replicated here in Table 1, Column 1). This and all other models presented in this paper were estimated using KW’s original data, which they generously provided.

4

prestige committees in particular slanted away from the chamber median and toward that of the party.

Thus, by setting the party ratios and focusing attention on the composition of the control committees,

the majority party tends to benefit from the committee system. In line with a cartel view of party

government, the practice of numerically stacking committees—which is related to negative agenda

control or gatekeeping (see Cox and McCubbins 1999)—tends to be invariant to time. That is, we

generally observe the majority party enjoying disproportionate representation on at least the control

committees, particularly when the margin between the parties is small in the chamber as a whole.

And in line with conditional party government, when the parties are cohesive they usually empower

their leadership to stack the control committees with members that are ideologically in line with the

dominant positions of the party (see, e.g., Aldrich and Rohde 2000a).

This brings us back to the matter of what, if any, majority party effect(s) the variable in KW’s

model is tapping. They suggest evidence for modest majority party benefits in committee portfolios

based on the significance of the coefficient for the majority party dummy variable. That is, in contrast

to a member of the minority party, ceteris paribus, a Republican (majority) member gains about 0.18

units of portfolio value. Thus, at the individual level, this variable is neither trivial nor compelling.

Two points are worth keeping in mind at this point, however. First, given that Cannon initiated the

practice of allowing the minority leader to make the assignments for the minority party, there is some

question as to whether we should expect to find him meddling in and actually affecting the portfolios

of Democratic members. 5 However, proceeding under the assumption that he could have done so

since minority rosters were technically subject to his approval, and since the minority leaders at times

relinquished his opportunity to make assignments, another point should be considered. While KW

interpret their results for the majority party variable to imply that the Speaker advantaged his fellow

party members by pursuing a strategy of offering them more valuable portfolios (thereby an individual-

4 See, e.g., Aldrich and Rohde (2000a, b), Cox and McCubbins (1993), and Rohde (1991).

5

level explanation), another view might be that the significance of majority party status is simply an

artifact of what was a common occurrence both in this period of the House and in others: committee

deck-stacking. Many, if not most, House committees in Cannon’s era were biased in their

representation toward the majority party. That is, the ratio of majority to minority members frequently

exceeded that of the chamber as a whole. Thus, in order to keep these proportions higher for the

majority party, many majority members served on more committees than their minority counterparts.

This phenomenon is exacerbated by the number of committees that existed in these Congresses. With

more committees and smaller margins between the parties, the majority party had no choice but to

assign its members additional committee seats to hold the ratios in its favor. Since most committees

have a positive value based on the Groseclose-Stewart estimates, it is likely that simply holding more

committee seats resulted in higher portfolio values (thus, this is an aggregate dynamic with individual-

level effects).

< Table 1 Here >

One way to explore this issue is by estimating a separate regression for each of the four

Congresses included in KW’s analysis. These results are presented in the last four columns of Table 1,

where we see that the majority party variable is highly significant in the Congresses in which the

Republicans held a narrower majority (58th, 60th, and 61st) and insignificant in the Congress in which

they enjoyed a wide margin (59th). The bottom panel of Table 1 presents the summary data on this

relationship and describes the way in which each party went about making members’ assignments to

fill each committee in such a way as to reflect the appropriate committee ratios. Thus, it appears that

the majority party simply had more committee “goods” to distribute among members as a result of its

larger goal of stacking the committee system in its favor.6 While such behavior is certainly evidence of

5 On this point, see Cox and McCubbins (1993: 163), Shepsle (1978: 22-23), and Hasbrouck (1927: 44). 6 More systematic support for this claim is evidenced by regressing the variables introduced by KW (seniority, seniority squared, and majority party), along with the number of committee seats held by a member and an interaction term for the

6

party effects in the House, such effects are more aggregate than individual in nature. That is, we

expect them to vary based on characteristics of the majority party rather than those of individual

members.7

The same type of logic is relevant in considering subsequent models estimated by KW (in

their Table 2), in which they examine the possibility that “the Speaker’s primary interest were [sic]

confined to a small set of key standing committees” (371). That is, he may have “manipulated

committee assignments as conventional wisdom suggests,” but only on the most important committees

of the era. Once again, what the authors are actually tapping in their expanded model is somewhat

ambiguous. They include a dummy variable for whether the member held a seat on a top-ten

committee, the estimate of which is (as they note) significant and positive “by construction” (371).

However, the interaction term, which KW claim allows them to examine whether “majority party

members had a unique advantage within the set of top committees” (371) is simply tapping whether

members of the majority party who held seats on top committees had higher portfolio values than

minority party members of the top committees. Because members of each party who sat on these

committees were less likely to sit on others, it is not surprising that the two sets of members differ little

in their portfolio values and that the variable is insignificant.

It is not clear whether party theory has anything to say about whether or not we should expect

leaders to provide members of the top committees with better overall portfolios, particularly in contrast

to the minority party. Here again, the fact that Cannon generally allowed the minority party to select

its members (within the confines of the majority-established committee ratios) suggests that the

number of seats held by majority party members, on members’ portfolio values. Seniority and its square have effects comparable to those in the other models, but majority status is now insignificant while the number of committee seats held is negative and significant and the interaction term is positive and significant. Thus, it appears that the significant majority party effect described above is attributable to the benefit in seats accruing the majority party in particular Congresses. 7 KW note later that the evidence they marshal in making the claim that majority party status was valuable is “tentative” and that their conjectures “are not as closely affiliated with theoretical claims as is possible” (13).

7

finding of a null effect for this variable has little bearing on existing party theories. In searching for

majority party effects on the top committees, other tests are arguably more appropriate.8

Finally, KW augment the preceding models with a variable tapping members’ ideological

distance from Speaker Cannon to test the argument that the “czar” manipulated committee

assignments on the basis of not only seniority and party status but also on the degree to which

members’ preferences paralleled his own. 9 The ideological distance variable is simply the difference in

first dimension Nominate scores between Cannon and each member. Model (1) of Table 2 replicates

KW’s results, in which they find no evidence to support a preference-based explanation for members’

committee portfolio values (371).

Of additional interest in this model, though not noted by KW, is the fact that the majority

party variable fails to obtain statistical significance at conventional levels (p = 0.132). While this

would seem to additionally imply the absence of purported majority party benefits in doling out

committee assignments, at least while controlling for preference extremity from Cannon, it is important

to note that the majority party variable is highly correlated with the measure of members’ distance

from Cannon (r = -0.93). Poole and Rosenthal (1997: 126) note the fact that party variables are often

insignificant when controlling for members’ spatial positions because “the effects of party are typically

contained in the D-NOMINATE measures.”

A common empirical pattern in the context of high levels of collinearity among variables is for

the coefficients of the corresponding variables to have high standard errors (and thus low levels of

significance) while the overall model is relatively strong (i.e., the variables are jointly significant and

the estimate carries a high R2). It may also be the case that the coefficients of interest “have the

‘wrong’ sign or implausible magnitudes” (Greene 2000: 256). Thus, it seems plausible that the

apparent null effects of the two variables in this model may be a result of multicollinearity as opposed

8 This point is elaborated below in Section 3.

8

to an insignificant effect of the primary variables of interest.10 An F-test of the joint significance of

these variables lends credence to the notion that they are mutually significant in explaining members’

portfolio values. The ratio of the F-statistics for the constrained and unconstrained models suggests

that the null of mutual insignificance can be rejected with 99.9% confidence (F[2,1525]=6.73). Of

added import is the fact that KW’s hypothesis test is structured so as to reject the conventional view of

Cannonism and strong party government by simply accepting (or failing to reject) the null. Thus, in

the context of significant multicollinearity, the models specified by KW are predisposed to Type II

errors.

< Table 2 Here >

In light of the concerns raised above, a few alternative specifications might be employed.

First, to assess the impact of preference extremity from Cannon independent of the collinearity issue,

Model (2) does not include the majority party variable. In this model, distance from Cannon is

significant and its effect is in the direction predicted by KW’s notion of a strong majority party (371).

The more extreme a member is relative to Cannon, the lower his or her portfolio value tends to be.

The same patterns holds if we move away from using a variable based in part on Cannon’s D-Nominate

score and instead include the members’ Nominate coordinates as a rough proxy for general ideology.11

If Cannon is the conservative that the historical and scholarly records contend, then we should

observe increasing portfolio values with increasing conservatism, and vice versa. Model (3) includes

9 The estimates for this equation appear in KW’s Table 2, Column 3. 10 One might also assess the extent to which multicollinearity impacts the estimates by examining the variance inflation factors (VIFs) for majority party status and distance from Cannon, which are 7.95 and 7.38, respectively. The VIF for xj is given by

211

)(j

j RxVIF

??

where 2jR is the square of the multiple correlation coefficient that results from regressing xj on the other explanatory

variables. Conventionally, a VIF exceeding ten for individual variables or greater than one for the mean of all variables provides evidence of high levels of multicollinearity (Chatterjee, Hadi, and Price 2000: 240-242). The mean VIF of this equation is 5.86.

9

the majority party dummy and the member’s D-Nominate score, while Model (4) drops the majority

party dummy (because it and ideology are correlated as well, at about r = 0.949). In each case, the

ideology proxy approaches or obtains statistical significance at conventional levels. Thus, contrary to

KW’s assertion, there does appear to be a connection between awarding committee assignments and

members’ ideology. The presence of high levels of multicollinearity appears to adversely affect the

ability of KW’s models to detect otherwise significant effects related to a strong-speaker view of

Cannon.

4. An Alternative Conception of Party Influence

Given the concerns described above regarding the conceptualization and measurement of

KW’s key variables, and the issue of just what aspects of partisan behavior their tests are tapping, one

might approach their conclusions with some reservation in regard to their ability to tap individual-

level party effects. While there does appear to be an across-the-board partisan benefit resulting from

committee stacking during the Congresses in which the margin between the parties is small, this does

not seem to offer strong evidence of the sort of member-specific effects Krehbiel and Wiseman are

seeking to test. However, it may be possible to obtain a clearer picture of questions surrounding this

era by directly testing an issue that KW touch on but do not specifically examine. Most party theorists

would argue that it is in seating particular members on the most prestigious and important committees,

along with introducing numerical bias on committees in general, that majority party leaders are likely

to exert influence. KW explore the value of committee portfolios as they may be affected by

membership on a top committee, but this does not allow for an investigation of the perhaps more

interesting question of who gets seated on such panels. A first look at this question may be obtained

by examining the influence of ideology on members’ assignments to the top committees, which party

11 KW note in footnote 29 (p. 388) that “the D-Nominate score…approximates the ‘distance from Cannon’ measure we

10

theory suggests should be driven by the degree to which a member diverges from Cannon

ideologically.12

< Table 3 Here >

Table 3 presents the estimates of a series of logit models that allow us to gain some leverage on

this question. Building on the basic individual-level models employed above, we can test the

conjecture that Cannon was more likely to appoint members to the top ten committees based on party

and preference factors while controlling for seniority. Model (1) includes both the majority party

dummy variable and the variable measuring preference extremity from Cannon, which as noted above

are highly correlated. Not surprisingly, neither obtains significance in the joint model. However, as

evidenced in Models (2), (3), and (4), extremity from Cannon, a member’s D-Nominate score, and

majority party status are independently significant in the predicted direction in their influence on

appointment to a top committee. Thus, both types of party effects noted earlier, those at the aggregate

and the individual levels, appeared to be at work on the primary committees of this period. Members

of the majority party (who also tended to be more conservative) frequently held more committee seats

and thus had higher portfolio values. Additionally, members of the majority party, particularly those

who were closer to Cannon ideologically, were more likely to receive an appointment to a top

committee in the House.

5. Key Vote Defections: Reward your Friends, Punish your Enemies?

In the second major portion of their empirical analysis, KW test for changes in portfolio values

between the 60th and 61st Congresses resulting from a series of votes “on which there were

opportunities for, and instances of, defection” as well as from members’ participation in three

used in Table 3, equation 3, because Cannon was on the low end of the Nominate spectrum.” 12 See, e.g., Aldrich and Rohde (2000b) for a discussion of the centrality of control committees under the conditional party government view of majority party influence.

11

nonvoting events that might be said to evoke party discipline (374). The motivation for this segment

of the analysis is to test the proposition that the “deviant behavior of backbenchers is punished by

leaders” (374). KW describe three potential theoretical models based on different expectations of

what party or speaker-centric government might entail. In light of the three competing perspectives,

KW adopt a modeling approach that allows them to capture the separate effects of defection for both

Republicans and Democrats, thus remaining agnostic about the specific theoretical approach being

tested.13 I maintain this approach in my replication and re-specification of their models.

Before turning specifically to the models estimated by KW, it is important to note that in this

segment of their analysis, a series of votes are included within each model. While this seems at first

glance to be an efficient way of proceeding, as well as allowing the opportunity to simultaneously test

the impact of the various votes, it does carry with it other potential problems. In essence, by including

a series of votes that are likely to involve similar defecting coalitions, there is a high likelihood that

many of the votes are correlated. Because defectors, at least in the Republican Party, tended to be

relatively junior, midwestern progressives, this empirical pattern should not be surprising. If

confirmed, we are again faced with the issue of collinearity, which would tend to decrease the

explanatory power of each of the individual cases of defection, thus making it more difficult to find a

discernible effect for the votes of interest. Thus, it would be possible for the votes to exert

independent influence yet when lumped together fail to obtain significance.

To explore this possibility, Table 4 presents the correlations of the party variables included in

KW’s models. Not surprisingly, all but one of the Republican vote variables are correlated at greater

than 0.5, and a few exceed 0.9. The Democratic variables fare no better—in fact, all but two of the

13 That is, separate coefficients are estimated for the two parties to tap the potentially different impact on each of defection from Cannon’s position. For instance, a strong majority party theory would predict a negative coefficient for defections by Republicans, a strong parties theory would predict a negative coefficient for Republicans and a positive coefficient for Democrats, and a strong-speaker theory would suggest a negative effect for both parties (see KW Section IV).

12

votes within the models for Democrats are correlated at levels exceeding 0.9. Since none of the

variables in KW’s models attain statistical significance at traditional levels, it is important to

determine whether this is simply a result of the models’ specification or if in fact the votes had no

influence on members’ changing portfolio values. In light of this issue, two alternative specifications

seem plausible. First, we might estimate the effect of each vote independently, thus allowing for a

more accurate assessment of the influence of each on the change in portfolio values. Alternatively, an

index of defection could be created to tap members’ general pattern of behavior on the votes of

interest to Cannon. Both avenues are pursued in turn below. If upon reassessing the influence of

these variables it remains true that Cannon does not appear to have punished defections, then KW’s

assertions regarding the behavior of leadership in the so-called “partisan” era would be reinforced. On

the other hand, if it turns out that these alternative measures demonstrate a systematic and

theoretically consistent pattern of declining portfolio values based on defecting behavior, then the

purportedly “majoritarian” nature of Cannon’s speakership would appear to be simply an artifact of very

high levels of multicollinearity.

< Table 4 Here >

Table 5 presents the results from a series of estimates that seek to circumvent the collinearity

issue by estimating the effect of each vote independently. Model (1) simply replicates KW’s first

model based on two key votes occurring in the 60th Congress, in which none of the party-specific

coefficients is significant (and three of the four are in the predicted negative direction).14 Re-

estimating the model with each vote separately (vote 60-1 in Column 2 and vote 60-2 in Column 3)—

while keeping the parties in the same model—is not substantially different in substantive terms,

though vote 60-1 for Republicans is marginally significant (p = 0.054) and all the coefficients are in

14 Presented in Krehbiel and Wiseman’s (2001) Table 4, Model 1. The mean VIF for this estimate is 25.11.

13

the direction predicted by a strong-speaker perspective (negative).15 Thus, KW’s claim that on the

banking bill (vote 60-1) “the estimate of Cannon’s having resorted to punishment against defectors…

is small, insignificant, and, thus, in effect, zero” seems questionable, at least in the case of Republicans

(377). As they note, this case appears to be “tailor made for confirmation” of a strong majority party

thesis (374), and upon reconsideration this effect seems to be present.

< Table 5 Here >

Column 4 replicates KW’s second model, which tests for the influence of defection on a group

of votes that occurred in the 61st Congress prior to Cannon’s making committee assignments.16 The

estimation presents some contrary and perhaps counterintuitive findings. First, for many of the votes

there appeared to be little or no consequences for Republican defection (e.g., election of Cannon as

speaker, vote 61-1). Vote 61-3 is marginally significant at conventional levels in the negative

direction, while 61-4 is marginally significant in the positive direction. In the latter case, KW suggest

that “Republicans who voted to appeal the decision of the chair to reform calendar Wednesday seem,

if anything, to have profited from their defections” (377). They do go on to note, however, that the

overall low levels of significance suggest that some of these findings may be “statistical artifacts” and

that “the prudent conclusion is simply that the evidence for a heavy-handed or punitive Speaker is

very thin” (377). On the Democratic side of the aisle, a few more votes are significant, though here

again there seems to be no underlying pattern that would allow us to establish which of the various

theories KW put forward might be in play. That is, we observe both negative and positive effects, so

“no single theoretical approach provides a consistent explanation for the set of findings in [KW’s]

equation (2)” (377).

15 Since I am concerned more with the general pattern of the coefficient estimates as opposed to the substance of each vote, I adopt an abbreviated name for each vote and event included in Table 5. The description of each is presented in the notes to Table 4 and is discussed at greater length in Krehbiel and Wiseman’s (2001) Table 3. 16 Presented in Krehbiel and Wiseman’s (2001) Table 4, Model 2. The mean VIF for this estimate is 25.88.

14

Once again, however, if the effect of each vote is estimated independent of the others, a very

different picture emerges. Columns (5) through (9) of Table 5 present these results. First, we notice

that all of the coefficients for both parties are negative, and thus consistent with the strong speaker

thesis. Furthermore, many more votes are significant in the individual models in contrast to the larger

model. Four of the votes for Republicans are significant (or approach significance) at conventional

levels —interestingly, all but the vote to elect Cannon speaker. On the Democratic side, two of the

four are at least marginally significant.

Finally, Column (10) replicates KW’s model estimating the effect of three important nonvoting

defections on portfolio values.17 As they note, only one of the events is significant, that of Jones

“spectacular appointments,” which is essentially a dummy variable corresponding to those instances in

which punishment did occur. They conclude that that “[w]hen compared with the insignificant or

inconsistent findings elsewhere, this coefficient reinforces suspicions that the conventional wisdom

about Cannon and Cannonism may be more of an outgrowth of selected anecdotes than systematic

evidence in support of a theory” (378). Here again, though the correlation among the variables is

somewhat lower than in the other models, it seems worthwhile to examine each for any independent

effect, particularly since the mean VIF exceeds one. Not surprisingly, the coefficients of the other two

variables approach significance and are in the predicted direction.

All in all, Table 5 seems to indicate a pattern rather consistent with a strong speaker

explanation. For each vote across both parties, the coefficient for defecting behavior is negative and

in many cases significant, suggesting that Cannon used his power to sanction deviant behavior on

some of the more prominent issues of concern to him and his party. Table 6, based on defection rates

in each of the three sets of events, underscores this relationship. Republicans were significantly more

likely to be punished across the board based if they exhibited a pattern of defection. For Democrats,

17 Presented in Krehbiel and Wiseman’s (2001) Table 4, Model 3. The mean VIF for this estimate is 1.49.

15

the same pattern existed, though the coefficient for the defection rate in the 60th Congress does not

obtain statistical significance. If anything, these results and those described above suggest that

Cannon may have been neither arbitrary nor personally vindictive. He does not appear to have

punished members for voting against him as speaker, though there were consequences for involvement

in the insurgent wing of the party. In large part, he seems to have employed his institutional

prerogatives to sanction members who defected, especially if such behavior was frequent, from the

general party position on salient issues of the day.

< Table 6 Here >

Finally, in Section VI of KW’s paper, they suggest that party theories would imply that, upon

removing some of Cannon’s power in the revolt of March 19, 1910, we should expect to see a decline

in what they hold to be “the finding in this study that offers the clearest support for the strong-Speaker

thesis: the significant, positive net effect of majority party status on committee portfolio values” (379-

80). Stated somewhat differently, if the effects of the reforms were to weaken the speaker and if in

fact important aspects of party government were dismantled, then the effect of the dummy variable

tapping majority party benefits in committee portfolios should decline in the 62nd Congress. Contrary

to this hypothesis, KW find that it is actually positive and significant.18 They conclude that “the

revolt against the institutional instruments of Cannonism, and, hence, of party government, had little

constraining effect on the new party regime in the House. On the contrary,…[they appear] to have

been liberating with regard to the partisan compositional consequences of committee assignments”

(381).

This seemingly anomalous finding may be clarified by recalling just what the majority party

variable seems to be tapping—the across-the-board benefit enjoyed by majority party members resulting

from disproportionate ratios on committees. It is not particularly surprising that this variable is

18 These estimates are presented in Krehbiel and Wiseman’s (2001) Table 5.

16

significant given that the 62nd House was 58.3% Democratic (recall that this figure is roughly the same

as two of the three significant Republican Congresses described earlier). This finding may, in fact, be

supportive of the invariant nature of majority party deck stacking. That is, it is not clear that we

should expect the Speaker’s removal from the Rules Committee to have any impact on the majority

party’s ability to influence party ratios on committees. The finding also lends credence to the notion

that the revolt did little to diminish short-term party influence—it simply shifted the locus of power

away from a relatively autonomous Speaker and toward a broader coalition made up of party leaders.

6. Conclusion

The aim of this paper has been to take a closer look at some of the empirical evidence on

which recent claims regarding one of the most distinctive eras in congressional development have

been made. That Speaker Cannon may not have been as arbitrary and excessive as historians and his

contemporaries have claimed is not a new theme in political science research (see, e.g., Chiu 1928;

Polsby, Gallaher, and Rundquist 1968; and Lawrence, Maltzman, and Wahlbeck 1998). The most

recent contribution to this body of research, that of Krehbiel and Wiseman, suggests a number of

interesting paths worth considering in relation to this period. Their incorporation of the Groseclose-

Stewart (1998) method of assessing committee portfolio values is a novel approach to testing theories

of congressional parties absent the limitations inherent in traditional roll-call based analyses.

However, a number of issues in their empirical analysis lead them to cast aside the significance of

significant party effects in favor of the null hypothesis of non-partisan behavior on the part of the

Speaker. The presence of very high levels of multicollinearity, for instance, leads them to prematurely

conclude that no systematic pattern of leadership sanctions was discernible in Cannon’s committee

assignment behavior, a claim that if supported would pose important questions for party theorists.

17

However, while there does seem to be evidence suggesting that Cannon’s purportedly arbitrary

use of leadership prerogatives may indeed be overstated, this does not imply that the era was

nonpartisan. Of course, the conventional wisdom regarding the period stands in stark contrast to

KW’s claims. Their pronunciation of party government as weak in what most would say was the

heyday of its existence seems overstated at best, particularly in light of the empirical bases upon which

they base their conclusions:

Did majority-party status confer net committee benefits to Republicans because of the parliamentary prerogatives of Joseph Cannon? Was it a characteristic of Cannon’s speakership that disciplined behavior was systematically rewarded and errant behavior systematically punished? The findings related to these essential mechanics of sustaining a majority-party coalition in the presence of intra-party heterogeneity were of a distinctly different type. Often, the critical coefficients were insignificant, and, when significant, they were not consistently in the direction that party-theoretic approaches predict. As such, the findings support a conclusion that this high point of party government in the United States was probably not so high after all. More specifically, we would suggest that perhaps the Speaker…was, in fact, less of a tyrant from Illinois than a majoritarian from Illinois” (382-3).

This paper has aimed to reconsider the two primary foundations upon which KW’s claims are

made. First, their modeling approach simply requires acceptance of the unconventional majoritarian

null hypothesis in order to support what is a very distinctive picture of Speaker Cannon. Second, in

contrast to the points they raise in their conclusion, after accounting for exceedingly high levels of

multicollinearity (which in some cases was nearly perfect), all the critical coefficients in the models

were in the predicted direction and in many cases obtained statistical significance at conventional

levels. Thus, we should not rush to replace the traditional view of Cannon as party-empowered leader

with that of chamber or median-centric “majoritarian.” There does seem to be systematic evidence

of party effects both in doling out committee assignments and in altering members’ existing

assignments based on deviant behavior, even after controlling for other important variables.

Additionally, this paper has attempted to clarify some of the significant findings for across-the-board

majority party benefits by relating them to recent work on party government in Congress.

18

Of course, this era does not leave students of Congress without important questions regarding

theories of party government. For instance, if Cannon’s behavior as Speaker was not as odious as some

(particularly his contemporaries) have claimed, why would his party (or at some segment of it) choose

to limit his powers? At the same time, if there were a number of members who personally opposed

Cannon, why did they not go through with his removal when presented with the opportunity to do so?

In sum, this interesting period of congressional history is likely to stimulate much more research aimed

at addressing some lingering questions for the various theories of congressional politics for some years

to come.

7. References Aldrich, John H. and David W. Rohde. 2000a. “The Republican Revolution and the House

Appropriations Committee.” Journal of Politics 62: 1-33. Aldrich, John H., and David W. Rohde. 2000b. “The Consequences of Party Organization in the

House: The Role of the Majority and Minority Parties in Conditional Party Government.” In Polarized Politics: Congress and the President in a Partisan Era, Jon R. Bond and Richard Fleisher, eds. Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press.

Busbey, L. White. 1927. Uncle Joe Cannon: The Story of a Pioneer American. New York: Henry Holt. Chatterjee, Samprit, Ali S. Hadi, and Bertram Price. 2000. Regression Analysis by Example, 3rd ed.

New York: John Wiley & Sons. Chiu, Chang-Wei. 1928. The Speaker of the House of Representatives Since 1896. New York: Columbia

University Press. Cox, Gary W., and Matthew D. McCubbins. 1993. Legislative Leviathan: Party Government in the

House. Berkeley: University of California Press. Cox, Gary W., and Matthew D. McCubbins. 1999. “Agenda Power in the U.S. House of

Representatives, 1877 to 1986.” Typescript: University of California, San Diego. Greene, William H. 2000. Econometric Analysis, 4th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Groseclose, Tim, and Charles Stewart III. 1998. “The Value of Committee Seats in the House, 1947-

91.” American Journal of Political Science: 42: 453-74.

19

Hasbrouck, Paul DeWitt. 1927. Party Government in the House of Representatives. New York: Macmillan.

Krehbiel, Keith, and Alan Wiseman. 2001. “Joseph G. Cannon: Majoritarian from Illinois.” Legislative

Studies Quarterly 26: 357-89. Lawrence, Eric D., Forrest Maltzman, and Paul J. Wahlbeck. 2001. “The Politics of Speaker

Cannon’s Committee Assignments.” American Journal of Political Science 45: 551-562. Polsby, Nelson W., Miriam Gallaher, and Barry Spencer Rundquist. 1969. “The Growth of the

Seniority System in the U.S. House of Representatives.” American Political Science Review 63: 787-807.

Poole, Keith T., and Howard Rosenthal. 1997. Congress: A Political-Economic History of Roll Call

Voting. New York: Oxford University Press. Rohde, David W. 1991. Parties and Leaders in the Postreform House. Chicago: University of Chicago

Press. Shepsle, Kenneth A. 1978. The Giant Jigsaw Puzzle: Democratic Committee Assignments in the Modern

House. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Table 1: The Effect of Majority Party Status on Portfolio Values

58th - 61st 58th 59th 60th 61st

Constant 0.003

(0.056)

-0.194 (-2.205)

0.040 (0.404)

0.105 (1.141)

0.093 (0.920)

Seniority 0.328 (17.832)

0.412 (10.967)

0.351 (9.718)

0.283 (7.782)

0.269 (7.099)

Seniority 2 -0.016 (-10.202)

-0.023 (-6.717)

-0.018 (-5.883)

-0.013 (-3.926)

-0.012 (-3.803)

Majority Party 0.184 (5.034)

0.263 (3.711)

0.035 (0.465)

0.182 (2.579)

0.255 (3.284)

N 1590 396 397 396 401 Adjusted R 2 0.2723 0.3406 0.2745 0.2581 0.2215 Percent of Chamber Republican 53.6 64.8 57.5 56.0 Average # of Comm. Assignments (Rep) 2.18 1.97 2.22 2.29 Average # of Comm. Assignments (Dem) 1.62 2.11 1.86 1.78 Percent of Republicans on a Top 10 Committee 44 41 46 48 Percent of Democrats on a Top 10 Committee 29 40 36 36 Note: Column 1 is a replication of Krehbiel and Wiseman (2001), Table 2 Model (1). The dependent variable is a member’s committee portfolio value. Coefficients are OLS estimates, with t-statistics in parentheses.

Table 2: Reassessing Ideology in Explaining Portfolio Values

(1) (2) (3) (4)

Constant 0.066

(0.717)

0.192 (4.834)

0.117 (2.162)

0.112 (3.493)

Seniority 0.151 (10.357)

0.152 (10.355)

0.151 (10.308)

0.151 (10.314)

Seniority 2 -0.008 (-6.623)

-0.008 (-6.606)

-0.008 (-6.626)

-0.008 (-6.628)

Majority Party 0.116 (1.507)

-0.008 (-0.094)

Top Committee 1.131 (24.547)

1.118 (24.679)

1.133 (24.613)

1.134 (24.894)

Majority Party x Top Committee -0.043

(-0.760)

-0.020 (-0.373)

-0.049 (-0.864)

-0.050 (-0.899)

Distance from Cannon -0.019

(-0.200)

-0.142 (-3.343)

D-Nominate

0.136 (1.709)

0.129 (4.045)

N 1532 1532 1532 1532 Adjusted R 2 0.6063 0.6060 0.6071 0.6073 Note: Column 1 is a replication of Krehbiel and Wiseman (2001), Table 2 Model (3). The dependent variable is a member’s committee portfolio value. Coefficients are OLS estimates, with t-statistics in parentheses.

Table 3: Factors Contributing to Membership on a Top 10 Committee

(1) (2) (3) (4)

Constant -2.472

(-6.079)

-2.099 (-12.778)

-2.347 (-15.391)

-2.526 (-14.915)

Seniority 0.730 (12.104)

0.728 (12.097)

0.728 (12.071)

0.730 (12.105)

Seniority 2 -0.035 (-6.943)

-0.035 (-6.928)

-0.035 (-6.932)

-0.035 (-6.943)

Majority Party 0.325 (1.006)

0.369 (3.129)

Distance from Cannon -0.059 (-0.146)

-0.438 (-2.965)

D-Nominate

0.354 (3.269)

N 1532 1532 1532 1532 LR ?2 Statistic 306.84 305.83 307.73 306.82 Reduction of Error 26.4 26.1 26.4 26.4 Note: The dependent variable is dichotomous, coded 1 if a member served on a top 10 committee (as defined by Krehbiel and Wiseman 2001) and 0 otherwise. Coefficients are logit estimates, with z-statistics in parentheses.

Table 4: Correlation Matrices of Anti-Cannonism Votes and Behavior

Republicans

N = 199 60-1 60-2

60-1 1.000 60-2 0.510 1.000

N = 369 61-1 61-2 61-3 61-4 61-5

61-1 1.000 61-2 0.616 1.000 61-3 0.640 0.963 1.000 61-4 0.653 0.945 0.981 1.000 61-5 0.496 0.542 0.564 0.530 1.000

N = 221 Event 1 Event 2 Event 3

Event 1 1.000 Event 2 0.6222 1.000 Event 3 0.2416 0.320 1.000

Democrats

N = 199 60-1 60-2

60-1 1.000 60-2 0.990 1.000

N = 369 61-1 61-2 61-3 61-4 61-5

61-1 1.000 61-2 0.957 1.000 61-3 0.914 0.956 1.000 61-4 0.883 0.924 0.966 1.000 61-5 0.989 0.967 0.925 0.893 1.000

Note: These variables correspond to those of Krehbiel and Wiseman’s (2001) Tables 3 and 4, who identify them as instances “ripe for defection or discipline” during the 60th and 61st Congress. The full variable names as they appear in KW’s Table 4 are listed below. See their Table 3 for full descriptions and dates. Roll Call Votes: Anti-Cannon Behavior: 60-1: Banking discharge Event 1: Rosewater Pledge 60-2: Overrule Cannon Event 2: Insurgent leaders 61-1: Election of Cannon Event 3: Jones’ “spectacular appointments” 61-2: Previous question on rules 61-3: Previous question on Rules Committee reform 61-4: Appeal decision of chair 61-5: Conference report on tariff bill

Table 5: Reassessing the Consequences of Defections on Committee Portfolio Values

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (12) (13) Constant 0.232

(3.690) 0.209

(4.045) 0.214

(3.828) 0.189

(4.939) 0.148

(3.996) 0.185

(4.877) 0.198

(5.377) 0.211

(5.880) 0.170

(4.549) 0.162

(4.058) 0.149

(3.741) 0.145

(3.667) 0.155

(3.945) 60-1 (Rep) -0.238

(-0.854) -0.372

(-1.932)

60-2 (Rep) -0.048 (-0.262)

-0.128 (-0.934)

60-1 (Dem) -0.232 (-0.371)

-0.067 (-0.851)

60-2 (Dem) 0.109 (0.174)

-0.104 (-1.273)

61-1 (Rep) 0.085 (0.419)

-0.150 (-0.957)

61-2 (Rep) -0.189 (-0.524)

-0.318 (-3.130)

61-3 (Rep) -0.942 (-1.474)

-0.340 (-3.276)

61-4 (Rep) 0.851 (1.595)

-0.325 (-3.105)

61-5 (Rep) 0.006 (0.041)

-0.180 (-1.465)

61-1 (Dem) 0.449 (1.245)

-0.036 (-0.646)

61-2 (Dem) 0.530 (1.933)

-0.069 (-1.227)

61-3 (Dem) 0.335 (1.224)

-0.107 (-1.894)

61-4 (Dem) -0.851 (-4.020)

-0.153 (-2.728)

61-5 (Dem) -0.608 (-1.467)

-0.058 (-1.042)

Event 1 -0.222 (-0.835)

-0.358 (-1.707)

Event 2 -0.028 (-0.081)

-0.404 (-1.534)

Event 3 -0.539 (-2.301)

-0.604 (-2.729)

N 199 259 232 369 381 381 382 383 378 221 221 221 221 Adjusted R 2 -0.007 0.008 -0.001 0.066 -0.002 0.021 0.026 0.031 0.002 0.025 0.009 0.006 0.006

Note: Columns 1, 4, and 10 replicate the models presented in Krehbiel and Wiseman’s (2001) Table 4. The dependent variable is change in committee portfolio value. Coefficients are OLS estimates, with t-statistics in parentheses. For a more detailed description of the independent variables, see the previous table or Krehbiel and Wiseman’s (2001) Table 3.

Table 6: The Effect of Defection Rates on Committee Portfolio Values

Constant

a

Republicans

ß

Democrats

?

Adj. R 2

N

Model 1: Defection Rate in the 60th Congress 0.207

(4.192)

-0.285 (-1.851)

-0.067 (-0.921)

0.006 292

Model 2: Defection Rate in the 61st Congress 0.193

(5.105)

-0.391 (-2.987)

-0.091 (-1.581)

0.024 388

Model 3: Defection Rate on Nonvoting Events 0.159

(4.008)

-3.612 (-2.617)

0.026 221

Note: The dependent variable is change in committee portfolio value between the 60th and 61st Congresses. Coefficients are OLS estimates, with t-statistics in parentheses. The independent variables are ratios corresponding to the percentage of votes on which a member defected, grouped by Congress, based on the votes described in the preceding tables.