Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T06:13:09.498Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Political Parties and the Porkbarrel: Party Conflict and Cooperation in House Public Works Committee Decision Making*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

James T. Murphy
James T. Murphy*
Affiliation:
Wesley an University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This study of the House Public Works committee examines the relationship between membership goals and the degree of party conflict, identifies conditions of party conflict and cooperation, and links party conflict and cooperation to policies adopted by the House.

Party conflict is the Public Works committee's most striking behavioral characteristic. This party conflict stems from (a) the issues processed by the committee and (b) the partisan program orientations of committee members. Beyond these initial sources of party conflict on Public Works, there is a norm of partisanship adopted by each of the parties on the committee in order to achieve an extra measure of party cohesion. Public Works committee party conflict is, to be sure, often modified by shared interests cutting across party lines. Committee party cooperation stems, however, not from widespread shared interests but, instead, from a fundamental distrust between the parties respecting the allocation of federal largesse. To preclude porkbarreling, Congress has adopted fixed allocation formulas for distributing the boodle on programs likely to involve a majority in each party, thereby constraining the parties on the committee to cooperate on such proposals.

Whether Public Works is united or divided when reporting legislation, the House of Representatives will typically adopt its proposals. This success of the Public Works committee is attributable to a mixture of anticipation and influence.

Type
Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 68 , Issue 1 , March 1974 , pp. 169 - 185
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1974

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

I wish to express my appreciation to the American Political Science Association for a Congressional Fellowship which gave me the opportunity to be a participant-observer with both the Senate and the House Public Works committees during the first session of the 90th Congress, and to the Brookings Institution for a Research Fellowship in Government which facilitated the preparation of this paper. In addition, I am indebted to David W. Adamany, Richard F. Fenno, Jr., Fred I. Greenstein, Russell D. Murphy, James L. Payne, Nelson W. Polsby, and Hubert J. O'Gorman for many helpful suggestions in the revision of earlier drafts.

References

1 Bailey, Stephen K. and Samuel, Howard D., Congress at Work (New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1952), chap. 7Google Scholar; N.B. pp. 166–168.

2 Campbell, Angus, Converse, Philip E., Miller, Warren E., and Stokes, Donald E., Elections and the Political Order (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1966), chap. 11Google Scholar. Professor Warren E. Miller and Donald E. Stokes discuss the significance of favorable images as against the significance of issues with partisan content in congressional elections.

3 Piano, Jack C. and Greenberg, Milton, The American Political Dictionary, 2nd ed. (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, Inc., 1967), p. 145 Google Scholar.

4 Turner, Julius, Party and Constituency (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1951), p. 70 Google Scholar.

5 Fenno, Richard F. Jr., “Congressional Committees: The Comparative View” (paper presented at the 66th meeting of the American Political Science Association, Los Angeles, California, September 8–12, 1970), pp. 2–11 Google Scholar.

6 Ibid., p. 29.

7 It should be noted that the large minority of members assigned to Public Works because other seats were not open contradicts the electoral benefit criterion for committee assignments developed in Masters, Nicholas A., “Committee Assignments,” American Political Science Review 55 (June, 1961), 345–357 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On p. 357, Masters asserts the following: “Although a number of factors enter into committe assignments—geography, group support, professional background, etc.—the most important single consideration—unless it can be taken for granted—is to provide each member with an assignment that will help to insure his re-election.” And, on p. 354, Masters writes: “Assignment to Public Works, Interior and Insular Affairs or Merchant Marine and Fisheries are usually based on the ecological make-up of the members' districts, so as to allow them to serve their constituent interests and protect their incumbency.” But since such a large proportion of members are apparently assigned to Public Works who do not want to be, it is clear that the party leadership does not systematically attempt “to provide each member with an assignment that will help to insure his re-election” (p. 357). Because of the relative abundance of Public Works seats it is impossible for the leadership to apply an electoral benefit criterion even if they so desired.

8 On the significance of party affiliation in the House of Representatives, see Ripley, Randall B., Party Leaders in the House of Representatives (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1967), chap. 6.Google Scholar

9 These results are reported in Murphy, James T., “The House Public Works Committee: Determinants and Consequences of Committee Behavior” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Rochester, 1969), pp. 317–333 Google Scholar.

10 Fenno, Richard F. Jr., “The House of Representatives and Federal Aid to Education,” in New Perspectives on the House, ed. Peabody, Robert L. and Polsby, Nelson W., 2nd ed. (Chicago: Rand McNally and Co., 1969), pp. 286–289 Google Scholar; Eidenburg, Eugene and Morey, Roy D., An Act of Congress: The Legislative Process and the Making of Education Policy (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1969)Google Scholar.

11 Fenno, , “Congressional Committees,” pp. 25–26 Google Scholar.

12 Jones, Charles O., “Representation in Congress: The Case of the House Agriculture Committee,” American Political Science Review, 55 (June, 1961) 367 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 These results are consistent with those on labor, urban, agricultural, and Western issues reported in Mayhew, David R., Party Loyalty Among Congressmen (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the general relationship between interdependent interests and reciprocity, see Coser, Lewis A., The Functions of Social Conflict (Glencoe: Free Press, 1956), pp. 75–76 Google Scholar and passim.

14 Blau, Peter M., Exchange and Power in Social Life (New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1964), p. 266 Google Scholar.

15 Blau, p. 266 (italics added).

16 Fenno, Richard F. Jr., The Power of the Purse (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1966), pp. 82–90 Google Scholar; Manley, John F., The Politics of Finance: The House Committee on Ways and Means (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1970), pp. 53–58 Google Scholar.

17 Fenno, , “Congressional Committees,” p. 6 Google Scholar.

18 Fenno, , “Federal Aid to Education,” pp. 289–293 Google Scholar; cf. Eidenberg and Morey, An Act of Congress, chaps. 2–3.

19 Goodwin, George Jr., The Little Legislatures: Committees of Congress (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1970), pp. 114–115 Google Scholar.

20 Fenno, , Power of the Purse, pp. 500–501 Google Scholar.

21 Manley, John F., “The House Committee on Ways and Means: Conflict Management in a Congressional Committee,” American Political Science Review, 60 (December, 1961), 927 Google Scholar.

22 The standard reference on the House Committee on Rules is Robinson, James R., The House Rules Committee (New York: Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1963)Google Scholar. For committee rankings, see Goodwin, , The Little Legislatures, pp. 114–115 Google Scholar.

23 Fenno, Richard F. Jr., “The Internal Distribution of Influence: The House,” in The Congress and America's Future, ed. Truman, David B. (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1965), pp. 52–70 Google Scholar.

24 Fenno, , “Congressional Committees,” pp. 23–28 Google Scholar.

25 Fenno, , “Federal Aid to Education,” pp. 284–300 Google Scholar.

26 Blau, , Exchange and Power in Social Life, p. 267 Google Scholar.

27 Blau, pp. 255–263.

28 Homans, George C., The Human Group (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1950), pp. 121–127 Google Scholar; Thibaut, John W. and Kelley, Harold H., The Social Psychology of Groups (John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1959), pp. 126–142 Google Scholar; Newcomb, Theodore H., Turner, Ralph H., and Converse, Philip E., Social Psychology (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, Inc., 1965), chaps, 8, 11, and 12Google ScholarPubMed; cf. Price, Charles M. and Bell, Charles G., “The Rules of the Game: Political Fact or Academic Fancy?,” The Journal of Politics, 32 (November, 1970), 839–855 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Congressional Record, 105, p. 17968 Google Scholar.

30 Congressional Record, 103, pp. 13196–13211 Google Scholar.

31 Congressional Record, 105, pp. 7703–7728 Google Scholar; N.B. 7703–7705. See the discussion of the Democratic erosion of support in Wildavsky, Aaron, “The TVA and Power Politics,” American Political Science Review, 55 (September, 1961), 576–590 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 Congressional Record, 111, pp. 20240–20244 Google Scholar.

33 Turner, , Party and Constituency, pp. 51–53 Google Scholar; p. 70.

34 Congressional Record, 108, p. 17333 Google Scholar.

35 Congressional Record, 108, p. 17927 Google Scholar.

36 For the Corps cost-benefit ratio, see Inter-Agency Committee on Water Resources, Subcommittee on Evaluation Standards, Proposed Practices for Economic Analysis of River Basin Projects, 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1958)Google Scholar; for highway legislation generally, see U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Public Roads, Federal Laws, Regulations and Other Material Relating to Highways (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1965)Google Scholar; for water pollution control legislation, see U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on Public Works, A Study of Pollution—Water, Committee Print, 88th Cong., 1st sess., June, 1963 Google ScholarPubMed.

37 Since all Bureau of Reclamation projects reported out by the House Interior Committee must go through exactly the same process as the Corps projects, the explanation for party cooperation on Public Works should be just as valid for party cooperation on Interior. And since the Bureau of Reclamation projects —a national allocation issue—constitutes the overwhelming bulk of Interior's legislative proposals, mutual partisan distrust should account for Interior's party cooperation, the most salient characteristic of its behavior. See Fenno, , “Congressional Committees,” pp. 36–37 Google Scholar; also see Inter-Agency Committee on Water Resources, Subcommittee on Evaluation Standards.

38 Only one of the 12 bills lost was actually called up and defeated.

39 For an extended discussion of the authorization process, see Maass, Arthur, Muddy Waters (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1951), pp. 22–24 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 Miller, Clem, Member of the House (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1962), p. 16 Google Scholar.

41 Congressional Record, 103, p. 9710 Google Scholar.

42 Congressional Record, 103, p. 9710 Google Scholar.

43 Congressional Record, 103, p. 9712 Google Scholar.

44 Congressional Record, 103, p. 9713 Google Scholar.

45 Congressional Record, 103, p. 9713 Google Scholar.

46 Congressional Record, 103, p. 9713 Google Scholar.

47 House Committee on Public Works, Subcommittee to Study Civil Works, The Civil Functions Program of the Corps of Engineers, United States Army, House Committee Print No. 21, 82nd Cong., 2d sess., p. 35 Google Scholar.

Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.