party caucuses and coordination: assessing caucus activity and party effects

Party Caucuses and Coordination: Assessing Caucus Activity and Party EffectsAuthor(s): Richard ForgetteSource: Legislative Studies Quarterly, Vol. 29, No. 3 (Aug., 2004), pp. 407-430Published by: Comparative Legislative Research CenterStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3598560 .

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RICHARD FORGETTE University of Mississippi

Party Caucuses and Coordination:

Assessing Caucus Activity and Party Effects

Party caucuses are increasingly important to members' allocation of time. This article reports findings from new data on the minutes, frequency, timing, and attendance of House party caucus meetings. I argue that the party caucuses increasingly affect political and policy information flows to members. This growing party coordination has resulted in a greater bonding and shared strategic information among rank-and-file copartisans.

This research also contributes to the party effects literature. Earlier research on congressional partisanship has used roll-call data to measure both member preferences and party effects. I investigate whether or not members' attendance at party caucus meetings immediately prior to key congressional votes imposes partisan cohesion beyond members' preferences. The results indicate that party coordination contributes to greater congressional party unity on key floor votes at both the bill and member level controlling for members' ideological preferences. This party coordination effect occurs even during a period of high intraparty preference homogeneity.

Introduction

Rising rates of congressional party voting have spawned interest in both the practice and effects of parties among legislative scholars. A disconnection exists between these literatures, however, particularly with regard to testing the relationship between congressional party activity and party effect. Do party leaders and organizations impose cohesion beyond copartisans' preference homogeneity?

Literature on the practice of congressional partisanship has focused on the growth of"party-building" activities. This party building includes a more active party leadership, a more inclusive whip system, committee and floor procedural changes, or extralegislative activities such as campaign fund-raising, interest group mobilization, and informal caucuses (Aldrich and Rohde 1997 and 2000; Campbell and Davidson 1998; Connelly and Pitney 1994; Evans and Oleszek 1997; Hammond 1998; Kolodny 1999; Sinclair 1992 and 1995). The literature provides us with a detailed, sophisticated understanding of contemporary party-building efforts.

LEGISLATIVE STUDIES QUARTERLY, XXIX, 3, August 2004 407



Richard Forgette

The party effects literature tests theories of legislative organization- in this context, ones centered on legislative parties-as solutions to collective action problems (Aldrich 1995; Cox and McCubbins 1991 and 1993; Rohde 1991; Smith 2000). Scholars have shown that these party effects vary under different historical and institutional contexts (Binder 1997; Canon and Price 1999; Jenkins 1998; Roberts and Smith 2003; Schickler 2001). Most empirical tests of these theoretical models, though, have centered on floor roll-call analyses to assess party influence.1 Building on traditional cohesion-based measures (Rice 1928), these studies have proposed different roll-call measures of party voting and have charted and explained time series of floor party voting (Collie 1989; Cooper and Young 1997; Hurley and Kerr 1997). Recent works have advanced methodological and measurement approaches for assessing the effect of party discipline independent of members' ideological preferences (Cox and Poole 2001; McCarty, Poole, and Rosenthal 2001; Snyder and Groseclose 2000). Roll-call data, however, are still used to measure both members' preferences and the independent effect of party activity. Despite the increasing sophistication of empirical tests, the issue of congressional party influence persists, given the endogeneity of members' roll-call voting behavior.

This article's objective is twofold. First, it reports a more complete picture of contemporary congressional party caucus activities and their effect on floor voting behavior. I examine new data on the minutes, frequency, timing, and member attendance of House party caucus meetings. I argue that party effects in the U.S. Congress may be generated by promoting coordination and inducing group consciousness. Congressional party organization serves a coordination role more than an enforcement role when compared to parliamentary party organizations. These party coordination activities have increased over time. I show that congressional party caucuses are meeting more often than ever before and that these meetings are more strategically timed and better attended than in the past.

The second objective is in response to the disconnection between the party-building and party effects literatures. I test whether or not these party organization activities have had any independent effect on party voting by modeling party voting behavior on Key Votes, which are high salience floor votes that are likely to interest both members and parties. The analysis indicates that party caucus activity increases party voting controlling for members' ideological preferences, as well as the political and policy context. This result is demonstrated at both the bill level and member level. The next section provides theoretical context for the analysis.

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Party Caucuses and Coordination

Explanations of Partisanship

An important debate in the congressional literature relates to the political influence of parties within Congress. Despite a rise in congressional party activity, congressional party critics argue that party voting alone does not indicate party effects. These critics have questioned if floor party voting represents evidence of meaningful legislative partisanship (Krehbiel 1993, 1998, 2000).

Krehbiel (1993) argues that the rise of congressional party voting is wholly preference induced, occurring merely from the coincidence of copartisans' policy preferences. The apparent rise of partisanship is nothing but "preferenceship," he argues, devoid of any structural- or discipline-based party effects. He also presents a nonpartisan, pivotal politics model (1998) while demonstrating that traditional, vote-based cohesion measures of legislative partisanship "are ineffective instru- ments for detecting genuine party-based voting, party strength, and leadership support" (2000, 212). Krehbiel's work shows that current voting patterns are consistent with theories of strong, influential parties as well as with a nonpartisan model in which member preferences are arrayed along party lines. He concludes that high rates of party voting in Congress are "artifacts of preferences rather than evidence of party discipline" (225).

In contrast, structural partisanship and conditional party government literatures (Aldrich 1995; Cox and McCubbins 1993; Rohde 1991) argue that the congressional (House) majority party induces greater partisanship than would have occurred due to intraparty preference homogeneity alone. Leaders may not effectively force copartisans to support the party, but they can structure their floor choices to limit rates of party dissension. By structuring members' institutional incentives through committee assignment, bill scheduling, and floor amendment agenda control, party leaders induce higher rates of party voting. A conditional party government strand of this argument is that this structural partisanship is limited by or "conditional" to the degree of copartisans' preference homogeneity and interparty polarization (Aldrich and Rohde 2000; Rohde 1991). Structural partisanship is more apparent during periods of high preference homogeneity.

Party influence, according to these theories, results from the majority party leadership structuring and thus limiting floor agenda access. Legislators may cast votes sincerely, but their floor choices are constrained by the leadership's structural powers. Distinct from these preference- and structural-induced partisanship claims is a third source of partisanship, party discipline. In this case, legislators may

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Richard Forgette

knowingly misrepresent their true policy preferences when casting floor votes in favor of their party's position. They do this to advance their party's legislative and electoral agenda while also avoiding any implied leadership threat of retribution and preserving their own institutional ambitions. Party enforcement or discipline suggests that the role of party leaders is to compel rank-and-file compliance through rewards and sanctions in a multiperson prisoners' dilemma in which members have dominant strategies to defect despite a pareto-superior party outcome. Leaders communicate clear party expectations, establish precommitment among rank-and-file members, and expose probable party defectors. Party defectors risk both the informal sanctions of their partisan peers as well as the more formal sanctions from leaders, including restricted agenda access and limited electoral and legislative career advancement.

From a comparative legislatures perspective, scholars have argued that the U.S. Congress is designed for and achieves relatively low levels of this enforcement-based party discipline (Bach 2000; Bowler, Farrell, and Katz 1999; Mezey 1993; Sinclair 2000).2 Despite the cen- trality of party discipline to the order of parliamentary democracy, even parliamentary scholars have noted the erosion of enforcement-based discipline in the "Westminster Model" (Whiteley and Seyd 1999).3 Con- gressional party organizations do not generally function to instill party enforcement. What, if any, role then do congressional party caucuses serve?

A coordination view of the congressional party caucus suggests that party meetings serve to transmit strategic information. An informational asymmetry exists between the party rank and file and their leadership regarding legislative strategy, policy priorities, and electoral marketing of a party agenda. The objective of the party caucus is to build cohesion indirectly through information transmission. An exchange occurs. The party leaders provide opportunities for rank-and-file members to voice objections to and, in some cases, derail or alter party strategy. Leaders signal and justify party positions to sometimes ambivalent or less-informed rank and file who need to explain their vote decisions to constituents (Bianco 1994; Fenno 1978; Kingdon 1989). Rank-and-file members, in most cases, follow the leadership agenda or at least provide strategic information to leaders by indicating likely areas of party division.

The role of party leaders within the party caucus, therefore, is to signal to the party rank and file a particular party position that lies within the caucus majority's pareto set. Rather than enforcing compliance in a prisoners' dilemma, party leaders solve a coordination problem of multiple, asymmetric equilibria among copartisans. Calvert (1995 and

410




2001) describes a rational choice account of partisanship as an instru- mental mechanism for social coordination. According to this view, coordination rather than enforcement is the primary role for the congressional party caucus. Assuming intraparty preference homogeneity, copartisans share a range of policy positions that they may prefer to the status quo.

This coordination perspective presupposes preference homogeneity, a condition in which most copartisans recognize shared policy and political goals. Members are more likely to act on information disseminated by party leaders as intraparty preference homogeneity increases. Furthermore, this strategic information exchange loses its power when the majority party leaders are less able to control the agenda, instead deferring to the committee chairs and individual members. In these ways, a party coordination view of the caucus is consistent with the conditional party government and structural party theories.

The coordination perspective also extends party theories of legislative organization. The distinction between enforcement and coordination clarifies the causal mechanisms for generating party bonding within the caucus. Earlier works on party effects have focused on procedural powers of the majority party alone, with less clarity on how party effects relate to the process of party building and the role of information. The coordination role of the party caucus, reinforced by the majority party's procedural advantages, may explain why congressional party organizations are more active during times when their enforcement role is least needed, during periods of high preference homogeneity.

Enforcement and coordination were both illustrated within the House Democratic Caucus during the 1981 Reagan tax cut debate. Conservative Democratic Boll-weevils, particularly then-Democrat Phil Gramm, not only voted for the Reagan tax bill but openly conspired with the Reagan administration to sponsor legislation and share opposi- tion information.4 Members within the Democratic Caucus addressed the tension between party enforcement and respecting members' own political discretion. In short, the Caucus debated its primary purpose and what a member's minimal obligation is toward party organization.

Democratic Caucus Chairman Gillis Long declared that political conduct (short of voting loyalty) should be the basis for enforcement. Speaking to the Democratic Caucus in 1981, Long stated:

If it can be substantiated that a Member listens to our strategy sessions and then is an active participant in the strategic sessions of the political opposi- tion, is that reasonable political conduct that deserves rewards in our Caucus? I personally think it is not. What football team would reward a player who listens to his own team's offensive huddle and then goes straight over to the opponents' huddle to plan defensive strategy with them?5

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Richard Forgette

According to Long's view, members are obliged to avoid public party betrayal. A clear breach in ethics, gross party disloyalty (such as supporting another party's presidential candidate), or perhaps defection on an initial organizational vote might be the only basis for caucus enforcement.

Representative Toby Moffett, a liberal Democrat from Connecticut, expressed a stricter, vote-based, party obligation:

If you can't vote with us [Democrats] on three out of ten issues, really, why are you a Democrat? And I think it is a good question for some of our Members, and I don't say this with any malice at all. I think some of the rest of us would like to know why you are a Democrat if you have a 20% voting record with the party.

This vote-based party obligation was more formalized with the House Republicans' "Contract with America" in 1995. Republican members unwilling to support Contract items may have perceived that they were placing their institutional careers at risk (Evans and Oleszek 1997). In 1981 and 1995 (and since then), however, intraparty factions have been potentially pivotal for achieving floor majorities. The 70-plus cushion of seats that the majority party enjoyed over the minority throughout most of the 1970s and later 1980s did not exist. Consequently, majority size margin may limit party leaders' ability to enforce a party vote or agenda for fear of triggering loss of majority support.

Finally, Charlie Rose, a Democrat from North Carolina, expressed a coordination view of the Democratic Caucus. Following Moffett's statement, Rose offered a challenge:

I challenge the leadership of this party to find a place that is suitable-Virginia, Maryland, Bermuda-get a 747 and we will fly around the White House... but let us go somewhere where we can, you know, get drunk together, where we can have Charlie Rangel roast the Boll-weevils, where the Conservative Demo- cratic Forum can mock Toby Moffett.... Do it in a spirit of fun and fellowship and maybe at a human level and we can find out what we have in common and what it really means to be a Democrat.

According to Rose, political or vote obligations do not formally exist within a party caucus, but the caucus may build trust and a shared identity among copartisans. This political understanding and perceived common fate may, in time, lead members to coordinate without coercion with the party position.

Concluding, enforcement and coordination perspectives coexist as two explanations for the role of the congressional party caucus.

412




While congressional party organizations may influence outcomes with both enforcement and coordination, the latter tactic may be more common in Congress from a comparative perspective. Congressional electoral and institutional design allows for more independent-minded and careerist membership. Efforts to impose party order through the force of a leader's personality or the structural advantages of leadership have not been sustained in congressional history. The coordination perspective, though, implies that party caucus activity increases as intraparty ideological preferences become more homogeneous.

This expectation leads to several testable implications of party coordination and party voting. First, I expect party leaders' use of the caucus, as indicated by the frequency and strategic timing of meetings, will coincide with intraparty preference homogeneity:

Hypothesis 1: Party caucuses meet more frequently as ideological homogeneity increases.

Hypothesis 2: Party caucus meetings immediately preceding Key Votes are more common as ideological homogeneity increases.

Second, I expect rank-and-file copartisans' reliance on the party caucus for information and voting cues will increase as preference homogeneity increases. Members' association with party coordination efforts are affected by their general ideological agreement with the party. Consequently, I hypothesize caucus attendance effects:

Hypothesis 3: Party caucus attendance increases as ideological homogeneity increases.

Finally, I would expect that party-building activities would ultimately result in party voting effects independent from intraparty preference homogeneity. Coordination within the party caucus would contribute to party floor unity independent from member ideology. I therefore offer

Hypothesis 4: Party cohesion is greater on Key Votes when there is a clear party position and a party caucus meeting immediately preceding the floor vote.

In the next section, I describe the party caucus data and test these hypotheses.

413



Richard Forgette

Data and Results

Both the House Democratic Caucus and Republican Conference have historically restricted public access to their activities. When Representative Bill Frenzel (R-MN) offered a motion in the 94th Congress to open the Republican Conference meetings "to put heat on the Democrats" to reciprocate, Minority Leader Robert Michel (R-IL) resisted. Michel asserted that the press would likely use their access to report on differences within the parties rather than between them. Closed party caucus sessions, he argued, facilitate a more frank exchange between copartisans. More recently, after repeated news leaks during the 105th Conference, Speaker Gingrich expelled Repub- lican staff from attending Conference meetings.

The closed nature of party organization business has resulted in few studies of congressional party organization and, among those studies, a general reliance on elite interviews and participant-observer methods for drawing generalizations. Ripley (1967) and Jones (1968) give detailed, although now dated, accounts of House party organizations over time, emphasizing the contextual forces that inhibit or permit different leadership styles. Generally, these works indicate that the party organizations (particularly, the House Republican Conference) served little or no consistent role in floor coalition formation during the prereform era.6

To update these assessments of party building and to test my hypotheses, I read the available minutes and transcripts of House party caucuses.7 Additionally, I collected individual-level attendance data for the House Republican Conference meetings from 1987 to 1998, as well as data on the frequency and timing of House Republican Conference and Democratic Caucus meetings over time.8 General patterns of caucus activity support the party coordination view and hypotheses.

Frequency

One limited but reasonable gauge of party caucus activity is the frequency of its meetings. Figure 1 shows the frequency of House Republican Conference meetings, arrayed along the left axis, for each of 53 years. Arrayed along the right axis is a measure of party preference homogeneity, the standard deviation of Poole and Rosenthal's (1997, 1998) DW-NOMINATE, first-dimension scores for House Republicans during each Congress over the time period. Evidently, the rising frequency of meetings corresponds with the declining standard deviation (rising preference homogeneity).9 Ripley's characterization

414




FIGURE 1 House Republican Conference Meetings and Intraparty Preference Homogeneity

*** * *

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Year I I~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-n- Republican Conference Meetings -+- Republican DW-Nominate 1st, Std. Dev.

of an inactive Conference is reflected in the small number of meetings throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Most of these meetings were early organizational ones to elect party officers. Beginning in 1987, House Republicans began holding more meetings. Note also the spike in the timeline at the start of the 104th Congress. In fact, the Republican Conference met more often in 1995 (n = 76) than it did during the entire decade of the 1950s (n = 52).

Figure 2 presents comparable timelines of House Democratic Caucus meetings and Democratic preference homogeneity over time. House Democratic Caucus meetings data are not available over the entire time period. Nevertheless, the patterns weakly conform to the coordination perspective.10 The frequency of Democratic Caucus meetings has been more variable than that of the Republican Confer- ence, but it demonstrates that the increasing number of Republican meetings is not exclusively a function of their movement toward and attainment of majority status. The Democratic Caucus in recent Congresses has met more as a minority party than the preceding majority Democratic Caucuses.

70

60

50-

40-

30- .*

20-

I~ q/In

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r,



Richard Forgette

FIGURE 2 House Democratic Caucus Meetings

and Intraparty Preference Homogeneity

4- 4 (: A O~ ( L O' OO Oa -. -_ -_ -- -- 00 00 00 00 00 'CO ' I O ' O O ,i - --4 , . n j t - - -- IC - , -- O I -L W (. -_ C -r W -_ O - W .e -.

Year

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0.16

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0.12

0.10

-*- Democratic Caucus Meetings - Democratic DW-Nominate 1st, Std. Dev.

Strategic Timing

As noted earlier, throughout most of the history of the party caucuses, meetings were held predominantly to elect officers at the start of each Congress. Another gauge of caucus activity is the number of meetings held immediately pending Key Votes. The strategic timing of caucus meetings indicates efforts to exercise influence over copartisans' vote decisions. Figures 3 and 4 show the percentage of Congressional Quarterly Key Votes each year for which a party caucus meeting was held three days or less before the floor vote. Minutes were available for House Republican Conference meetings (but not the Democratic Caucus meetings) and confirm that the pending Key Vote was typically a central item on these meetings' agendas.

I also include the parties' preference homogeneity measures arrayed along the right axes. Again, the expected pattern is more discerable in Figure 3 for House Republicans, but both parties have had a significant increase in strategically timed meetings during the 1990s. The correlation coefficient between annual percent of Key Votes

416




FIGURE 3 Strategic Timing of Republican Conference Meetings

and Republican Preference Homogeneity

1.0

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2

0

Year

-U- % of Key Votes -+ Republican NOMINATE, Std. Dev.

with strategically timed Republican meetings and the DW-NOMINATE Republican standard deviation is -.81 (p = .00). The comparable correlation coefficient for House Democrats is -.25 (p = .4). The minutes of Republican Conference meetings also indicate that Republicans have become more inclined to use the Conference for planning, strategizing, and whipping floor votes. Attendance rates at these strategically timed meetings increased between 1987 and 1998. For Republicans, average attendance at these meetings was about 45% during the 100th Congress; it increased to 60% by the 105th. Again, although Republican Confer- ence activity is more consistent with expectations than Democratic Caucus activity, growing caucus activity does not generally appear to be a function solely of majority party status. Strategically timed Republican Conference meetings increased prior to the 104th Congress, and such Democratic Caucus meetings significantly increased after Democrats became the minority.

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Richard Forgette

FIGURE 4 Strategic Timing of Democratic Caucus Meetings

and Democratic Preference Homogeneity

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- 0.24

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-- % of Key Votes -- Democratic NOMINATE, Std. Dev.

Member Attendance Rates

A final indicator of party caucus activity is member attendance. Ideally, to assess the coordination thesis, we would examine attendance data from the 1960s and 1970s, when parties were more ideologically heterogeneous. Unfortunately, Democrats have only erratically recorded attendance, and the Republican Conference did not regularly take member attendance prior to 1987. Still, we know that Republican Conference attendance rates increased marginally during the 1987-99 period. Average Republican attendance increased about 10% over that time period, even with the substantial increase in number of meetings and the increasing size of the Conference. The correlation coefficient between a year counter and the percent of Republican attendance is .55 (p = .07). Attendance varies by time of the session, pending business, and the Conference agenda, with the early organizational meetings attracting greatest attendance. Nonetheless, the Conference no longer struggles to achieve quorums, as it did during prior decades as indicated in the minutes.

418

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0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2

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Growing attendance across the different factions within the Con- ference may indicate the growing informational importance of party meetings. Specifically, growing attendance rates for senior Republican members (those with at least ten years of prior service) would indicate greater strategic value of the meetings. Generally, these senior members' attendance rates are lower over time than those of other members. But senior members' attendance rates increased over 20% during the time period. This senior attendance trend is partly but not wholly reflecting a generational effect within the Republican Confer- ence. Incoming classes throughout the period included larger shares of conservatives, who generally participate more in the party conference.

The changing regional balance within the Conference has resulted in shifting sizes of ideological factions among Republicans (Kolodny 1999; Rae 1989). The Southern Republican share of the Conference grew 75% between the 97th and 104th Congresses. During the same period, there was a corresponding 30% decline among Conference members from New England and mid-Atlantic states (Koopman 1996). A more strategically active Conference might attract greater attendance from members when contending immoderate ideological factions (relative to the party median). Attendance rates among conservatives are slightly but consistently higher than the rates of moderates throughout the time period.11 However, attendance rates among both conservative and liberal Republican factions have slightly increased over time. Members from both ideological factions increased attendance by close to 10% from the 100th to 105th Congresses.

Party Effects and Voting

Although we have observed these bivariate patterns of party building and members' preferences, we have yet to directly test the relationship between party building and party influence. The determi- nants of party voting are most likely complex and contextual. The theoretical issue, however, is whether or not party voting is exclusively a function of members' preferences. I specify a model to explain the percentage of copartisans voting with their party leader on Congressional Quarterly (CQ) Key Votes, the dependent variable in the analysis.12 CQ chooses these Key Votes each session as a sample of roll calls they believe were highly salient to members, interest groups, or the public. In many cases, these floor votes resulted in ideological, regional, or other divisions within and between parties. I estimate separate equations for House Republicans' and Democrats' party cohesion on these Key Votes.

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Richard Forgette

The principal control in the model is the copartisans' preference homogeneity in any Congress. Again, I use Poole and Rosenthal's DW- NOMINATE scores, particularly the first-dimension standard deviation, as a measure of the party's ideological homogeneity. I expect a negative effect of the variable Preferences. As the NOMINATE standard deviation decreases, party unity increases.

The strategic timing and informational signaling of party caucus meetings is captured in an interaction dummy variable, Party Coordi- nation. This variable is coded as 1 for Key Votes fulfilling two conditions. The first condition is that the Key Vote was preceded by a party caucus meeting three days or less before the floor vote. The second condition is that there was an unambiguous party signal, as indicated by the party leader and whip voting in the same direction on the Key Vote. The party coordination variable is included in the Democratic and Republican models as a measure of strategic party caucus activity preceding a Key Vote. I expect a positive relationship with party leadership cohesion.

The margin between majority and minority seats may also influence intraparty cohesion. Whether the minority party leadership chooses an accommodational or confrontational strategic role may depend on their closeness to gaining majority status. Fenno (1997) partly credits Newt Gingrich for both the rise and decline of the "Republican revolu- tion." Gingrich's election as Republican Whip over Ed Madigan (R-IL) in the 101st and Representative Armey's defeat of Jerry Lewis (R- CA) as Conference Chair at the start of the 103d Congress marked the beginning of the end of the Republican minority's intraparty strategic struggle. This minority party strategic change coincided with declining interparty seat margins. It also altered the nature and number of Con- ference meetings.13 For the majority party Democrats also, interparty seat margin may matter. The effects of party defection when House Democrats held a 70-plus seat margin throughout the 1970s and from the mid- to late 1980s were not as pivotal as at other times. Party strategies may change in response to new leadership and changing interparty seat margins. Roberts and Smith (2003) report evidence that party strategies affect party voting and polarization. For these reasons, I include a Seat margin variable, the absolute difference between House Democrats and Republicans, as a determinant of party voting. I expect a negative relationship with party cohesion; that is, as the interparty seat difference decreases, the importance, if not appearance, of party cohesion increases.

I also control for issue context. To the extent that legislative agenda is exogenous to the majority party leadership, the nature of issues voted

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on the House floor may affect party cohesion. I code Key Votes as Budget, Domestic, or Foreign/military issues. I include dummy variables in the model for the first and last categories. Generally, budget votes have been considered more partisan, whereas foreign policy votes have been considered more bipartisan.

The movement from minority to majority party status may particularly affect the role of the new majority caucus for forging party unity. The large 103d and 104th Congress Republican classes increased the size and moved the ideological center of the Republican Confer- ence. Furthermore, the new majority's number of first-year legislators, lack of institutional knowledge, and desire for quick action allowed for a larger-than-usual and, ultimately, unsustainable delegation of authority to the party leadership. The Contract with America provided a ready- made positive agenda to focus the Conference's early efforts for enhancing unity. Consequently, I expect this electoral shock to explain a temporary increase in party cohesion. To control for the majority party change, I include another dummy variable for the 1995-96 period, 104th Congress.

Finally, legislative-executive relationships alter the role of the party caucus. A new administration with an active agenda provides a unique political context for the congressional party caucus. Mobilizing and maintaining copartisans' support for that presidential agenda becomes a vital function for party leaders. The early Reagan agenda provided some of that role for the House Republican Conference, but the remaining Reagan and Bush presidencies presented the Conference with a less formative role for framing policy negotiations and forming floor coalitions. To the frustration of House Republicans, both Reagan and Bush negotiated with Democratic leaders, undermining the Conference's strategic role. Clinton's 1992 election presented a political context in which House Democratic leaders were to advance his agenda. House Republicans saw a common enemy, a context in which confrontational partisans, led by Gingrich, thrived. Thus, I include the variable Prhoneymoon in Democratic and Republican models, coding it as 1 for the first year of a copartisan president's administration and as 0 otherwise.

Preferences, party organization, and the policy and political context may all matter in forming party cohesion. Again, I run separate analyses for the percent of Democrats and Republicans voting with their leaders on Key Votes. Table 1 includes the results of a censored regression model. These results support the view that party coordination significantly increases party cohesion rates. Although the preferences hypothesis is supported in both models, preferences do not subsume

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422 Richard Forgette

TABLE 1 Tobit Estimates of Party Coordination on Key Vote Cohesion

(standard errors in parentheses)

Dependent Variable = Percent Party Cohesion on a Key Vote

Model 1: Model 2: Variable Democratic Party Cohesion Republican Party Cohesion

Preferences -1.191**

(.428)

Party Coordination

Seat Margin

.061**

(.021)

-.004 (.003)

Budget Vote .009 (.022)

1.309*

(.638)

.089**

(.021)

.005 (.003)

.012 (.024)

Foreign Policy Vote

104th Congress

Presidential Honeymoons

Constant

n

Model x2

-.030 (.024)

-.054 (.038)

-.002 (.029)

.945** (.075)

-.385 (.025)

.124** (.040)

.015 (.031)

.865** (.094)

372 372

43.04** 48.79**

*p < .05; **p < .01.

the effect of party building. In fact, as theorized by a party coordination view, the two effects work in concert. Party coordination increased Democrats' floor cohesion by about 6% and Republicans' by about 9%. The size of the party coordination effect was pivotal to the voting outcome for between one-sixth and one-fourth of Key Votes in any year over the time period.

With the exception of the Republican 104th Congress coefficient, the results do not indicate strong evidence for the policy and political context variables. Republican party cohesion appears strong in the 104th




Congress, and the effect of the party caucus on Key Votes is significant beyond the unusual, unsustainable conditions that existed during the majority party transition. Additionally, this party coordination effect is robust to party leaders calling caucus meetings in anticipation of a higher rate of party defection on a pending Key Vote.

Party effects can also be assessed at the member level. Besides noting the observational equivalence of party and preference-based voting, conditional party government critics also suggest that party effects are negligible or nonexistent if they only occur during periods of high preference homogeneity (Krehbiel 2000). In other words, structural partisanship is theoretically achievable only when it is least needed, under conditions of high intraparty ideological homogeneity and interparty polarization. Presumably, if ideological preferences are sufficient to achieve party cohesion, then party coordination or structure will not significantly increase party unity. I assess this critique of the conditional party government model by examining House Republican members' Key Votes during the 105th Congress (1997-98), a period of high intraparty preference homogeneity.

Table 2 displays logit results from a member-level model of House Republican vote choice across 28 Key Votes during the 105th Con- gress.14 In this case, the dependent variable is whether or not a Repub- lican member voted the party position (coded as 1 if the member did so) on a particular Key Vote. Member-level attendance to House Republican Conference meetings allows for a test of party coordination. The variable Party Whipped is the central theoretical variable again, coded as 1 if a member attended a strategically timed party caucus meeting three days or less before the Key Vote. Member preferences are measured as the member's first-dimension D-NOMINATE score.15

Sinclair (1992) and others discuss a strategy of inclusion in which a growing number of junior rank-and-file members are given institutional and party responsibilities. Therefore, I include control variables for a member's institutional and party placement, as well as for chamber seniority. I control for a member's inclusion as a party leader, key committee member, and a ranking committee member16 I expect that institutional and party inclusion increases the probability of a member voting with the party. I also control for Chamber seniority, measured as years of prior institutional service for a member.

Finally, Loomis (1988) discusses the rise of legislative entrepreneurship during the 1970s, and, more recently, Wawro (2000) explains and tests different theories of entrepreneurial activity. I control for legislative entrepreneurship by including a count of Bills introduced and Floor amendments offered by the member. I expect the floor

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TABLE 2 Estimates of Party Coordination on Individual Members' Key Votes

(standard errors in parentheses) [marginal effect for any variable in brackets]

Dependent Variable = Member Party Support on a Key Vote

Model 1: Model 2: Variable All House Republicans Lower Half of Conference Attendees

Member Preferences 2.88** 2.64** (.23) (.31) [.06] [.05]

Party Whipped .12** .14** (.039) (.05) [.03] [.03]

Chamber Seniority .023 .000 (.021) (.03) [.01] [.01]

Party Leader .60** .58 (.31) (.75) [.08] [.06]

Ranking Committee Member .13 .17 (.09) (.13) [.04] [.03]

Key Committee Membership .023** .28* (.007) (.12) [.01] [.00]

Party Leadership Vote .22* .22 (.10) (.16) [.03] [.03]

Bills Introduced -.001 .003 (.005) (.008) [.01] [.01]

Floor Amendments -.06** -.04 (.02) (.04)

[-.02] [-.01]

Constant -.71* * -.54** (.19) (.27)

n 5823 2939 Model x2 224.01** 99.4**

*p < .05; **p < .01. Note: The marginal effect equals the probability change on E[Y] of a standard deviation increase in variable X, holding all other variables at their means.




amendments variable to be negatively related to a member's party voting. Frequent floor amendments by a majority partisan may indicate dissatisfaction with party and committee floor agenda setting.

The Model 1 column in Table 2 displays results for all House Republicans in the 105th Congress across the 28 Key Votes. These results indicate that, even during a period of high preference homogeneity, party coordination significantly increases the probability that a member votes with his or her party, if we control for the member's ideological preferences. Party Whipped and Party Leadership Vote are positive and significant. A member's attendance at a strategically timed Conference meeting results in an 11% increase in the odds of he or she voting the party position. Holding other variables at their means, I find that the effect of party caucus attendance and clear party leadership signals increases a member's probability of party voting by 6%. Inclusion in key committee and party positions also increases party voting independent from ideological preferences. Members who offer more floor amendments are significantly less likely to support the party position; this variable indicates a tendency to oppose the party and chair's bill.

Model 2 in Table 2 helps us assess whether or not the party whipped variable merely measures the effect of highly ideological members who are more inclined to attend party meetings. The party whipped effect may be spurious or merely a proxy for ideological preferences. Logistic regression results are reported for only those House Republi- cans with below average Conference attendance. These results indicate that the party effect is not spurious. The size of the party whipped coefficient slightly increases and remains significant for a member whose Conference attendance is below average, resulting in a 15% increase in the probability of casting a floor vote for the party position.

Conclusion

This research assesses the relationship between the party-building and party effects literatures. The relationship is central to testing party theories of legislative organization. My research contributes to existing works in two ways. First, I offer a coordination view of the role of congressional party caucuses that clarifies a causal process for generating party effects. Prior studies of party effects have not clearly stated the mechanisms for achieving these effects or have argued that procedural carrots and sticks are the principal means. Party caucuses engage in both enforcement and coordination, but I find patterns in newly collected data on caucus activities that provide support for the coordination view.

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Richard Forgette

As is consistent with a coordination view, party organization activity has increased as intraparty preferences have become more homogeneous.

The second contribution to the existing literature is a new test of party effects. I test for party effects with a measure that identifies party organization activity before and independent from the recorded floor vote. Prior studies have used roll-call votes to measure both party preferences and effects. I report a multivariate analysis testing the impact of party caucus activities on overall bill cohesion and on individual members' vote choices. The results show a strong, positive party effect when one controls for members' preferences. Party leadership and whipped votes with a clear party position and a strategically timed party caucus meeting appear to yield greater party cohesion. Members who attend strategically timed party meetings are significantly more likely to vote the party position, independent of their ideological preferences. This test of party activity preceding a key floor vote offers a more exogenous measure than tests used in previous roll-call analyses.

In later work, I will assess more carefully this relationship between caucus activities and congressional partisan effects. I will address who participates in a party caucus and why, making greater use of the individual-level, cross-sectional time series nature of the caucus attendance data, as well as participants' perceptions gleaned from interviews and transcripts.

Richard Forgette is Professor and Chair of Political Science, University of Mississippi, 116 Deupree Hall, P.O. Box 1848, University, Mississippi 38677-1848.

NOTES

I thank Susan Kay, Glenn Platt, Brian Sala, and anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

1. Recent exceptions include Ansolabehere, Snyder, and Stewart 2000; Forgette and Sala 1999; Jenkins 1999; and Jenkins and Schickler 2000.

2. One institutional artifact of party discipline is the King Caucus rule. Until 1975, the House Democratic Caucus included in their rules a King Caucus provision allowing copartisans to bind the vote of all Democrats with a two-thirds caucus vote. The King Caucus rule was used six times between 1911 and 1924; it was used only twice during the next 50 years. In 1965 and 1969, the Democratic Caucus voted to strip committee seniority from members who actively supported opponents to the Demo- cratic presidential nominees.

3. One unique and very tangible example is in the Spanish parliament; Sanchez de Dios (1999) writes that party leaders "can impose a fine of up to...40,000 pesetas" on a member of Parliament for missing a Key Vote without justification (157).

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Party Caucuses and Coordination 427

4. House Democrats ultimately removed Phil Gramm from the Budget Com- mittee. Gramm soon after resigned his House seat to run (and win) again as a Republican.

5. Members' quotes from the 1981 tax cut debate are taken from House Demo- cratic Caucus transcripts, September 16, 1981.

6. Ripley (1967) states that the House Republican leadership throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s was "radically decentralized" (191) and that the Conference had "no attributes of a truly deliberative body" (46).

7. The House Democratic Caucus has transcripts of its meetings, but only records from the 1970s to 1980s were available. The House Republican Conference has a more complete archive of Conference minutes dating from the 1920s.

8. Individual-level attendance records were not available for the Democratic Caucus for this period.

9. The correlation coefficient between annual frequency of Republican meetings and the DW-NOMINATE Republican standard deviation is -.40 (p = .04).

10. The correlation coefficient between frequency of Democratic meetings and the DW-NOMINATE Democratic standard deviation is -.53 (p = .09).

11. American Conservative Union (ACU) voting scores are used to identify a member's ideological faction. The bottom and top quartiles over the entire 12-year ACU time series were used to define cutoffs for moderates and conservatives, respectively.

12. The "party leader" is designated as the House majority or minority leader. Congressional Quarterly chooses 13 to 15 "Key Votes" each year.

13. The variation and amount of party caucus activities outside of regular meetings also changed. For Republicans, participants credit Representatives Armey and Boehner with transforming the level of Conference activity. "Cross-lobbying" (regular meetings with Republican-aligned interest group lobbyists), coordinated message control (members' "boarding passes," "recess kits," and "issue briefs"), greater media outreach (regional press, talk radio, and online) and personal office and district staff support are all recent expansions of Conference activities.

14. For both models, I tested for the unit and time effects that are often associated with pooled cross-sectional time series data (Greene 1997, sect. 19.5). Particularly, I examined effects of a member's prior party voting and party caucus attendance. Also, I tested for heteroscedasticity across cross-sections by including dummy variables for each Key Vote.

15. Later studies may also control for constituency characteristics or bill spon- sorship not captured by the member preferences variable.

16. Party leaders are designated as the Speaker, Majority Leader, Majority Whip, Chief Deputy Whip, Regional Whips, Conference Chair, Vice-Chair, Conference Secretary, Policy Committee Chair, and Campaign Committee Chair. Key Committee members include those assigned to House Appropriations, Rules, Ways and Means, and Commerce. Ranking Committee members include all committee and subcommittee chairs. I ran the model using only full committee chairs for this final control variable and arrived at comparable results.

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