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Setting the Agendaby Gary W. Cox and Mathew D. McCubbins 1 Setting the Agenda: Setting the Agendaby Gary W. Cox and Mathew D. McCubbins
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Setting the Agenda:
Responsible Party Government in the US House of Representatives

by

Gary W. Cox

and

Mathew D. McCubbins

Department of Political Science
UC San Diego
April 2004


Setting the Agendaby Gary W. Cox and Mathew D. McCubbins
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Table of Contents

Introduction ..... 7

Part I: Why Party Government?
Chapter 2
Procedural Cartel Theory 36

Part II: The Bill-Makin Behemoth

Chapter 3
Procedural Cartel Model vs. Floor Agenda Model .. 93

Chapter 4
The Primacy of Reeds Rules in House Organization . 107

Chapter 5
Final Passage Votes . 170

Chapter 6
The Costs of Agenda Control .. 197

Chapter 7
The Textbook Congress and the Committee on Rules . 227

Chapter 8
The Bills Reported from Committee 266

Chapter 9
Which Way Does Policy Move? .. 298


Part III: The Consequences of Positive Agenda Power and Conditional Party
Government

Chapter 10
Positive Agenda Power ... 340


Chapter 11
Conclusion .. 370




Setting the Agendaby Gary W. Cox and Mathew D. McCubbins
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List of Tables and Figures
Table number
Title
Page
Figure 1.1
Majority agenda control and legislative
success
34
Table 2.1
Census of legislative resources
83
Table 3.1
Possible distributions of agenda vetoes 86
Figure 3.1
The idealized cartel agenda model
106
Appendix 4.A.2
A listing of organizational and rule
changes
155
Table 4.1
Effects of rule changes on proportion
of final-passage bills that move policy
toward majority, Congresses 45-105
166
Figure 4.1
Status quos that will and will not be
put on the agenda and amended to F
167
Figure 4.2
Identifying the direction of policy
change
168
Figure 4.3
Effect of Reeds rules on the
proportion of bills moving policy
toward the majority party
169
Table 5.1
House rolls on final passage votes for
majority and minority parties, by
Congress, 1877-1997
191
Table 5.2
Predicted and estimated effects of
distance on roll rates, majority and
minority parties, 1877-1997
193
Table 5.3
Effect of preference shifts on roll rates 194
Table 5.4
Direction of Policy Change for
majority and minority rolls, 45
th
-105
th

Congresses
195
Table 5.A
OLS and MLCS estimates of effects of
distance on roll rates, majority and
minority parties, 1877-1997
196
Table 6.1
Probit estimate of effect of Republican
presidents and Senates on Democratic
majority rolls in the House, 84
th
-103
rd

Congresses
226
Appendix 7.A
Majority and minority rolls on rule
adoption votes, by order of Rules
Committee, majority party, and floor
median ideal points, Congresses 62-
100
256
Table 7.1
Majority-party roll rates on rule
adoption votes, 54
th
-74
th
Congresses
258
Table 7.2
Majority-party roll rates on rule
adoption votes, 54
th
-105
th
Congresses
259 Setting the Agendaby Gary W. Cox and Mathew D. McCubbins
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Table 7.3
Minority-party roll rates on rule
adoption votes, 54
th
-105
th
Congresses
260
Table 7.4

Effects of distance from Rules
Committee block-out zone on majority
and minority party rolls on rule
adoption votes, 62
nd
-100
th
Congresses
261
Figure 7.1
The Rules Committee as an Agenda
Setter
263
Figure 7.2
Kernel Density plots of Roll Rates on
Special Rules Votes
264
Figure 7.3
Location of the Rules median and
party rolls
265
Table 8.1
Determinants of Dissent on Committee
Reports, 84
th
-98
th
Congresses (even-
numbered).
290
Figure 8.1
Estimated dissent rates for (majority)
Democrats and (minority)
Republicans, by W-NOMINATE
score.
292
Figure 8.2
Estimated rate of voting against a bill
for (majority) Democrats and
(minority) Republicans, by W-
NOMINATE score.
293
Table 8.A.1
Determining the dissent zone as a
function of x, C and F
295
Figure 8.A.1
Illustrating the member dissent and
committee block zones
296
Table 9.1
Six models of the legislative process
317
Table 9.2
Explaining variations in the proportion
of final-passage bills that propose to
move policy leftward, if bills move
policy to the floor median
318
Table 9.3
Explaining variations in the proportion
of final-passage bills that propose to
move policy leftward, if bills move
policy as per the pivot model
319
Table 9.4
Explaining variations in the proportion
of final-passage bills that propose to
move policy leftward, if bills move
policy to a constitutional weighted
average
320
Table 9.5
The effect of Reeds rules on the
proportion of leftward moves
321
Figure 9.1
Proportion of Bills that Move Policy
Leftward
322 Setting the Agendaby Gary W. Cox and Mathew D. McCubbins
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Figure 9.2
Agenda-setting, and bill passage stages
of the legislative process
323
Figure 9.3
Proportion of leftward moves under
the floor agenda model
324
Figure 9.4
Proportion of leftward moves under
the extended pivot model
325
Figure 9.5
Proportion of leftward moves under
the cartel agenda model
326
Table 10.1
Extended beta binomial estimate of
effect of majority-party homogeneity
on minority party roll rate, 45
th
-105
th

Congresses
367
Table 10.2
Majority and minority roll rates by
committee, 84
th
-98
th
Congresses
368
Figure 10.1
The Consequences of Increasing
Homogeneity
369
Table 11.1
Majority party roll rates throughout the
legislative process
392
Figure 11.1
Legislative productivity as a joint
product of agenda power and
discipline
394
Addendum
Majority and minority rolls, 45
th
-105
th

Congresses
395
Setting the Agendaby Gary W. Cox and Mathew D. McCubbins
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Acknowledgements:
Setting the Agenda is the product of our interest in the role the majority party plays in the
U.S. House of Representatives. Throughout the book, we analyze how the majority party
seizes agenda control at nearly every stage of the legislative process, in the process
arguing that a version of responsible party government can and does exist in our polity.
The results, arguments, and conclusions contained within represent countless hours of
analyzing data, crafting arguments, and drafting chapters but, fortunately for us, we were
not alone in this process.

We first want to acknowledge the financial support that made this book possible. The
National Science Foundation, grant numbers SBR-9422831 and SES-9905224, and the
Public Policy Research Project at UC San Diego generously contributed to our data
collection and research efforts, and the UC San Diego Committee on Research supported
us with various grants throughout the early stages of our research. We owe a debt of
gratitude to each of these institutions.

We also acknowledge those colleagues and friends who graciously shared their data.
David Rohdes and Keith Pooles datasets were invaluable to our research, and we also
benefited tremendously from the data that Garrison Nelson, Howard Rosenthal, Robert
Hennig and Greg Wawro made available to us. Such contributions and generosity made
possible many of the results that we present throughout this book.
We presented portions of this book at many conferences and seminars, where we received
comments for which we are also grateful. Two seminars in particularthe legislative
politics seminar at Washington University, led by Steven Smith, Randy Calvert, and Gary
Miller, and a week-long seminar at the Center for Behavioral Research in the Social
Sciences at Harvardwere particularly helpful to us in revising and improving upon an
earlier manuscript of the book. We owe special thanks to Jim Alt for hosting the latter
seminar and for providing us with an invaluable opportunity to present our work, and we
are also grateful for the feedback of the seminar participants who trudged through the
snow and record-low temperatures to attend our presentations: Jim Alt, Ken Shepsle,
Rebecca Morton, Jim Snyder, Greg Wawro, Eric Schickler, Keith Poole, John
Londregan, and Walter Mebane.
We also received comments and suggestions from many people at our home institution,
UC San Diego, and we owe a great deal to our dedicated research assistants: Scott
Basinger, Adriana Bejan, Cheryl Boudreau, Andrea Campbell, Chris Den Hartog, Joel
Johnson, Nathan Monroe, and Nick Weller.
Setting the Agendaby Gary W. Cox and Mathew D. McCubbins
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Chapter 1: Introduction

The party system that is needed must be democratic, responsible and
effectivea system that is accountable to the public, respects and
expresses differences of opinion, and is able to cope with the great
problems of modern government.

--American Political Science Association, 1950

Modern democracy is unthinkable save in terms of the parties (Schattschneider
1942). Thus, if the parties were in trouble, so too was democracy (White 1992).

1. Introduction

For democracy in a large republic to