Scholars of American legislative politics have settled into debating the merits and faults of majoritarian and party theories to explain legislative actions, brushing aside theories that see committees as autonomous. However, all three types of theories have rarely been tested together. This study builds upon an existing game-theoretic model of the legislative process in the U.S. House of Representatives to compare all three simultaneously. Competing hypotheses are generated and tested using observable actions by legislative committees. Support is found for both committee and party theories, conditional on the congressional era and the relative preferences of key institutional actors.
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