We examine why a significant proportion of the policy issues passed in either the U.S. House or Senate often fail to pass in the other chamber. We hypothesize that much of this failure of the House and Senate to coordinate their agendas occurs because committee jurisdictions are not parallel across chambers. To compare House and Senate agendas, we develop a comprehensive issue-level data set covering all bills introduced in the 103rd Congress. We estimate a multinomial logit model that reveals that the degree of jurisdictional parallelism across chambers is indeed one of the most important determinants of whether issues that pass in one chamber also pass in the other chamber.
Adler, E.S. ( 2002). Why congressional reforms fail: Committee politics in the U.S. House of Representatives. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
2.
Ai, C., & Norton, E.C. ( 2003). Interaction terms in logit and probit models. Economics Letters, 80, 123-129.
3.
Aldrich, J., & Rohde, D. ( 2004). Congressional Committees in a partisan era. In L. C. Dodd, & B. I. Oppenheimer (Eds.), Congress reconsidered (8th ed., pp. 249-267) Washington, DC: CQ Press.
4.
Anderson, W.D., Box-Steffensmeier, J.M., & Sinclair-Chapman, V. (2003). The keys to legislative success in the U.S. House of Representatives. Legislative Studies Quarterly, 28, 357-386.
5.
Bach, S. ( 2001). Fast-track or expedited procedures: Their purposes, elements, and implications. (Report for Congress: 98-888). Congressional Research Service.
6.
Baker, R.K. ( 1989). House and Senate. New York: W. W. Norton.
7.
Baughman, J. ( 2006). Common ground: Committee politics in the U.S. House of Representatives. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.
8.
Baumgartner, F.R., & Jones, B.D. ( 1993). Agendas and instability in American politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
9.
Baumgartner, F.R., Jones, B.D., & MacLeod, M.C. ( 2000). The evolution of legislative jurisdictions. Journal of Politics, 62, 321-349.
10.
Brams, S.J. ( 1989). Are the two Houses of Congress really coequal? In B. Grofman & D. Wittman (Eds.), The federalist papers: The new institutionalism and the old (pp. 125-141). New York: Agathon .
11.
Burstein, P., Bauldry, S., & Froese, P. ( 2005). Bill sponsorship and congressional support for policy proposals, from introduction to enactment or disappearance. Political Research Quarterly, 58, 295-302.
Cox, G.W., & McCubbins, M.D. (1993). Legislative leviathan. Berkeley: University of California Press.
14.
Cox, G.W., & McCubbins, M.D. (2005). Setting the agenda: Responsible party government in the U.S. House of Representatives. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
15.
Deering, C., & Smith, S.S. ( 1997). Committees in Congress (3rd ed.). Washington, DC: CQ Press .
Evans, C.L., & Oleszek, W.J. ( 1995, April). Reform redux: Jurisdictional change and the new Republican house. Paper presented at the annual meeting of theMidwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL .
18.
Evans, C.L., & Oleszek, W.J. ( 2001). Message politics and Senate procedure. In C. C. Campbell & N. C. Rae (Eds.), The contentious Senate: Partisanship, ideology, and the myth of cool judgment (pp. 107-128). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
19.
Gailmard, S., & Jenkins, J.A. ( 2007). Negative agenda control in the Senate and House: Fingerprints of majority party power. Journal of Politics, 69, 689-700.
20.
Hardin, J.W. ( 1998). Advocacy versus uncertainty: The dynamics of committee jurisdiction concentration. Journal of Politics, 60, 374-397.
21.
Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress. ( 1993). Organization of Congress. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
22.
King, D.C. ( 1997). Turf wars: How congressional committees claim jurisdictions . Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
23.
Krutz, G.S. ( 2005). Issues and institutions: "Winnowing" in the U.S. Congress . American Journal of Political Science, 49, 313-326.
24.
Larocca, R.T. ( 2006). The presidential agenda: Sources of executive influence in Congress. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.
25.
Light, P.C. ( 1991). The president’s agenda: Domestic policy choice from Kennedy to Reagan. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
26.
Long, J.S., & Freese, J. ( 2006). Regression models for categorical dependent variables using Stata. College Station, TX: Stata Press.
27.
Nagler, J. ( 1991). The effect of registration laws and education on U.S. voter turnout. American Political Science Review, 85, 1393-1405.
28.
Oleszek, W.J. ( 2004). Congressional procedures and the policy process. Washington, DC: CQ Press.
29.
Poole, K.T., & Rosenthal, H. ( 1997). Congress: A political-economic history of roll call voting . Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
30.
Sheingate, A.D. ( 2006). Structure and opportunity: Committee jurisdiction and issue attention in Congress. American Journal of Political Science, 50, 844-859.
31.
Sinclair, B. ( 1983). Majority leadership in the U.S. House. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
32.
Sinclair, B. ( 1995). Legislators, leaders and lawmaking: The U.S. House of Representatives in the postreform era. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
33.
Sinclair, B. ( 2007). Unorthodox lawmaking: New legislative processes in the U.S. Congress (3rd ed.). Washington, DC: CQ Press.
34.
Tomz, M., Wittenberg, J., & King, G. ( 2001). CLARIFY: Software for interpreting and presenting statistical results (Version 2.0). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
35.
U.S. House of Representatives. (2007). Calendars of the United States House of Representatives and history of legislation: One hundred eighth Congress, final edition. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
36.
Wawro, G. ( 2000). Legislative entrepreneurship in the U.S. House of Representatives . Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
37.
Wilson, R.K., & Young, C.D. ( 1997). Cosponsorship in the U.S. Congress. Legislative Studies Quarterly, 22, 25-44.
38.
Wilkerson, J.D., Feeley, T.J., Schiereck, N.S., & Sue, C. ( 1999, September). Policy interest and legislative responsiveness: Bill introductions as indicators of issue salience. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association , Atlanta, GA.
