Majority Party Agenda Setting

Picking Fights or Avoiding Them

Bibliographic Data

ID6301300
AuthorsAustin Bussing (0000-0002-7631-5493, Sam Houston State University, corresponding author), Sarah A Treul (0000-0001-8528-1988, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
Year2022
Volume47
Issue3
Pages605-637
Publication date2022-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueLegislative Studies Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0362-9805 • E-ISSN: 1939-9162
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/lsq.12354
OpenAlexW3172806273
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited39

In legislatures such as the U.S. House of Representatives, where the majority party controls the agenda, the frequency of observed partisan disagreement is partially a function of strategic agenda‐setting choices made by that party. Do majority party leaders use their agenda control to privilege bills that accentuate disagreements with the minority party? In this paper, we develop a theoretical framework focused on the costs and benefits associated with floor consideration of partisan legislation. We test hypotheses derived from our theory on a dataset of 15,611 bills considered in House committees during the 104th–114th Congresses (1995–2016). We find that minority party opposition in committee is associated with a decreased likelihood of floor consideration, suggesting that the majority party does not use agenda setting to indiscriminately favor partisan legislation. Our findings focus attention on the costs of partisan agenda setting, and contextualize the partisan disagreement we ultimately observe on the House floor

Legislation · Legislature · Opposition (politics · Political science · Politics · Privilege (computing · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Fiscal Policies and Political Economy · Gender Politics and Representation · Law · Public Administration

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