IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/apsrev/v56y1962i02p310-324_07.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The House Appropriations Committee as a Political System: The Problem of Integration

Author

Listed:
  • Fenno, Richard F.

Abstract

Studies of Congress by political scientists have produced a time-tested consensus on the very considerable power and autonomy of Congressional committees. Because of these two related characteristics, it makes empirical and analytical sense to treat the Congressional committee as a discrete unit for analysis. This paper conceives of the committee as a political system (or, more accurately as a political subsystem) faced with a number of basic problems which it must solve in order to achieve its goals and maintain itself. Generally speaking these functional problems pertain to the environmental and the internal relations of the committee. This study is concerned almost exclusively with the internal problems of the committee and particularly with the problem of self-integration. It describes how one congressional committee—The Committee on Appropriations of the House of Representatives—has dealt with this problem in the period 1947–1961. Its purpose is to add to our understanding of appropriations politics in Congress and to suggest the usefulness of this type of analysis for studying the activities of any congressional committee.

Suggested Citation

  • Fenno, Richard F., 1962. "The House Appropriations Committee as a Political System: The Problem of Integration," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 56(2), pages 310-324, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:56:y:1962:i:02:p:310-324_07
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0003055400077819/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Phuong Nguyen-Hoang & Ryan Yeung & Alexander Bogin, 2014. "No Base Left Behind," Public Finance Review, , vol. 42(4), pages 439-465, July.
    2. Edward J. Laurance, 1976. "The Changing Role of Congress in Defense Policy-Making," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 20(2), pages 213-252, June.
    3. Otto Davis & M. Dempster & Aaron Wildavsky, 1966. "On the process of budgeting: An empirical study of congressional appropriation," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 1(1), pages 63-132, December.
    4. Kristin Taylor & Marjorie Sarbaugh‐Thompson & Steven Betz, 2021. "State legislative committee deliberations: Why some issues are difficult and where state legislators turn for help," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 102(6), pages 2863-2880, November.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:56:y:1962:i:02:p:310-324_07. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/psr .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.