IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/apsrev/v90y1996i01p21-33_20.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Careerism, Committee Assignments, and the Electoral Connection

Author

Listed:
  • Katz, Jonathan N.
  • Sala, Brian R.

Abstract

Most scholars agree that members of Congress are strongly motivated by their desire for reelection. This assumption implies that members of Congress adopt institutions, rules, and norms of behavior in part to serve their electoral interests. Direct tests of the electoral connection are rare, however, because significant, exogenous changes in the electoral environment are difficult to identify. We develop and test an electoral rationale for the norm of committee assignment “property rights.†We examine committee tenure patterns before and after a major, exogenous change in the electoral system—the states' rapid adoption of Australian ballot laws in the early 1890s. The ballot changes, we argue, induced new “personal vote†electoral incentives, which contributed to the adoption of “modern†congressional institutions such as property rights to committee assignments. We demonstrate a marked increase in assignment stability after 1892, by which time a majority of states had put the new ballot laws into force, and earlier than previous studies have suggested.

Suggested Citation

  • Katz, Jonathan N. & Sala, Brian R., 1996. "Careerism, Committee Assignments, and the Electoral Connection," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 90(1), pages 21-33, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:90:y:1996:i:01:p:21-33_20
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0003055400205303/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. Joseph McGarrity, 2005. "Macroeconomic conditions and committee re-election rates," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 124(3), pages 453-480, September.
    2. Leandro De Magalhães & Salomo Hirvonen, 2015. "Multi-Office Incumbency Advantage: Political Careers in Brazil," Bristol Economics Discussion Papers 15/662, School of Economics, University of Bristol, UK.
    3. Joseph McGarrity, 2006. "The committee assignment process as an optimal contracting problem," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 128(3), pages 433-455, September.
    4. Iain Hampsher‐Monk & Andrew Hindmoor, 2010. "Rational Choice and Interpretive Evidence: Caught between a Rock and a Hard Place?," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 58(1), pages 47-65, February.

    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:90:y:1996:i:01:p:21-33_20. 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.