After Speaker of the House Thomas P. " Tip" O'Neill (D-MA) retired from Congress, he was occasionally seen popping out of a suitcase in a television commercial advertisement for a major hotel chain. With all due respect, O'Neill's venture into commercial culture is probably not attributable to his Hollywood looks. Rather, O'Neill had become such a familiar public figure, that he was a valuable commodity for businesses trying to lure senior citizens with attractive discount offers.

Combined with his personal charm, O'Neill's rise to commercial stardom is one consequence of a set of institutional and political conditions that generally advanced the strength and significance of the Speaker of the House of Representatives over the past two decades. Beginning with O' Neill, speakers generally have wielded more power over committee assignments and the policy agenda, and they have taken on a more public role as spokespersons of their respective parties. O'Neill successor, Speaker Jim Wright (D-TX), wielded the powers of the office even more aggressively than O'Neill, and Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) pushed the powers of the office far beyond what political scientists could have imagined in the 1970s. The current Speaker, Dennis Hastert (R-IL), though less charismatic and public conscious than Gingrich, retains considerable influence in the House, and there is no reason to think that the Speaker's institutional power will decrease in the future.

On the contrary, I expect the Speaker, and perhaps other top party leaders in the majority and the minority, to become even more significant in advancing their parties' political and policy goals over the next decade. At least four important conditions will affect the influence of party leaders in the House of Representatives over the next decade: intense electoral competition, homogenous constituency bases, term limits, and increased reliance on the Internet and other forms of electronic communication. Though it is hard to predict the precise consequences of these conditions, chances are they will increase the institutional leverage of party leaders and enable them to play a more prominent role on the national stage of American politics.

To begin with, close electoral competition will increase the importance of congressional campaign committees as resource providers for congressional candidates. If current patterns hold, the vast majority of House seats will be safely in control of one party or the other. A Washington Post 2000 pre-election analysis found only 19 House seats where there was "no clear favorite." Meanwhile, party leaders have become aggressive solicitors of interest group funds for the party campaign committees, and those committees have emerged as formidable entities in congressional campaigns in terms of providing money and services to candidates. Both parties piled significant resources into the closest races in the form of direct contributions, in-kind support, and issue advocacy ads in the 2000 congressional elections. With so few seats up for grabs and so many resources directed from the parties to candidates running for these seats, winners of close elections will be more beholden to the institutional support of parties. At the very least, this provides party leaders with more carrots and greater leverage with respect to candidates in competitive races.

A second important consideration is that, short of a major change in redistricting of congressional seats, the vast majority of constituency bases are likely to remain homogenous. To complement the few seats that are competitive, the overwhelming number of seats are safe, due in large part to the homogenous preferences of voters within each district. Republican members tend to represent Republican districts and Democratic members represent Democratic districts. As David Rohde has argued, this situation is more conducive to strong party leadership on a host of policy issues. Where members agree, they are willing to vest authority in party leaders to advance policy goals that most members in the party agree upon.

The combination of these two key conditions, close electoral competition in a few seats and electoral safety in a vast majority of seats, will reinforce each other with respect to the influence of party leaders. The trend in party fundraising and strategic targeting of resources to competitive districts is likely to continue and perhaps amplify over the next decade. Party leaders will continue to hit up the large majority of safe incumbents with ready access to cash and distribute the cash to the few competitive seats in each campaign cycle. So long as the margins for gaining a majority in the House are close, every seat will count, and well-endowed incumbents will have a vested interest in sharing their wealth, either to maintain or to win a narrow majority. Meanwhile, candidates in the few competitive seats will try to raise as much as they can and will be materially linked to congressional party leaders. In this process of redistributive politics, party leaders will serve as the conduits from the safe to the survivors, and thus will gain leverage in both directions. This situation will likely enable party leaders to build political capital that could be conveyed into partisan support in the legislative process.

Third, term limits on committee chairs and term limits already imposed on state legislators will likely alter the incentive structures for members and the opportunities for party leaders. Term limits on committee chairs give party leaders more chances to serve the policy goals of the party as a whole as well as to accommodate the policy and political goals of individual members who aspire to be committee chairs. Of course, leaders will need to be judicious in how they exercise their authority in the committee assignment process. At the same time, term limits in eighteen states will force more state legislators out of office and into a position to run for Congress. We should expect the number of quality challengers for House seats to increase. District level conditions, such as homogenous party bases referred to above, may create disincentives for prospective challengers to run. But when seats do open up, there will be more talent waiting in the wings, and this could heighten competitiveness even further. In races so close that every dollar counts, party leaders have an opportunity to contribute to the success of prospective members.

Finally, in addition to the proliferation of television news outlets and talk shows that offer exposure to political leaders, the Internet and other forms of electronic communications will provide leaders with untapped potential for elevating the public role of the Speaker. Thus far, studies of the effect of the Internet on political organization have suggested that the internet mainly helps established political organizations and candidates, rather than newcomers. And the population of users continues to grow. According to a national survey conducted after the 2000 elections by the Pew Center for the People and the Press, 30% of Americans got news about the election from the Internet; a three-fold increase from the 10% that got news from the internet in 1996. Not surprisingly, Internet users tend to be younger, more educated, and wealthier than those who do not use the Internet. In any case, the rate of Internet usage and other forms of electronic communication are bound to grow, creating more possibilities for party leaders to engage the public at large in the legislative business of the House of Representatives.

If these general conditions hold, the Speaker of the House in 2010 will be an even greater force in American politics. Having said that, Speakers will not use their powers the same way, and they will not be equally skilled in taking advantage of opportunities for strong leadership. For one thing, short term changes in party control of Congress and the White House, the margin of House seats for the majority, bicameral differences, and the size of the surplus or deficit will no doubt affect the leadership situation from one congressional term to the next. Moreover, individual leaders will leave their own mark on the House, and those effects are impossible to predict.