Congressional History: New Branches on Mature Trees History Eric Schickler
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| The volume of congressional scholarship
that adopts a historical approach has increased dramatically in recent
years. But this trend does not imply that earlier scholarship ignored history.
Indeed, congressional scholarship of the 1960s and 1970s contains numerous
historical works on Congress that have had a lasting impact on the field.
Thus, Charles Jones (1968) used historical evidence concerning the Cannon
speakership to illuminate the battle to limit Howard Smith's power as Rules
Committee chairman in the early 1960s. This comparison provided an early
foundation for the conditional party government literature that became
prominent two decades later (Cooper and Brady 1981; Rohde 1991). Joe Cooper's
(1960) far-reaching study of the origins and development of the House committee
system not only supplied a rich information base for subsequent studies,
but also provided an institutionalist perspective that anticipates important
elements of the informational theory of committees (Krehbiel 1991). Nelson
Polsby's (1968) classic essay on the institutionalization of the U.S. Congress
traced changes in a diverse array of indicators across nearly two centuries
of congressional history. Polsby's finding that many of these indicators
of institutionalization "took off" in the 1890-1910 period helped make
that era one of the "hottest" in the study of congressional history (see
also Price 1975).These highly influential works were not simply isolated
instances of political scientists "doing" congressional history. The literature
on party leadership in the 1960s-1970s includes such historically-oriented
work as Jones's (1970) insightful study of minority leadership and Brady's
(1973) pioneering exploration of party politics in the McKinley era (see
also Ripley 1969). The literature on congressional committees had, as one
of its major components, a lively and important debate concerning the origins
of legislative professionalism and seniority (see, e.g., Polsby et al.
1969; Price 1975; Abram and Cooper 1968). Even the reforms of the 1970s
led some scholars, such as Larry Dodd (1977), to reflect upon how recent
developments can be fit into a broader historical framework.
The observation that historically-oriented scholarship on Congress was a critical element of the field in the 1960s and 1970s raises the provocative possibility that the present fascination with congressional history is really nothing new. There is considerable merit to this view: the impressive continuity in research agendas has received insufficient attention. Still, some things have changed in research on congressional history. In the remainder of this essay, I consider three possible accounts of what has changed. I conclude by considering one of the challenges facing the new work on Congress. The first way in which recent work on congressional history might differ from earlier work is its engagement with the emerging literature on "American political development" (APD). Indeed, the proliferation of work on congressional history is in a sense but a subset of burgeoning political science research into the historical development of American political institutions. Two of the best examples of research that bridges the Congress-APD divide are Kernell and MacDonald's (1999) analysis of Congress's role in initiating changes in the postal service and Sander's (1999) study of how congressional agrarians drove state development in the progressive era (see also Stewart 1989). But for the most part, the connections between the literatures on American political development and congressional history have been indirect and fairly tenuous (see Lapinski 2000).1 Congress scholars have focused on the internal dynamics of congressional institutions, but have not, for the most part, linked those developments to the major transformations in the scale of the national government or the powers of the other branches.2 A second way in which the recent work on congressional history differs from earlier research is in its emphasis on testing rational choice theories of congressional institutions. Charles Stewart's (1989) study of budget reform, Sarah Binder's (1997) and Douglas Dion's (1997) analyses of changes in minority rights, and Jenkins' (1999) comparison of the U.S. and Confederate Congresses each used historical data as a rich new evidence base to evaluate and refine rational choice models that had been developed with the contemporary Congress in mind (see also Schickler 2000).3 Yet it is worth remembering that the earlier historical work on Congress was also engaged in theoretical debates; it is just that the theories at issue have changed considerably from ones derived from sociology and organization theory to ones rooted in individual maximizing. The turn to rational choice is less a distinctive feature of recent historical research than an outgrowth of the broader currents in the field; just as analyses of the present-day Congress are often framed in terms of rational choice models, so is much of the historically-oriented research. Therefore, while the attention to testing and refining rational choice theories of legislative institutions is certainly a significant development, another feature of today's historically-oriented scholarship is equally important: self-consciousness about the shared goal of bringing a historical dimension to bear in understanding congressional politics. The sheer increase in the volume of work that uses historical materials is less significant than the existence of a group of scholars who share a common project of developing a history of Congress that reflects the particular concerns and insights of political scientists.4 One result has been an outpouring of conferences and panels at political science conventions that address historical themes.5 Another is that cumulation of knowledge is facilitated as scholars with different methodological skills (quantitative, game theoretic, and qualitative) and theoretical assumptions (rational choice, historical institutionalist, etc.) are nonetheless reading one another's work and learning from it. Yet there also are some limitations that confront the new work on congressional history. In particular, there is the challenge of using history as a laboratory to test and refine existing theories while remaining attentive not just to the nuances of a given historical case but also to questions of timing, sequencing, and context that are at the heart of historical analysis. In the rush to use historical data to test existing models, we risk sacrificing the strengths of traditional historiographical approaches. There is no ideal response to this challenge. In my own work, I have sought to balance these concerns by combining quantitative tests of alternative models from the rational choice literature with detailed qualitative analyses of specific changes in legislative institutions and of trajectories of change across time. My recent book (2001) analyzes forty-two changes in congressional leadership instruments, the committee system, and rules and procedures across four periods (1890-1910, 1919-1932, 1937-1952, and 1970-1989). Based on this analysis, I argue that legislative institutions are the products of "disjointed pluralism." By disjointed pluralism, I mean that processes of change derive from the interactions and tensions among multiple member interests, including electoral, partisan, policy, and power base motivations. I show that different interests emerge as particularly important in different eras, that multiple interests typically shape each instance of institutional change, and that specific institutions develop through an accumulation of innovations inspired by competing motives, which engenders a tense layering of new arrangements on top of preexisting structures. Members' multiple interests push and pull Congress in conflicting directions, leaving congressional development without an overarching direction. The book also analyzes the conditions under which a given member interest will be more or less salient. This approach calls attention to features of congressional institutions that are generalizable across historical eras, even as it attempts to remain sensitive to the nuances of individual cases and the importance of issues of context and sequencing. Indeed, one of the main arguments in the book is that the internal tensions and contradictions that characterize congressional institutions can best be understood through the lens of historical analysis: while each individual change is consciously designed to serve specific goals, the layering of successive innovations results in institutions that appear more haphazard than the product of some overarching master plan. Binder's (1997) analysis of minority obstruction and Gamm and Smith's (1999) ongoing study of the development of Senate leadership are additional examples of research that integrates quantitative tests of competing theories with fine-grained case studies and attention to sequencing. This is not to claim that all congressional history research must combine these features. Different types of studies will yield different types of insights. But at the level of a subfield, the distinctive promise of congressional history research is to provide both a wealth of evidence concerning the robustness of models of the contemporary Congress and a set of propositions concerning the determinants and implications of institutional development over time. To sum up, the burgeoning political science literature on congressional history is less of a departure from past practice than one might imagine. There have always been a fair number of legislative scholars who have made historical materials an important element of their research. But as today's scholars self-consciously attempt to bring contemporary quantitative and formal approach to bear on historical data, they must grapple with the longstanding difficulty of combining generality and theoretical rigor with attention to historical specificity. Notes 1. Some additional works have drawn upon theoretical ideas that emerged from the APD literature. For example, Strahan (1999) draws upon Skowronek's (1993) work on "political time" while Schickler (2001) builds upon Orren and Skowronek's (1994) analysis of institutional layering. 2. Ironically, the earlier literature on congressional history was arguably more engaged with some of these questions (Cooper 1960; Dodd 1977, 1986; Brady 1988). Poole and Rosenthal (1997) have also linked internal institutional politics to broader political outcomes. Mayhew (2000) also offers an innovative approach to linking congressional politics to American political development, broadly construed. 3. This was not the sole goal of any of these studies, but it nonetheless was a contribution of each. 4. Zelizer (2000) is one of the few contemporary historians who is also directly contributing to this shared enterprise. 5. Interestingly, in 1985-86, shortly before the increase in the volume of work on congressional history, the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences hosted a year-long congressional history working group that consisted of Nelson Polsby, David Brady, Allan Bogue, and Joel Silbey. References Abram, Michael E., and Joseph Cooper. 1968. "The Rise of Seniority in the House of Representatives." Polity 1:52-85. Binder, Sarah. 1997. Minority Rights, Majority Rule. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brady, David W. 1988. Critical Elections and Congressional Policy-Making. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Brady, David W. 1973. Congressional Voting in a Partisan Era: A Study of the McKinley Houses and a Comparison to the Modern House of Representatives. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press. Cooper, Joseph. 1988 [1960]. Congress and Its Committees. New York: Garland. Cooper, Joseph and David Brady. 1981. "Institutional Context and Leadership Style: The House from Cannon to Rayburn." American Political Science Review 75: 411-25. Dion, Douglas. 1997. Turning the Legislative Thumbscrew. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Dodd, Lawrence C. 1986. "The Cycles of Legislative Change: Building a Dynamic Theory." In Political Science: The Science of Politics., ed. Herbert F. Weisberg. New York: Agathon Press. Dodd, Lawrence C. 1977. "Congress and the Quest for Power." In Congress Reconsidered, 1st ed., eds. Lawrence C. Dodd and Bruce I. Oppenheimer. New York: Praeger. Gamm, Gerald, and Steven S. Smith. 1999. "Policy Leadership and the Development of the Modern Senate." Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL. Jenkins, Jeffery A. 1999. "Examining the Bonding Effects of Party: A Comparative Analysis of Roll-Call Voting in the U.S. and Confederate Houses." American Journal of Political Science 43:1144-65. Jones, Charles O. 1970. The Minority Party in Congress. Boston: Little, Brown. Jones, Charles O. 1968. "Joseph G. Cannon and Howard W. Smith: An Essay on the Limits of Leadership in the House of Representatives." Journal of Politics 30:617-46. Kernell, Samuel, and Michael P. McDonald. 1999. "Congress and America's Political Development: The Transformation of the Post Office from Patronage to Service." American Journal of Political Science 43:792-811. Krehbiel, Keith. 1991. Information and Legislative Organization. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Lapinski, John. 2000. "Congress and American Political Development." Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, DC. Mayhew, David R. 2000. America's Congress: Actions in the Public Sphere, James Madison Through Newt Gingrich. New Haven: Yale University Press. Orren, Karen, and Stephen Skowronek. 1994. "Order and Time in Institutional Study." In Political Science in History, eds. James Farr et al. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Polsby, Nelson W. 1968. "The Institutionalization of the House of Representatives." American Political Science Review 62: 144-68. Polsby, Nelson W., Miriam Gallagher, Barry S. Rundquist. 1969. "The Growth of the Seniority System in the U.S. House of Representatives." American Political Science Review 63:787-807. Poole, Keith T., and Howard Rosenthal. 1997. Congress: A Political-Economic History of Roll Call Voting. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Price, H. Douglas. 1975. "Congress and the Evolution of Legislative Professionalism." In Congress in Change, ed. Norman J. Ornstein. New York: Praeger. Ripley, Randall B. 1969. Majority Party Leadership in Congress. Boston: Little, Brown. Rohde, David W. 1991. Parties and Leaders in the Postreform House. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Sanders, Elizabeth. 1999. Roots of Reform: Farmers, Workers, and the American State, 1877-1917. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Schickler, Eric. 2001. Disjointed Pluralism: Institutional Innovation and the Development of the U.S. Congress. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Schickler, Eric. 2000. "Institutional Change in the House of Representatives, 1867-1998: A Test of Partisan and Ideological Power Balance Models." American Political Science Review 94: 269-88. Skowronek, Stephen. 1993. The Politics Presidents Make. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.Stewart, Charles H. 1989. Budget Reform Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Strahan, Randall. 1999. "Leadership in Institutional Time: The Nineteenth Century House." Paper presented at the History of Congress Conference, January 15-16, 1999, Stanford University. Zelizer, Julian E. 2000. Bridging
State and Society: The Origins of 1970s Congressional Reform. Social
Science History 24 (Summer): 379-93.
Eric Schickler's email address is
schick@socrates.berkeley.edu
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