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Party Loyalty and Legislative Success: Are Loyal Majority Party Members More Successful inthe U.S. House of Representatives?Author(s): Edward B. Hasecke and Jason D. MycoffSource: Political Research Quarterly, Vol. 60, No. 4 (Dec., 2007), pp. 607-617Published by: Sage Publications, Inc. on behalf of the University of Utah

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Party Loyalty and Legislative Success

Are Loyal Majority Party Members More Successful in

the U.S. House of Representatives?

EdwardB. Hasecke

WittenbergUniversity

Jason D. MycoffUniversityof Delaware

Political Research QuarterlyVolume60 Number4

December2007 607-617

@ 2007 Universityof Utah

10.1177/1065912907305754

http://prq.sagepub.comhosted at

http://online.sagepub.com

Majority artyeaders rehypothesized,hroughheir ontrol f the egislativechedulentheHouse fRepresentatives,ouse egislativeuccess s a selectivencentiveoencourage ajorityartymembersocontributeo thecollectiveoalsoftheparty.Membersandemonstrateartyoyalty hroughloorvoting nd inancialontributionsotheparty'se-electionefforts.Thisarticle xamines

egislativeuccess rom he103rd

hrough07th

Congresses.heevidencehows hatboth

demonstrationsfpartyoyalty aveasignificantffect nlegislativeuccess.

Keywords: party loyalty; legislativesuccess; party government

n the 107thCongress,oe Skeen R-NM) ndJohn

Cooksey R-LA)eachsponsoredourbills.Bythe end

of theCongress,all of Skeen'sbillshad receiveda vote

on the floor of the Housewhilenone of Cooksey'sbills

made it this farin the legislativeprocess.Cookseywas

not alone.One hundred ndtwenty-fourthermembers

failed o haveeven one bill make tto the floor or a vote.Of these, 25 were majoritypartymembers.Why are

somemembersable to find this kind of legislative uc-

cess while othersare not? Recent workhas shownthat

legislative uccessvaries or a number f reasons.Some

membershold nstitutionaldvantages,ikemembershipinthemajority artyorgermane ommittee ssignments.Othermembers akeadvantage f thepolitical ontextor

use theirownlegislative kills to movelegislationrom

one stageto thenext.

We arguethatlegislativesuccess is also influenced

by party leaders. Party leaders often face a choicebetweenpartymemberswhendecidingwhich bills will

be selected as the legislative vehicles to proceed

throughhelegislative abyrinth.This choicepresentsa

strategicopportunity.Legislativesuccess is importantto members or various easons, ncludingmakinggood

publicpolicy(Fenno1973),demonstratingnstitutional

power (Dodd 1977), claimingcredit(Mayhew 1974),and attracting inancialsupport rom interestgroups(Box-Steffensmeier and Grant 1999). As a result,

majorityparty eaderscan use legislativesuccess as a

reward.The puzzle is, how do partyleadersdecide

which members should receive the benefits of leg-islative success? We suggest that partyleaders dis-

tribute egislative success throughbill scheduling by

rewarding oyal partymembers.

In this articlewe examinetherelationshipbetween

party loyalty and legislative success for majority

party members. Our central hypothesis is thatincreasedparty oyaltycauses greater egislative suc-

cess, all else being equal. While members express

loyalty to their party in many ways, scholars have

only exploredone expressionof loyalty:floorvoting.Recent work, however,has emphasizedthe growing

importanceof campaigncontributions o partycam-

paign committees and party candidates (Heberlig2003). We, therefore, examine loyalty as demon-

stratedby majoritypartymembers hroughboth floor

voting in the U.S. House of Representatives ndcam-

paign contributions o the majorityparty's campaigncommittee anddirectlyto its members.By includingboth forms of loyaltywe capture oyalty amongthose

memberswho, becauseof representational oncerns,are unable to toe the partyline in voting. By explor-

ing two forms of party loyalty, we not only test the

hypothesis that party loyalty matters to legislative

Authors' Note: We thank Patrick Sellers, Stephen Borrelli,AlexanderTahk,and StephenJessee for helpful comments.We

thankKeithPoole andHowardRosenthal orthe use of theirDW-

NOMINATEdata.

607

This content downloaded from 158.109.174.204 on Wed, 30 Oct 2013 16:40:16 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions






608 Political ResearchQuarterly

success but we also examine the relativeimportanceof these factors.

In this article,we are careful to limit ourselvesto

majority party members. This is because it is not

clear who, in practice, determines which minority

partymembershave success. The majoritypartyulti-

mately controls the schedule but often defers to the

minoritypartyleadershipwhen schedulingminority

partybills. Thus,it is not clear if loyalty to the minor-

ity partyor majorityparty is more important.This

poses an interestingquestionthat deserves attention

but is beyondthe scope of this article.

We test our hypothesis using data fromthe 103rd

through 107th Congresses. These data include

Congresses with both Democratic and Republicancontrol of the House and include the time period in

which intraparty undraisingdramatically ncreased

inimportance(Heberlig2003).

Weemploy

a count

model using a negative binomial regression to

explain scheduling. We find that party loyalty is

rewarded with legislative success and that loyalty

expressed throughvoting supportand financial con-

tributions can mitigate institutional disadvantagesfacedby most members(i.e., lack of a partyor com-

mitteeleadershipposition).

LegislativeSuccess

The literatureon legislative success defines suc-cess as the ability to advance bills sponsoredby the

memberthroughthe legislative process. This beganwith Matthews' (1960, 115) work on legislativenorms. In his book, he foundthat adherence o these

norms correlateswith the abilityof a member o have

legislativesuccess, whichhe called "legislativeeffec-

tiveness." Since then, scholars have found several

factors that contribute to success. These can be

divided into institutionalandpolitical advantagesas

well as individual effort. Institutional advantages

include majority party membership,membershiponthe relevant committee, leadership positions, and

seniority(Frantzich1979;Hibbing1991;Krutz2000;

Moore and Thomas 1990). Majoritypartyand com-

mittee membersenjoyadvantagesbecauseit is easier

for them to overcome hurdles in the legislative

process. Leadership positions enhance the advan-

tages thatcome from the committee andpartyadvan-

tages. Seniorityis either linkedto the advantage hat

legislative norms provide to senior members or the

expertisethatseniormembershave in the mechanics

of the legislative process. Regardless, institutional

advantages are considered to be static over a

Congressanddefine the contextin which a legislatormust operate.For some, legislative success will be

moredifficultthanforothersbecausetheinstitutional

hurdles arehigher.In addition to institutionaladvantages,members

face differentpolitical realitiesthat can affect their

success, such as electoral security and ideology.Frantzich 1979) foundthatelectorallysafe members

were more likely to have legislative success. Largeelectoral margins allow members to act as trustees

(Bianco 1994), which gives them greater egislative

flexibility over their agenda (Fiorina 1974). Thus,

theycan tailortheiragendas o maximizethechances

of success. Ideologymayalso play a factor.Members

who are ideologicallyextrememay find it harder o

attract support for their agenda (Anderson, Box-

Steffensmeier,andSinclair-Chapman 003).

Despitethe differentnstitutionalnd

politicalsitua-

tions,Anderson t al.(2003)demonstratehatmembers

canimprove heirchancesof legislative uccessthroughindividual ctions.Theyfind,forexample, hatsponsor-

ing a largeragenda,makingspeecheson thefloor,and

emphasizingocalbills can enhance helegislativesuc-

cess of members.Theyconcludethat"legislators eed

not bow under he weight of their egislativerealities.

Instead,legislatorsare able to influence the fate of

their egislationby behaving n a manner hat encour-

ages its passage" p. 378).

Since Matthews'(1960) early work, the literaturehas used the termslegislativesuccess andlegislative

effectiveness interchangeably. Adler, Feeley and

Wilkerson(2003) arguethat this can be misleading.Effectivelegislators, in theirview, areones who are

able to have theirpolicies enactedinto law.This can

happen, though, without the legislator being the

sponsor of the bill. Legislators often propose bills

aroundanticipatedssues like reauthorizations. hus,for any issue there can be many differentbills pro-

posed. One of these bills is chosen to be the "legisla-

tive vehicle" andideas from other bills areadded tothis bill. In an extreme case, committees may even

write a new bill with the committee chair as the spon-

sor to efficiently combine the ideas from several dif-

ferent bills. In this way, a legislator can be effective

in getting his or her policies enacted into law, but that

same legislator may not be seen as having legislative

success, defined as having their bill chosen as the leg-

islative vehicle. Thus, "the fact that a legislator is

listed as the sponsor of a bill that passes overempha-

sizes his contribution to the policy making process at

the same time that it underemphasizes the contribu-

tion of other legislators" (Adler et al. 2003, 7).







Hasecke,MycoffParty oyaltyndLegislativeuccess609

We agree. In this article we make a distinction

between egislative uccess and egislative ffectiveness.

Legislative ffectivenessmeans hata memberhasbeen

able to get a policy objective, onsistentwith his orher

ownpreferences, nacted ntolaw. Thiscan be accom-

plishedby passingone's ownbill,by addinganamend-

ment to anotherbill, or by helpingto pass someone

else's bill. Legislative uccess,though, s sponsoringabill that s chosen as the legislativevehicle.Legislativesuccess s, therefore, benefitorperk oronlythespon-sor,notevery egislator upportinghe bill.

If memberswere solely interestedn makinggood

public policy (Fenno 1973), legislativeeffectiveness

would be enough. However, other goals motivate

members that make legislative success valuable.

Mayhew (1974) arguesthatmembers are most inter-

ested in legislativeactivitiesthat allow them to claim

credit orlegislativeaccomplishments.Being

theorig-inal sponsorof the bill is an important ignal to con-

stituents hat heirrepresentative as a key actor n the

legislative process.It allows a memberto unambigu-

ously claim credit for a legislativeaccomplishment.Adleret al. (2003, 15)acknowledge his,arguing hat

"themajoritypartycontingenthas a strong ncentive o

select a bill that allows one of its members to claim

credit or the bill'spassage." f legislativeeffectiveness

was the only goal, then themajoritypartywould have

no reason o favormajoritypartymembers n granting

legislativesuccess. Sincethemajoritypartydoes favorits members, egislative success is a valuable benefit

forpartymembers.

While creditclaiming maybe the primarymotiva-

tion for wanting legislative success, othergoals can

be served by being the primary sponsor of a bill.

Members nterested n institutionalpoweror prestigemight value sponsorship because it demonstrates

their power (Dodd 1977; Fenno 1973; Mouw and

Mackuen 1992). Box-Steffensmeier and Grant

(1999) show thatpoliticalactioncommitteesprefer o

invest in members who are perceived to have thepower to push legislationthroughthe process. Thus,financial benefits come to those members who have

theirbills chosen to be the legislativevehicle. These

benefits are substantial. All else being equal, the

financial windfall from legislative success can be as

greatas the financialbenefit of being in the majority.Our view of legislative success complements past

work.We see legislativesuccessas a benefit that ndi-

vidual members will work hard to obtain.They will

use their institutionalpositions to seize legislative

success andmake individualchoices that ncreasethe

probabilityof having legislativesuccess. But legisla-tive success is also somethingthat can be influenced

by congressional eaders.Sincesuccess is partlydeter-

minedby leadersselectinga bill to serveas a legisla-tive vehicle, leadersmay consider other factorswhen

making this choice. In this article we focus on the

majorityparty.We ask,how would the majoritypartyuse the benefitof legislativesuccess to furtherts inter-ests? We arguethat success is a selective benefitthat

thepartygives to memberswho areloyal to the party.

PartyLoyaltyand SelectiveBenefits

Congressionalpolitical partieshave multiple goals

including securingmajoritystatus,passing items on

the issue agenda,helping membersreach individual

goals,and

enhancinghe

party's mage. Amongthese

goals, the most important oal is to achieve,maintain,or expand majoritypartystatus(Jacobson2001). The

paradoxof partyorganizations that o obtainmajority

partystatusmembersmustworktogether o "develop

political strategiesandlegislativesuccesses,"butonce

they secure majority status, members have greater

powerto pursuetheirpersonalgoals, which can con-

flict withthe collectivepartygoals anderodethecoop-eration hat s necessary orthe partyto remain n the

majority Dodd2005, 417). Party oyaltyis, therefore,

essential f theparty s to reach ts collectivegoalsandremain n themajority.

The centralquestion ntheparty oyalty iteratures,how do party eaders motivatepartymembers o par-

ticipate in partyefforts that realize collective party

goals?Afterall,whilepartymembers njoythebenefits

of majority tatus, he loyaltynecessary o keepmajor-ity statushas a personalcost. Givingcampaigncontri-

butions to the partymeans thatmembershave fewer

funds ortheirowncampaigns ndmustraiseadditional

funds,requiring oursspenton the phonecold-calling

potentialcontributors. otingwiththe partymayupsetconstituentswho will makemembers' eelection fforts

moredifficult.Partyeaders, herefore, ace a free-rider

problembecausemajoritystatus s a public good that

is available o allmajoritypartymembers egardless f

theirsupportof the party,andpartymembersarenot

alwayswillingto makepersonalsacrifices o maintain

majority tatus.

To overcomethe free-ridingproblem,party eaders

must convinceindividualmembersto serve the partyrather than purely individual goals. Olson (1965)

arguesthat the most effective way to overcome the








collective action problemis to offer selective incen-

tives or benefits to members in exchange for con-

tributingto the collective good. Party leaders can

distribute electiveincentivesas rewards orloyaltyor

withhold ncentivesas punishmentsordisloyalty.Past researchhas examined the use of committee

assignmentsas selective incentivesfor party loyalty.

They found a relationshipbetween a member'svot-

ing loyalty, as measuredby CongressionalQuarterly

party support scores, and a member's success at

obtainingrequestedcommittee assignments(RohdeandShepsle 1973; SmithandRay 1983). Theresults,

however,were not always significant.Morerecently,scholarshave examinedtherelationshipbetween suc-

cessful committee requests and voting loyalty on

committee-specificvotes (Maltzman1997) andlead-

ership votes (Cox and McCubbins 1993). In both

cases,there was a

relationship,especiallyfor trans-

fers to prestigiouscommittees.

Voting oyaltyhas been the focus of most research

on selective benefits. Recently, Heberlig (2003)

expandedhedefinitionof party oyaltyto includeboth

contributions nd voting.He noted thatpartyleaders

were making requests to membersfor contributions

from individualreelection funds to collective partyfunds.Theresultwas a 1500% ncrease ncontributions

between 1990 and 2000. In his research,he foundthat

campaigncontributions,n addition o voting loyalty,

areimportantor transferso prestigious ommittees.We follow Heberlig (2003) in consideringboth

campaign contributions and voting behavior as

importantdemonstrationsof partyloyalty. We note

thatvoting loyalty is important or passingthe party

agenda. But enforcing voting loyalty can threaten

majoritystatusif partymembers are forced to vote

with the party n oppositionto constituentsentiment.

A member who consistently abandons the con-

stituency n favor of the party positionis morelikelyto face a stiff challenge duringreelection,threatening

the party's control of the seat (Aldrich and Rohde2001; Sinclair1995). In contrast,campaigncontribu-

tions can demonstrate loyalty without abandoningdistrictpreferences.Makingcontributionso the con-

gressionalpartycommitteeor directlyto needy partycandidateshelps the partyreach its primarygoal of

securingmajoritystatus. This formof loyaltyhas an

advantageover voting loyalty because it helps the

partywithouthurting he individualmembers'reelec-

tion chances. We contend that party loyalty is

expressed in multiple ways, including both voting

supportandcampaigncontributions.

LegislativeSuccessas SelectiveBenefit

Tosuggestthat egislativesuccessis a selectiveben-

efit that is given to membersbased on their loyaltyrelies on the assumption hat the majoritypartycan

controlwhose bill is selectedto be thelegislativevehi-

cle. We recognize at least two ways that this might

happen. The first is a direct interventionby partyleaders. Since the 1970s, party leaders have been

granted greatercontrol over the legislativeschedule

(Rohde 1991).As Smith,Roberts,and VanderWielen

(2003, 16) note,"TheSpeakermayuse scheduling o

reward riendsandpunishenemies."Thus,theSpeaker

may use thispowerto select bills based on party oy-

alty.As a result,the bill becomes the legislativevehi-

cle that othersuse to advance heirpolicy goals.The second possibility is less direct.Adler et al.

(2003) arguethat the choice of legislativevehicle ispartlyinfluencedby members looking out for their

own-political partiesfavor fellow partisansbecause

it helps someoneon the team. This suggests a kind of

implicitbargainwherein membersof the partyagreeto supporteach other.It is possiblethat a similartypeof bargainingoccursregardingoyalty.Memberswho

sacrifice for the partymake this sacrifice known to

others with the expectation that they will receive a

benefit.Thenexttime the memberhas a bill on a par-ticular ssue underconsideration, he committeemay

be more inclinedto select the loyal member'sbill asthe legislativevehicle.Thus,instead of a directinter-

ventionby partyleaders, an informal marketof leg-islative favors helps give loyal members greatersuccess.

Regardlessof which process is at work, the pre-dictionis the same-party loyalty causes an increase

in legislativesuccess. If true,this adds anotherpossi-ble action for memberswho find themselveswithout

institutionalor political advantages-a membercan

either make campaigncontributions o the partyor

increase theirvoting loyalty.

Data andMethod

To test our hypothesis, we collected data bymember'on all publicbills and resolutionssponsored

by nonfreshmanmajoritypartymembers n the 103rd

through107thCongresses.2We includebothbills and

resolutions3because membersof Congresscan claim

credit for passing both types of legislation. While

most resolutionsdo not have the force of law, they







Hasecke,Mycoff / PartyLoyaltyandLegislativeSuccess 611

can be used as selective incentivesto reward oyalty.

Heberlig 2003)showsthatmember ontributionsothe

partyand othercampaigns oseconsiderably eginningwith the 105thCongressandcontinues o rise. We feel

that this rangeof Congressesprovidesa long enoughtimeperiod o capturehe impactof loyaltyon legisla-tive success but still focuses on the Congresseswhere

monetary ontributionso thepartyweresignificant.Since our hypothesis is limited to majority party

members,we exclude minority partymembersfrom

the data. Freshmenarealso excluded fromthe model

because we use severalvariables,suchaspartyvotingscores andprevioussuccess, thatcapturebehavior n

the previousCongress.

ModelingLegislativeSuccess

The traditionalmeasureof membersuccess is the

numberof bills passeddividedby the totalnumberofbills introduced(Matthews 1960). This "hit rate,"

however,does not capture he substantivedifferences

betweenmembers.Because the hit rate measures he

percentageof successfullyscheduledbills, it does not

distinguishbetweenmemberswho introducemanyor

few bills (Anderson,Box-Steffensmeier, nd Sinclair-

Chapman 003, 362).To overcome this problem, we follow Anderson

et al. (2003) and use thenumberof bills scheduled or

each member as thedependent

variable in a count

model.A countmodel s theappropriatehoice because

it overcomes he modeling problems nherent n usingthe hit rate.4A countmodel also makes sense froma

theoretical tandpoint.The literature as demonstrated

that members are able to claim credit for successes

while avoidingblame forfailures,so it makes sensetocount the successes but not the failures(Cook 1979;Parker ndDavidson1979).

Countvariablesareoften used in linearregressionanalyses,butestimatescan be inefficient, nconsistent,

and biased.There area varietyof modelsbettersuitedfor count variables,most notablythe Poisson regres-sion model (PRM).A PRM is the appropriatehoice

as long as thedependentvariable s notoverdispersed.

Overdispersion ccurswhen the dependentvariable's

conditional ariance s greater han ts mean.Whenthisis thecase, estimates rom a PRMwould be consistent

butinefficientwithstandard rrorsbiaseddownwards,

leadingto inflatedstatistical ignificance.Forourpur-

poses, overdispersion s a concern. Over the five

Congresses,173membersdidnot haveanybills sched-

uled. Thelargenumber f zeroes nourdependent ari-ablecan lead to overdispersion.

There are many alternatives o the PRM when

overdispersions a problem,but the negativebinomial

regressionmodel(NBRM) s themost common."While

PRM assumesequalitybetweenthe conditionalmeanandvariance,heNBRMallowstheoverdispersionara-meter to be modeled as a linear combinationof the

covariates.n thePRM, he conditionalmeanof y, givenx, is known:

t = exp(xp).

In the NBRM, the mean p is replacedwith the ran-

dom variable r,:

pr = exp(xij ++i),

whereE s a randomerrorassumed o be uncorrelated

with x and is either a combination of effects from

unobserved variables omitted from the model or

another ource of purerandomness Long 1997, 230).The NBRMis anextensionof the PRMand, n thecase

where overdispersion s not a problem, the NBRM

reduces to the PRM.6 In our models, the dependentvariable is overdispersed o the NBRM is the most

appropriatehoice.7

Covariatesof LegislativeSuccess

Ourprimary

ariablesof interestmeasureparty oy-alty,but we also include several variablesmeasuring

institutional, ontextual,andbehavioral actors denti-

fied by Andersonet al. (2003). Institutional ariables

includevariables orparty eaders,committeeandsub-

committeechairs,and seniority.Contextualvariables

include electoralsafetyand the spatialpreferencesof

the member. Behavioral variables include eachmember'spersonalagendasize, measured hrough henumberof bills each memberintroducedduringthe

Congress,andprevious legislativesuccess, measured

through he numberof bills scheduled n thepreviousCongress.

Our party loyalty variables measure both votingand contributionoyalty. For voting loyalty, we cal-

culated leadershiployalty scores for each member,

adjustedfor attendance, n the previous Congress.A

leadershipvote occurs wheneverthe leader andwhipof one partyvote togetherandoppositetheleader and

whip of the otherparty(Cox andMcCubbins1993).

Duringthese five Congresses, there was an increase

in the homogeneity of the leadership oyalty scores.

This makes including the raw scores for multipleCongressesproblematic.FollowingHeberlig (2003),







612 PoliticalResearchQuarterly

we standardizehescoresby transforminghem nto

z scores.8Calculatingscores or eachCongress ap-tures the loyalty a memberdisplaysduringthat

Congresselative o otherpartymembers.neffect,zscorescontrol or thishomogenizationnd createaconsistentmeasure crossCongresses.

We use the total dollaramounta membercon-

tributesromhis or her main reelectioncampaign

committee9o otherpartymembers'maincampaigncommittees ndto the relevant ongressionalam-

paign committee(eitherthe RepublicanNational

CampaignCommitteeor the DemocraticCongres-sional CampaignCommitteedependingon the

Congress)o measure artyoyalty hroughampaigncontributions.10efacethe sameproblemwithcontri-

butionshatweencounteredithvoting coresbecause

theamountfmoney ontributedn eachelection ycle

increasesxponentially.ocontrolor his

ncrease,e

use thez scorecalculatedoreachCongress." hus,bothvariables f party oyaltymeasurehe relativelevelofpartyoyaltydisplayedya member.

As mentioned bove,we includeseveralcontrol

variablesn ourmodel.There re ournstitutionalari-

ablesnthemodel: eniority,artyeadership,ommit-

tee chairmanships,ndsubcommitteehairmanships.Senioritysmeasuredsthenumber f terms memberhas servedin the House.12Becausefreshmenare

excludedrom hemodel, llmembersaveat eastone

term.We include ommittee ndsubcommitteehairandpartyeaderdummyvariables. artyeadersare

thosewithat easta chiefdeputywhipranking.'3We also controlfor severalcontextual actors

describinghepolitical nvironment:deologicaldis-

tanceandelectoral afety.Whileeach members in

themajority arty, artymemberstill have deolog-ical differences. omemembersmaybe advantagedbecausetheirpreferencesare closer to the partymedian.Members eviatingrom hepartydeologi-cally mayhave bills thatare either oo moderate r

extreme. f thegoalof themajority arty s to shiftoutcomes towards the party median (Cox andMcCubbins 002),then members lose to thepartymedian ould have anadvantage.We measure deo-

logical congruence s the absolutedistancerom he

partymedianusingDW-NOMINATEcores.14Another ontextualactor s the electoral ontext.

Somemembers avewideelectoralmarginsndotherswinwithnarrowmargins.Members ithgreaterafetyhavemore lexibilityntheiregislative gendasopur-sue policies beyond the narrowdistrictinterests

(Bianco 1994).Vulnerablemembers,however,aremore onstrainednd ypicallyocuson egislationhat

directsbenefitsback o thedistrictSteinandBickers

1995).Theresearchweaklysupportsheconclusionthatvulnerablemembers remore uccessful.Weaddthat hepartymayhavean ncentive omake ure hatvulnerablemembers f the partyareableto claimcreditfor legislative uccess.We measure lectoral

safetyas thepercentagef thevote receivedby the

member n the previouselection with unopposedmemberseceiving100% f thevote.15

Thefinal set of variablesncludesbehavioralac-tors.Weconsiderartyoyaltyas oneofthebehavioralfactorsbecause we hypothesizehatmemberscanincrease heir egislative uccessby choosing o bemoreoyal o thepartyhrough oting rcontributions.Another actor ncludesagenda ize-the greaterhenumberfbills ntroducedya memberhegreaterhechance that one of these bills will be scheduled.

Agendasize is often linkedwith

legislativequality.Theassumptions thatmembersaneither ntroduce

largevolumeof low-qualityegislationor a smallnumber of high-qualitybills. Frantzich(1979)describes his as the difference etweena "shotgun"and"rifle"pproach.nfortunately,e cannot apturethequality f legislation,utwe canexamineherela-

tionshipbetween he number f bills introduced nd

legislativeuccess.Pastresearchas found hat his sa nonlinearrelationship Andersonet al. 2003).

Introducingmore bills generatesgreateregislative

success,buttherearediminishingeturns. ocapturethiswe include oth henumberfbills ntroducednd

thesquaredumber f bills ntroduced.Wealso includea variable orthenumber f bills

scheduledor themember n thepreviousCongress.This s not ntendedocapture nyspecificbehavior;rather,t sets abaseline xpectationoreachmember.Thereare myriad actorsthat could set members

aparthataredifficulto measure. orexample,omemembersmightvaluelegislative uccessmorethanothersandworkhardero have heirbills scheduled.

Somemembersmayprefero haveone controversialbill scheduled over many noncontroversial bills

(regardlessof the numberof bills they introduced).

Some membersmay preferthe opposite.These indi-

vidual legislative styles can lead to variation in the

numberof bills scheduled. We assume thatpast suc-

cess capturessome of these individualdifferences.

Results

Webegin by comparinga fully specifiedmodel of

legislative success with a model that excludes the







Hasecke,Mycoff / PartyLoyalty andLegislativeSuccess 613

Table1Determinants f MemberSchedulingSuccess n the 103rd-107thCongresses

Bills Scheduled SummaryStatistics First Differences

Variable Coefficient Mean/Mode SD SD 0- 1

Behavioral actors

Loyalty:contribution 0.043* 0.112 1.055 0.121 0.115

(0.019)a

Loyalty:voting 0.115* 0.196 0.655 0.203 0.309

(0.046)# bills sponsored 0.065* 16.950 12.503 1.898b 0.066

(0.006)# bills squared -0.0005* -

(0.000)# bills scheduled(t-l) 0.036* 2.900 4.570 0.469 0.087

(0.006)Institutional actors

Seniority 0.042* 4.638 3.609 0.428 0.092

(0.009)

Party eader 0.369* 0 - - 1.161(0.104)

Committeechair 0.450* 0 1.479

(0.086)Subcommitteechair 0.213* 0 0.620

(0.063)

Contextual actors

DW-NOMpartydifference -0.788* 0.131 0.104 -0.206 -1.576

(0.344)Percentvote (t-1) 0.002 62.357 18.428 0.080 0.004

(0.001)Dummy variables

104thCongress 0.343* 0

(0.091)105thCongress 0.321"* 0

(0.081)106thCongress 0.389* 0

(0.080)107thCongress 0.285* 0

(0.082)Constant -0.730*

(0.147)

Alpha 0.176*

(0.025)Observations 914

Log-likelihood(df = 17) -1819.47

McFadden'sR-squared 0.170

a. Huber/White obuststandard rrorsareclusteredby member.

b. First differences calculatedby combiningthe effects of the numberof bills sponsoredandthe squared erm.

*p < .05, two-tailed.

party oyaltyvariables.Tworesultsareclear.First,chi-

square ests show that theparty oyaltyvariablesmake

a statisticallysignificantcontribution o our under-

standingof legislativesuccess.16 Second, the coeffi-

cients for the other variables in the model are

unaffectedby the presenceof party oyalty variables.

Both of these findings underline the importanceof

includingpartyloyaltybecausepast researchhas not

accountedorparty oyaltyeitherdirectlyorindirectly.Table1shows the resultsof ourNBRM of legislative

success.17 Since our data cover multipleCongresses,individualmembers show up multiple times in the

dataset,meaning hatour observations renotindepen-dent.Whilethisdoes not affect thecoefficients,it can








create inefficient estimates and to overcome this

problemwe use robust standarderrorsclusteredby

member.18 hese errorsarereported n parenthesesn

the Table 1.

The firstcolumn shows the full model.The two loy-

alty variablesare both significantandin the expecteddirection.First, this is importantbecause it demon-

stratesthat legislativesuccess is influencedby party

loyalty.Thissuggeststhat egislativesuccessis a selec-

tive benefit that is based on party loyalty.Second, it

demonstrates he importanceof both votingand con-

tributionso thepartyas anexpressionof party oyalty.Whileparty oyalty s typicallymeasured olelyas vot-

ing loyalty,we find an independentnfluenceof con-

tributions.These results show thatthesameprocessof

rewarding oyalty foundin committeeassignments s

atworkin the schedulingdecision.

The other variablesin the model also have inter-esting implications.As expected,previouslegislativesuccess has a positive effect on future success.

Consistentwith Andersonet al. (2003), we find that

agenda size positively affects legislative success but

each additional bill introduced has diminishingreturns.This strengthens heir resultby showingthis

effect holds across several Congresses.Also consis-

tentwithpastresearch,we find that nstitutionalposi-tions (seniority,party,and committee leaders) bring

greatersuccess.

The contextual variables show mixed results.Electoralsafety is statistically nsignificant,which is

similarto the null resultsreported n Andersonet al.

(2003). Ideologicaldistance,however, s significant-aresult that contradictspast findings.Thus, members

who are closerto the partymedianaremorelikely to

have theirbills selectedas the legislativevehicle.This

makes sense. If the partyis looking for a bill to use

as the legislativevehicle, a bill writtenby someone in

the partymainstreamwill most likely be closest to

the partyposition, and their bill is likely to include

fewer objectionable deas in need of revision.On the whole, the model does a good job of pre-

dictingthe legislativesuccess of individualmembers.

Wepredicted he numberof bills we would expect to

see each member have scheduled by the majority

leadership for floor consideration.The correlation

betweenthe actualnumberof bills scheduledandthe

numberof predictedbills scheduledwas .79.

To make furthersense of these results,we calcu-

lated first differencesof the predictedrateof sched-

uling success. The predicted rate is the expectednumberof bills scheduled for given values of the

independentvariables.We calculatedfirst differences

usingtwoapproaches. irst,we calculatedhechange n

thepredictedate hatresults roma one standard evia-

tion increase rom the meanfor eachcontinuous nde-

pendentvariable.Second,we calculated he changein

thepredictedate hatresults roma change rom 0 to 1in each independentariable.The othervariableswere

held at their mean (or theirmode for leadership ari-

ables)andthe Congressdummyvariableswere set to

reflectpredictionsor the 106thCongress.The resultsare shownin columnsfour and five of

Table1. The.party oyalty variablesboth have a sub-

stantively significant effect on legislative success.

The impactof changingfrom an averagememberto

one that falls in the top 88% (1 standarddeviation

above the mean)of thepartyresultsin an increaseof

about0.12 bills for contributionoyalty and 0.20 bills

for voting loyalty. Compared to the institutional

advantagesof

some members,he effect of

party oy-altyis small.Forexample,party eaders and commit-

tee chairsenjoy a 1.2 and 1.5 increase in scheduling

success, respectively, relative to the rank-and-file

members. But comparedto any contextual effects,

loyaltyhas a similarsubstantivempact.This does not tell the full story,however.We also

analyzed herelativesuccess of memberswithcontri-

butions and voting set at differentpercentiles. By

increasingboththe contributionandvotingvariables

from the 10th percentileto the 90th percentile,the

associatedeffect on predictedsuccess is an increaseof 0.56 bills, or greater hangainingan extratermof

seniority and legislative experience. Increasing the

loyalty on both variablesfrom the 5th percentileto

the 95thpercentile ncreasesthepredictedsuccess by0.82, or greater han the effect of holding a subcom-

mittee chairmanship.Therefore, by showing more

loyalty to the majorityparty through ncreasedcon-

tributions and voting support, majority partymembers can compensate for some seniority and

institutionaldisadvantages.This is not to say that oy-

alty is as importantas institutionalpositions,but it issignificant that members can use loyalty to gain

greatersuccess earlier n theircareers.

We also analyzed the predictednumber of bills

scheduledon a continuousscale from the minimum

to the maximum as reportedin Figure 1. Figure 1

reveals a differentpattern n the connection between

loyalty andsuccess forvotingand contributions.Low

votingsupport or themajoritypartyreduces thelike-

lihood of schedulingsuccess, buthigh voting supportdoes not increase the likelihood. In contrast,largecontributions ncrease the likelihood of schedulingsuccess, but low contributionsdo not decrease the







Hasecke,Mycoff / PartyLoyaltyandLegislativeSuccess 615

Figure1PredictedNumberof Bills Scheduled

by PartyLoyalty

4-

e)3

2•

210.

min p25 p50 p75 max

PartyLoyaltyPercentile

-Voting and Contributions -- Contributions-- Voting

likelihood. This pattern s largely drivenby the typi-cal behavior of party members. Typical partymembershave high voting supportand low contribu-

tions.Formembersdeviatingfromthisnorm, egisla-tive success is used as a selective incentive to

discourage voting disloyalty and encourage highercontributions. n this way, we see legislativesuccess

as a selective incentive that is used as both a punish-mentand a reward.

Conclusion

One of the intriguingpuzzles in the studyof con-

gressional policymakingis why some members are

more successful hanothersare ntermsof shepherdingtheirbills through helegislative abyrintho the House

floor for consideration.The literaturehas identified

manyfactors hathelpexplainsuccess, suchas institu-tionaladvantages,akingadvantage f thepoliticalcon-

text,andpoliticalskill. We addto this explanationby

suggesting that party leaders use their scheduling

authorityo strategicallydistributeegislativesuccess.Since membersbenefit rom egislative uccess forvar-

ious reasons, including credit-claiming, increased

power,and inancial ontributions,egislative uccess s

valuable.Recognizing his, leadersuse legislativesuc-

cess to encourageparty oyalty.This article uses a negativebinomialregressionto

estimate the determinants f legislativesuccessusing

scheduling data from the 103rd through 107th

Congresses.Wehypothesizethat increasedparty oy-

alty causes greaterlegislative success. We find that

legislativesuccess is used as a selective incentiveto

reward oyal membersof the party.Furthermore,we

find thatpartyloyalty can be used to partiallyover-

come the disadvantage aced by most memberswho

are less senior and do not hold party or committee

leadershippositions.Finally,we concludethatdiffer-

ent kinds of loyalty affect schedulingsuccess in dif-

ferentways. Low voting loyaltyis punishedwithlow

schedulingsuccess relativeto the mean,buthighvot-

ing loyalty does not resultin much more schedulingsuccess thantypical voting loyalty. But for contribu-

tions to the party, members with low contribution

levels experience about as much schedulingsuccess

as those with averagecontributions,while those with

high levels of contributions xperiencemoresuccess.

This articlemakes severalimportant ontributions.

First,pastresearchon legislativesuccess has focused

solely on the role of the individualmember n advanc-

ing a personal agenda. Our findings suggest that

leaders,who

ultimatelydecide which bills will be

scheduled, anmanipulateegislative uccess anduse it

as a selectivebenefitto encourage oyalty.Thus,future

workonlegislative uccess mustrecognize he rolethat

leadersplay n distributinguccess.Inotherwords,suc-

cess is not solely the resultof a member's egislativeeffort orpoliticalacumen.Italso includes he strategicbehaviorof key gatekeepers.

Second,ourresultsspeakto the literature n party

loyalty. We confirmprevious work that found that

party loyalty is more than just voting supportfor

party agenda items (Heberlig 2003). We find thatcampaigncontributionsare taken into consideration

by the leadershipwhen makingdecisions. We gener-alize this findingbeyond the impactof contributions

on committee assignments to include schedulingchoices. In fact, partyleaders may preferto reward

loyalty with legislativesuccess throughbill schedul-

ing rather than committee assignmentsbecause the

opportunity o make committee assignments occurs

infrequentlyand assignmentsarehighly constrained

because there arefew committee vacancies that can

be used to rewardgood behavior.Scheduling, n con-trast, involves decisions over thousandsof bills and

provides greaterflexibility-at very little cost to the

partyleaders, the party,or other members.The vol-

ume of scheduling decisions also means that each

decision is less significant than committee assign-ments. The magnitudeof the rewardor punishment,

then,can be tailoredto the level of party oyalty.

Despite these results,interestingquestionsremain

for futureresearch. In this article,we includedboth

resolutionsand bills in determining egislative suc-

cess. While we believe that this is essential in under-

standingthe nature of legislative success, it raises







616 PoliticalResearchQuarterly

questions bout nydifferenceshatmight xist ntheuseof partyoyaltywhenschedulingesolutionsndbills. For that matter,there may be differencesbetweenbills that are consideredeitherlocal ornationalnscope.Inaddition,ur ocuson themajor-ity party eavesquestionsabout he minoritypartyunanswered.How are minority party members

rewardedorparty oyalty?Does themajority artyrewardminoritypartymembers or loyaltyto the

majorityparty?Or do minorityparty eadershavecontroloverwhichmembers ain egislative uccesssuchthatloyaltyto the minorityparty s key?We

hopeto addresshese ssues n future esearch.

Finally,we believe hat hisarticleopens hedoorto a differentine of partygovernmentesearch. hisdebate ocusesexclusively nthestruggle verpolicycontent.Butmaybe hepolicyoutcomeovercontro-versial

egislations not where

partiesxercise heir

advantages.artiesmayhavetheirbiggest nfluence

by controllingwho can claimcreditfor legislativesuccess and who can get the most access to the

agenda o havetheir noncontroversialr localbills

passed.Wehave ound vidence f partisannfluencein areas hatareindependentf specificpolicycon-tent.Webelieve hat uture heoretical ork s neces-

sary oexplore hispossibilityn greater etail.

Notes

1. An anonymousreviewersuggestedthat a bill-level analy-sis would be a betterchoice than a member-levelanalysis. We

agreethat a bill-levelanalysiswouldprovidea differentandvalu-

abletest of findingsin the legislativesuccess literature.This does

not diminish, however, he value of a member-levelanalysis.Our

approachdoes a very good job of estimatingthe effect of party

loyaltyon legislativesuccess and is the accepted approach n the

legislative success literature.In fact, the entire literature rom

Matthews'(1960) first conceptualizationof legislativeeffective-

ness to Frantzich's (1979) expansion of the analysis and

Anderson, Box-Steffensmeier, and Sinclair-Chapman's 2003)

recent analysisall use the member as the unit of analysis. Sincewe are trying to establish a new variablethat affects legislative

success, we must take the firststepin demonstratinghat ourvari-

ables are significantin the context of past research.If we failed

to do this, the connection between our research and all of the

existing literature n this topic would be strained.

2. All data on the legislative success of each memberwas

collected fromTHOMAS(http://thomas.loc.gov),he Libraryof

Congress'sonline databaseof all bills and resolutions ntroduced

in Congress. This period includes both Democratic and

Republicanmajorities.3. Special rules are excluded fromthe analysis.4. Hit rate models typically use ordinary east squares.This

is problematicbecause it can predict impossible negative esti-matesfor legislativesuccess (Andersonet al. 2003). In addition,

it assumes hat here s a linearrelationship etweenthe covariates

andthe dependent ariable. t is likely,however, hat here s a non-

linearrelationship.Onepossibility s thatpassing hefirstbill is the

mostdifficultandadditional ills areeasier o pass once the critical

0%thresholds crossed Anderson t al.2003).Anotherpossibilityis thateach additionalbill becomes more difficultbecauseeverymemberwantsatleast somesuccess; he moresuccessone member

has,the less time there s for others o havesuccess.

5. See Anderson t al. (2003) fora discussionof theappropri-atenessof using zero-inflatedPoisson models and hurdlePoisson

models nsteadofnegativebinomial egressionmodels(NBRM) or

bill countdataandLong(1997)forotherrelatedmodels.

6. See Greene (1997) and Long (1997) for a discussion of

Poisson regressionmodels (PRM)and NBRM.

7. Wetested foroverdispersion singa one-tailedz test of the

null hypothesisthat a = 0 (see Table 1), wherea is the overdis-

persion coefficient, since when a = 0 the NBRM reduces to

PRM (Long 1997, 237).8. Leadershipsupportscores were calculated from the roll

call data for each Congress providedby Keith Poole (http://vote-view.com). We also ran our analysis using the Congressional

Quarterly artysupport coresand a modified version of the lead-

ershipsupport cores (resultsavailablefromauthors)whereonlyvotes that were decided by less than 3 percent were included.

Regardlessof whichmeasureof voting loyaltyis used, the results

are substantively he same-voting and contribution oyalty are

significant predictorsof legislative success. We use scores from

the previous Congress ratherthan the contemporaryCongressbecause voting scores arecomputedacross an entiresession and

the scores are therefore not appropriate or use in a dynamic

analysisof loyalty duringa Congress.9. We do not include contributions o partiesand members

fromleadershippoliticalaction committees(PACs)controlledby

individual members. While leadership PACs became a muchmore important orce in congressionalcampaignfinance duringthe early 1990s, these PACscan be seen as substantivelydiffer-

ent frompersonalcampaigncommittees.The literature as estab-

lished that leadership PACs are primarilyused by the party

leadershipor by membershoping to win election to the party

leadership Currinder 003, 553).10. Contribution data were collected from the Federal

ElectionCommission website (http://www.fec.gov).11. Heberlig(2003) uses a differentapproach o standardizing

contributions crossCongresses.He weightscontributions o that

the totalcontributionsof all members n each Congress is equalto the totalcontributionsn 2000. This fails to capture,however,

the relativecontribution f each member.If loyalty is important,it is likely based on how a member'scontribution tacksup to his

or herpeers.

12. Seniority data were collected from the Almanac ofAmericanPolitics.

13. These include the Speaker, MajorityLeader, Majority

Whip,ChiefDeputy Whip,Caucus Chairman ndVice Chairman

(for the Democrats),and ConferenceChair,and Vice Chairman

and Secretary for the Republicans).Institutionalpositions were

collected fromthe CongressionalQuarterlyAlmanac.

14. DW-NOMINATEscores allow for comparison across

Congresses and were collected from Keith Poole's Web site

(http://voteview.com).ccordingo Poole'sWebsite,theonlydiffer-

ences betweenDW-NOMINATEcores and D-NOMINATEcoresis in the computation f the errors(normallydistributederrors







Hasecke, Mycoff / PartyLoyaltyandLegislativeSuccess 617

versus logit errors) and in the weight assigned to the second

dimension n DW-NOMINATEcores.

15. Election returndata were collected from FederalElection

Commission(www.fec.gov).16.Wald est:X2 df = 2) = 21.48, p < 0.000; likelihoodratio

test:X2 (df = 2) = 21.58, p < 0.000.

17. Note that the alphacoefficient in ourmodel is statistically

significant.The null hypothesis is thata = 0. If we fail to reject

the null, thenthe data is distributedPoisson and the NBRM doesnotprovidea better it thanthesimplerPoissonregressionmodel.

Since we rejectthe null, we find support or the use of a NBRM.

18. We use robuststandard rrorsclusteredby member o pro-vide a stringent est of our hypothesisand control for the possi-

bility that some individualmemberswould have greatersuccess

than others would across all the Congresses. Regardlessof the

standard rrorswe use, however,the loyalty variablesare signif-icantand the substantive esults of the analysisdo not change.In

fact, if we use robusterrorswithoutclustering, he standard rrors

decrease. If we simply use traditionalstandarderrors,then the

voting loyalty standard rrordecreases and the contributionoy-

alty standard rrorrises, but the contribution oyalty variable s

still significantat thep < 0.05 level.

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