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Balancing the Legislative Agenda: Scheduling in the United States House of Representatives

Hasecke, Edward Brooke

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2002, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Political Science.
The Speaker of the House has tremendous procedural authority over the legislative schedule. He is able to define which bills will be considered and when they will be considered. This gives him an effective veto over the schedule and allows him to define the legislative agenda. The concentration of agenda control in the hands of the Speaker and the increased partisanship in the House has led scholars to argue that the Speaker uses his scheduling authority to create a legislative agenda that is biased towards the majority party’s interests. In this dissertation, I challenge this portrait of the Speaker. I argue that the Speaker is not solely an agent of the majority party, but rather must balance the demands of the full chamber and the majority party. The partisan theory of scheduling and my balancing theory lead to different expectations about scheduling, which are the basis for the empirical analysis. Partisan theories expect that the Speaker will frequently change the regular order of business to optimize a bill’s partisan benefits, that committees will anticipate the Speaker’s preferences and report primarily partisan bills, and that the Speaker will select the most partisan bills for the final agenda. In contrast, my theory expects the Speaker to follow the regular order of business and facilitate the committee agenda regardless of how partisan it is. In addition, to balance the agenda the Speaker will use his authority to schedule unreported bills that provide benefits undersupplied by the committee agenda. Using original data from the 100th and 105th Congresses, I find that I compare the actual schedule for each legislative day to the calendar schedule. I find that the Speaker rarely deviates from the regular order of business, even when committees do not have a strong partisan bias. Further, the Speaker does not use his authority to create a partisan bias, but rather uses his authority to balance the legislative demands of both the majority party and the chamber as a whole.
John Wright (Advisor)
180 p.

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Hasecke, E. B. (2002). Balancing the Legislative Agenda: Scheduling in the United States House of Representatives [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1031248502

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Hasecke, Edward. Balancing the Legislative Agenda: Scheduling in the United States House of Representatives. 2002. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1031248502.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Hasecke, Edward. "Balancing the Legislative Agenda: Scheduling in the United States House of Representatives." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2002. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1031248502

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)