Research on America’s legislatures, Congress and the 99 state chambers, often implies that legislative parties matter and possibly that they matter more than they have in the past. But what does it mean for parties to matter? Legislative scholars have sharply debated this idea for years. For example, do party leaders persuade rank-and-file members to vote in ways they otherwise would not? If so, how do they do so? What tools do party leaders have? What are the consequences of strong parties versus weak parties? Although evidence is often consistent with the notion that legislative parties matter—that they likely persuade at least some of their recalcitrant ranks to do things they otherwise would not or that they manipulate procedures to limit internal divisions—political scientists have yet to provide strong empirical evidence tracing exactly when, how, and by whom parties coordinate, persuade, and communicate. Leadership Organizations in the House of Representatives: Party Participation and Partisan Politics represents a convincing attempt to rectify this empirical gap. Scott R. Meinke’s research reveals how parties in the U.S. House formally organize and how these organizations benefit both party leaders and rank-and-file members. His research also shows how party organizations have changed in light of increasing electoral volatility and polarization.
Why do rank-and-file lawmakers devote time and effort to participating in party organizations? In the 105th Congress alone, for example, Meinke reports that more than 100 members of each party participated on a party committee or in their party’s extended whip network (Chapter 3). Notably, this figure does not include membership on campaign committees: it includes only members of the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, the Republican Policy Committee, the Republican Steering Committee, and both parties’ whip organizations. He argues that members want to participate in these organizations. Participation provides rank-and-file members with opportunities to hold their leaders accountable and to shape the direction and priorities of their caucus.
Party leaders, Meinke argues, also want widespread participation of their members on party committees. Party leaders use party organizations for at least three critical functions. First, they use party organizations to coordinate action among their ranks: to discuss party positions and strategies with their caucus and to allow their rank-and-file members to discuss their preferences and priorities with them (Chapter 4). Doing so helps parties coordinate successful legislative strategies, whether a party is in the minority or majority. Second, Meinke demonstrates how leaders use party organizations to enlarge support (i.e., persuade) among their rank-and-file members on process and policy (Chapter 6). After all, party organizations provide formal venues in which parties can reward loyalty. Finally, party organizations help parties communicate with voters, donors, and other external actors (Chapter 5).
One of Meinke’s biggest contributions is demonstrating that participation on party organizations increases as electoral volatility and polarization increase. For example, during the 94th Congress, only around 50 members of the Democratic Party served on a party committee or in the extended whip network. By the 106th Congress, nearly 2.5 times more Democrats participated on these organizations (p. 39). Members, he reckons, amid high polarization have more to gain through participation as the caucus becomes more unified on electoral and policy goals.
In this vein, Meinke shows that the activity of party organizations also shifts as polarization and electoral volatility increase. With an ideologically diverse caucus, party organizations exert more of a coordinating effort. For example, the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee met 38 times during the 94th Congress in an effort to review and coordinate legislative proposals from their rank and file (p. 91). As polarization and electoral volatility increase, party organizations expend more effort on external communication and persuasion. In the 103rd Congress, for example, Newt Gingrich held weekly meetings with the Republican whip organization to discuss both short-term and long-term communication strategies (pp. 128–29).
Much of Meinke’s data come from archives. He uses the papers of 11 former party leaders in the House to construct a fuller account of how party organizations coordinate, persuade, and communicate. In chapter 5, for example, Meinke uses these papers to reveal a marked change in party oriented behavior with respect to external communication. During the Reagan presidency, the Democratic Party began in earnest investing time and effort in using its party committees to nationalize an alternative policy agenda with voters (p. 117). Archival data such as these take tremendous amounts of time to collect and use. Meinke had to resort to archival evidence to meet the demand of observing party behavior. Quantitative analyses on roll call voting, for example, may reveal divisions between and within the parties, but they rarely reveal how parties actually communicate and coerce. The burdens of our discipline often make such painstaking and slow research unattractive. Meinke shows how useful it is, however, and how it can help us uncover existing data that speaks directly to critical and lingering debates in the literature.
In Chapter 6, Meinke marshals more archival research to show how party leaders have used their whip systems to persuade co-partisans to support or oppose legislation, and how those whip systems have changed with respect to time. His research adds more evidence to the literature about exactly how the Democratic Party created and institutionalized a task force oriented whip system; by recruiting many rank-and-file members to serve on whip task forces, Democratic Party leaders effectively use these task forces to externalize their interests, to give as many of their fellow partisans as possible some investment in the outcome. His evidence also reveals other examples of persuasion, like whips shaping votes by using cleverly worded questions (i.e., push polls) when they take whip counts (p. 145). Finally, Meinke’s evidence in this chapter shows how party leaders reward loyalty in an effort to build a strong team mentality, particularly through the use of committee appointments.
Meinke’s research is based on a very small number of formal party organizations in a single legislative chamber, the U.S. House. Although he has contributed to our understanding of party organizations, future research ought to consider how and why these organizations may differ in other venues, especially ones with different rules. It is conceivable that different rules and conventions shape the net benefit of party organizations in legislative chambers to rank-and-file members and leaders. For example, do longer elective terms in the Senate or term limits in nearly a dozen state legislatures shape the activities and behavior of party organizations? How might party organizations behave in chambers that grant the minority party more power (e.g., the U.S. Senate) or in a system with a more powerful executive (e.g., many state legislatures)? How might legislative professionalism—legislators’ time in session, pay, and number of staff—shape party organizations? Meinke’s book is also successful because it inspires these questions for future research to address.
