Review of “Richard Fenno’s Theory of Congressional Committees and the Partisan
Polarization of the House,” by John Aldrich, Brittany Perry, and David Rohde
In their article, the authors argue that Richard Fenno’s forty year-old theory of congressional committees
is still a useful approach to understanding the function of committees in a
House of Representatives that is significantly different from the one that Fenno studied in the 1970s. Fenno
maintained that congressional committees served as the principal means by which
members sought and achieved “one or more of three goals: reelection, power
within the chamber, and good public policy.”[1] The
significant difference noted by the authors is the increased partisanship of
the congressional parties and the heightened party discipline that the
partisanship entails. This resulted, say the authors, from the Republican
takeover of Congress in 1994 after forty or more years of Democratic control.[2] Reflecting
this change, the authors amend Fenno’s theory by
adding a fourth goal—“the achievement or maintenance of majority status—”
because the demise of the Democratic hegemony means that in congressional
elections, both parties now have a chance to win control of the House and
Senate.[3]
The authors test the
amended Fenno theory by examining how three
contemporary House committees—Rules, Appropriations, and Ways and Means—serve
members in achieving the four goals
in this era of intensified partisanship. The authors find that these committees
continue to provide the means by which congressmen achieve the goals on the
amended Fenno list:
Both the personal incumbency-oriented goals and the
collective goals of the party [can] be achieved by the majority party’s
capturing of the traditional sources of power in the House, the
committees, and by the implementation of collective goals through those
committees.[4]
(Emphasis added.)
The authors argue that
the most important difference in congressional politics since Fenno’s time has been the intensification of “party
polarization on policy.”[5] This
change has made the goal of “good public policy”—or perhaps we should read that
as “good party policy”—even more important
for the parties and for their individual members. This is true for the parties,
because increasingly the national parties are identified in the minds of the
voters as representing this or that platform or policy agenda. The parties need
to be able to follow through on their promises.
For the members, who are
increasingly identified with the policies that their party labels represent,
being able to work in the committees and make the committees reflect their
political will is important for their own reelection goals. The voters are more
partisan than they were in the 70s.
Each of the three
committees that the authors study supports this argument. The Rules Committee
as the essential arm of the majority leadership is tasked with providing majority
with the most favorable environment for floor action on party initiatives.[6] Ways and
Means, with its oversight of perennially important issues such as Social
Security and taxes, also allows the majority party members to report bills
reflecting the party positions.[7] Finally,
Appropriations, which strongly influences that level of funding necessary to
favor the majority’s programs and starve those favored by the minority, also
facilitates the majority party’s goals.[8]
The authors offer a
persuasive argument for the continued validity of an amended—albeit a
significantly amended—Richard Fenno theory.