Unified or Forced Majority?

I found a really interesting article in The Washington Post that brings to mind many topics discussed in the Weingast and Marshall article about committees, and their structure and relevance when it comes to legislation and interest groups. The article is called “The Trouble With Unity” and can be found HERE. First, the article discusses conformity and unity within Congress and other political institutions as the best way to push for legislative reforms and various interests of the different committees. Florida Rep. Mark Foley states “We have more loyal soldiers than independent rebels.” Foley is also “a member of the Republican revolutionary class of 1994 that pushed for legislative and institutional reforms and saw itself as the conscience of the new majority. "We're very unified," he says. "Everybody's fallen into the conformity of Congress."” This issue brings to mind the assumptions from Weingast and Marshall’s model, stating that Congressmen represent the interest groups in their districts and majority rule is a binding constraint. By going after issues that involve legislators’ specific districts and needs, they are trying to maximize their votes for future elections by gaining the respect and praise of their own district. As far as majority is concerned, acting alone will not create a positive outcome for the individual committees and legislators, and therefore generates vote exchanges and cooperation among the various groups. This creates the majority voting system, by which committees that belong to the same party come together and vote for eachother’s issues. “The desire for party unity trumped leaders' commitment to legislative change, even on a measure on national security. "We don't bring bills to the floor that divide our conference," said Stuart Roy, DeLay's spokesman.” It brings up another good point in the fact that Congressmen believe that if you want to get something achieved, changed, or passed, you must have the people in your committee and/or party supporting you and not lobbying for too many other issues at once. This brings up the point of diversity of interest. It is quite believable that maybe parties do place constraint on the behavior of their members in order to get what they want passed. Paul Weyrich, chairman of the conservative Free Congress Foundation states that "…you have a chance to get an agenda through. If you allow people to go all over the place, you're not going to do that." I believe his point contradicts Weingast and Marshall’s second assumption that diversity exists on committees because sometimes it seems to be unwanted. With too much logrolling and vote exchanges, there could be a price to pay. If committees exchange votes and then change their mind and decide not to vote for a particular issue that they were supposed to vote for, things could start to get ugly. A really interesting quote having to do with this issue states the following: “As it stands, dissent carries risks. Rank-and-file Republicans have watched some of their colleagues lose leadership posts or get passed over for key committee chairmanships in retaliation for defying Hastert and DeLay. Rep. Christopher Shays of Connecticut, a moderate Republican who led the fight for campaign finance reform in the House, was next in line to oversee the Government Reform Committee in 2002. But the leadership, which didn't support the campaign finance measure, anointed Thomas M. Davis III of suburban Virginia, who aligned himself closely with DeLay in order to ascend the leadership ladder.” Overall, this article talked about many underlying issues discussed in class and everyone should read it!