A tournament theory of congressional committee leadership

Christian Fong () and Joshua McCrain ()
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Christian Fong: University of Michigan
Joshua McCrain: University of Utah

Public Choice, 2025, vol. 202, issue 1, No 9, 193-215

Abstract: Abstract We apply tournament theory to congressional leadership to unify research on campaign finance with theories of endogenous party strength. Parties want to incentivize members to do costly work for the benefit of the party, such as fundraising. Accordingly, they make leadership offices attractive and award these leadership offices on the basis of who does the most work for the party. The more attractive the leadership office becomes, the harder party members work to win. We present a model to formalize this argument, derive its empirical implications, and find support for these implications using data from committee assignments, committee authorizations, and fundraising for leadership political action committees and congressional hill committees.

Keywords: Congress; Tournament theory; Personnel economics; Congressional committees; Campaign finance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1007/s11127-024-01184-y

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