Why Does the Senate "Win" In Conference Committee?: A Stability Explanation

Lydia D Ortega and Lawrence J McQuillan

Public Choice, 1996, vol. 87, issue 1-2, 16 pages

Abstract: This paper develops a bicameral stability model wherein the conference committee serves as a vehicle for mutually advantageous bicameral exchange. The goal is to maintain a single party's bicameral majority. Majority party leaders use the conference committee to attenuate the outlying positions of House standing committees that threaten the bicameral majority. Conference outcomes favor the Senate because it is more vulnerable to party turnover. Statistical results on data from the U.S. Congress, 1949 through 1991, demonstrate that, when one party holds a bicameral majority, a relative increase in conference bills preserves, at the margin, Senate majority-party seats at the expense of House majority-party seats. Copyright 1996 by Kluwer Academic Publishers

Date: 1996
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