Party power in the U.S. house : discharge petitions, agenda control, and conditional party government

Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on August 23, 2010).The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file.Dissertation advisor: Dr. L. Marvin Overby.Vita.Ph. D. University of Missouri--Columbia 2010.In the study of legislatures, the effect of parties on legislative organization and behavior is generally considered under the broad precepts of two party-based theories: conditional party government theory (CPG) and party cartel theory. While complimentary in many ways, these two theories have disparate expectations for the majority party's ability to keep measures off the floor (i.e., negative agenda control).Advocates of CPG suggest that negative agenda control varies with intra-party preference cohesion and inter-party preference distinction, while proponents of cartel theory contend that this type of agenda control is relatively constant over time. This latter expectation is primarily tested by looking at the majority party's ability to resist rolling efforts on final passage votes. However, there are other ways to conceptualize negative agenda control, thus, prompting questions about the stability of different indicators of this type of power. In this project, I propose that some manifestations of negative agenda control are not constant, and vary by the extent to which the conditions of CPG are met. To evaluate this claim, I examine the conditional nature of the majority party's control over participation in discharge efforts, a form of negative agenda control, in the U.S. House from 1931-2006. This project presents a more nuanced picture of how the majority party's power is restricted when the conditions of CPG are met to a lesser extent, and furthers our understanding of party power in the U.S. House.Includes bibliographical references

The Impact of Organized Interests on Eligibility Determination: The Case of Veterans' Disability Compensation

A bureaucracy has a profound impact on public policy when it determines eligibility for government programs. Organized interest groups can increase the amount of information the target population has about the program, help applicants with their applications, and work to inform policy makers when the process is not working well. By doing these things, interest groups can affect how government programs are implemented. In this paper, we investigate the influence of veterans' interest groups on eligibility determinations in the Veterans' Disability Compensation (VDC) program across the fifty U.S. states to determine whether variations in veterans' organizations can explain why VA programs are implemented differently across the states. We find that the strength of veterans' groups affect demand for, access to, and effectiveness of the Veterans' Disability Compensation program. In states where veterans' groups have greater resources, more veterans file claims, more applications are approved, and, interestingly, the Veterans' Administration makes fewer errors in their eligibility decisions. We find no evidence, however, that the strength of veterans groups explain variation in the number of claims that are appealed, the percent of claims that are pending over 120 days, or the average disability rating given to successful claimants.Includes bibliographical reference