Binder Procedural Choice

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The Partisan Basis of Procedural Choice: Allocating Parliamentary Rights in the House, 1789-

1990Author(s): Sarah A. BinderSource: The American Political Science Review, Vol. 90, No. 1 (Mar., 1996), pp. 8-20Published by: American Political Science AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2082794 .

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American Political Science Review Vol. 90, No. 1 March 1996

ThePartisanasisofProceduralhoice: llocatingParliamentaryightsnthe House, 789-1990SARAH A. BINDER The Brookings InstitutionC conventionalaccountsof the nstitutionalevelopmentf Congressuggesthatexpansion f thesizeand

workload f the House ledmemberso distribute arliamentaryightsnarrowly:Majority arty eadersaccrued trong rocedural owerswhileminority arties ostmanyof theirparliamentaryights. offeran alternative,artisanbasisof procedural hoice. Usingan originaldataset of changes n House rules,Ipresenta statisticalmodelto assessthe influence fpartisanandnonpartisanactorson changes n minorityprocedural ightsn the Housebetween 789and 1990.I find thatshort-termartisangoals-constrainedbyinherited ules-shape both the creationand suppression f rights or partisanand political minorities.Collectivenstitutional oncernsand longer-termalculationsaboutfutureparliamentaryeedshave littleimpacton changesn minority ights.The indingshave mportantheoreticalmplicationsor explaining oththe developmentf Congress nd the natureof institutionalhangemoregenerally.

As it is always in the power of the majority, by theirnumbers, to stop any improper measures proposed on thepart of their opponents, the only weapons by which theminority can defend themselves against similar attemptsfrom those in power are the forms and rules of proceeding.

-Thomas Jefferson, 1801It is but too evident, that when the right of debate is takenaway-when a majority can ... screen themselves fromexposure (however weak, arbitraryor wicked their measuresmay be) by sealing the lips of a minority on the floor ofcongress, we may soon bid adieu to our best and dearestrights.It is layingthe axe at the very root of the tree of liberty.

Rep. Archibald McBryde to constituents, 1810

C ompiling a manual of parliamentary practice in1801, Thomas Jefferson emphatically recognizedthe importance of procedure in securing the rightsof minority party members in the U.S. Congress. In ademocratic political institution, majority parties wouldachieve their favored outcomes by taking advantage oftheir superior size, and minority parties would resist byavailing themselves of protective rules to amend, delay,or obstruct the majority's agenda. Yet, as suggested byArchibald McBryde (Federalist-North Carolina) just afew years later, the portrait of congressional rules asstable guarantors of the minority's right to participatemeaningfully in the legislative process is deceptive. Farfrom rigidly securing the rights of the opposition, con-gressional rules are themselves the object of choice(Riker 1980). Just as policy outcomes are contested bycoalitions within each chamber, so too are the formalrules of the legislative game.What leads members of Congress-in theory entitledto full and equal participation as members of a demo-SarahA. Binder s ResearchAssociate n Governmental tudies,TheBrookings nstitution,Washington,DC 20036.The author is gratefulfor the advice and commentsof MichaelAlvarez, KatherineHarris,Eric Lawrence,Forrest Maltzman,JimStimson,PaulWahlbeck,GarryYoung,and especiallyStevenSmith.Funding for this projectwas providedby a doctoral dissertationfellowship rom the Universityof Minnesotaand a RobertHartleyFellowshipn Governmental tudies rom the Brookings nstitution;thank hembothfor theirgenerous upport.

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cratic legislature-to alter the procedural rights affordedmembers of the minority party? I shall articulate and testseveral competing explanations to account for formalchanges in the rules of the House of Representativesthat have created or suppressed minority rights from1789 to 1990. Although conventional accounts suggestthat changes in the size and complexity of the House andits agenda necessitated the development of firm majorityrule and restrictions on minority rights (Cooper 1977;Stewart 1992), my findings indicate otherwise. The re-sults, I argue, suggest the power of a partisan theory ofprocedural choice to explain the timing and directionof formal change in House rules. The distribution ofparliamentary rights in the House is conditional on theshape of partisan forces in the chamber. In allocatingrights to the minority, partisan advantage rather thancollective institutional concerns drives members' proce-dural choices.Although this study focuses on a narrow category ofcongressional rules, the evolution of minority rightshas broad theoretical implications. First, explaining thepolitics of minority rights is necessary for modelingthe course of congressional development. Although it iswell known that the House had become, by the latenineteenth century, a highly partisan and majoritarianinstitution (and remains so today), we know little asyet about why the House chose that particular historicalpath and the Senate did not. Second, understandingthe politics of procedural choice will help both formaland empirical students of institutions to answer a moregeneral question: What leads members of an institu-tion to agree to new organizational arrangements? Theevolution of minority rights will suggest that a theoryof institutional change should start with a simplepremise: Institutions reflect purposive behavior. Politicalbodies are designed and altered, in other words, tosecure their members' preferred outcomes. Importantly,however, past procedural choices are inherited by sub-sequent majorities, thereby constraining their own fu-ture choices over rules. Any theory of institutionalchange arguably must integrate such inherited institu-tional arrangements with the array of contemporarypolitical preferences.


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American Political Science Review Vol. 90, No. 1CONGRESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT ANDTHEORIES OF CHANGETraditional works on congressional development-in-cluding studies of committees (McConachie 1898), earlylegislative methods (Harlow 1917), and party govern-ment (Hasbrouck 1927)-charted institutional changein rich detail but fell short in identifying and explainingpatterns of change in Congress's past. Indeed, congres-sional scholars have produced little theory about insti-tutional change (Shepsle 1989). Even with the emer-gence of "new institutionalism"studies in the late 1970s,rules have generally remained exogenous to the study ofcongressional decision making (Shepsle 1979; Shepsleand Weingast 1987).Although formal theorists are now elaborating howinstitutional features structure policy outcomes, theirmodels generally depict institutions as ex ante bargainsstruck prior to the legislative game.' Moreover, thesemodels generally assume that legislators hold fixed setsof preferences. But when preferences and contextschange, an institution's rules are often no longer satis-factory to a majorityof its members.2Although we knowthat both policy preferences and environmental changeappear to drive institutional change (Cooper and Brady1981; Cooper and Young 1989; Sinclair 1989; Smith1989), theoretical work that predicts the timing anddirection of such change is limited.A growing number of scholars are now turning to thehistorical record to explain change in legislative institu-tions. Several of these studies focus on specific aspects ofcongressional development, including the emergence ofstanding committees (Gamm and Shepsle 1989), thedevelopment of bill introduction rules (Cooper andYoung 1989), and the development of committee senior-ity norms (Katz and Sala 1996). Such studies often drawdistinctions between macro (contextual) and micro (in-dividual) levels of explanation. The macro approachargues that changes in external demands and institu-tional norms shape institutional arrangements. For ex-ample, Cooper and Young (1989) argue that Housemajorities gradually changed bill introduction rules inthe nineteenth century largely in response to changes inthe size and complexity of the House's agenda. Incontrast, the micro approach posits the rational choiceof rules to secure legislators' preferences, with institu-tional changes reflecting the aggregate outcome of mem-bers' calculations. For example, in explaining changes incongressional budgetary structures at the turn of thecentury, Stewart (1989) argues that members' demandfor localistic policy induced preferences for a decentral-ized appropriations process, although preexisting eco-nomic and institutional forces constrained members'pursuit of such goals.These contrasting micro and macro perspectives pro-I See, e.g., Shepsle and Weingast 1987 and Shepsle's 1989 critique. Analternative rational choice approach models institutions as endogenousoutcomes of noncooperative games (Calvert 1992).2 Aldrich (1989) develops an argument about "frustrated majorities"and institutional failure. From an ecological perspective, Kaufman(1985) also details the ways in which organizations often fail to meetthe demands of their changing environments.

vide the basis for several alternative explanations ofchange in congressional minority rights. I shall nowelaborate these competing explanations and draw outtestable propositions for further study.

External Demands and Procedural ChoiceThe macro perspective on institutional change-linkingexternal pressures and internal change-is not new tothe study of Congress. Indeed, in his seminal article onthe institutionalization of the House, Polsby (1968)argued that as the responsibilities of the national gov-ernment increased and as career paths led to longerterms of service within the chamber, the House devel-oped an organizational structure that emphasized adivision of labor and more routinized modes of proce-dure. Isolating size and increasing workload, Polsbyargued that relating the size of the House to the amountof work it performs would likely explain much of theinstitutionalization of the House (pp. 164-65).

Such an organizational theory approach roots conven-tional accounts of the development of House procedure(see Cooper 1977). The logic of the argument is rela-tively simple: The rapid early growth of the House andits leading role in the new national government led tothe swift introduction of limits on individual rights.Institutional strains, in short, are said to have made"legislative egalitarianism impossible" (Stewart 1992,86). Because every member's ability to achieve his or herpolitical goals is in theory equally and adversely affectedby expansion of the chamber's agenda, it would be in thecollective interest of members under conditions of in-creasing House size and legislative activity to supportnew rules aimed at better management of chamberactivity. Such procedural changes would increase thelikelihood that both majority and minority party coali-tions would gain the time necessary to pursue legislativegoals important to their respective coalitions, increasingindividual members' support for such change.Of course, because rules changes in the House areadopted by simple majority vote, majority party leadersin practice only need to convince their own party mem-bers of the need for such restrictive procedural change.Thus, drawing from Binder (1995a), a workload/sizetheory of procedural change leads to the followingexpectation:WORKLOADHYPOTHESISSUPPRESSION). Themajorityartyis more likely to suppressminority rights when increasesin the level of demands on the chamber increase thevalue of timefor the majority.

A second expectation drawn from such an institu-tional logic would connect changes in workload and sizeto efforts to reinforce minority rights. If increases in thesize and workload of the chamber lead to restrictions onminority rights, then lessening of external demandsought to increase members' incentives to expand mi-nority rights. On those occasions on which majorityparties have responded to minority party demands fornew proceduralrights,we would expect to find a rela-tionshipbetweenworkloadandprocedural ightsagain:

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Allocating ParliamentaryRights March 1996WORKLOAD HYPOTHESISCREATION). The majorityparty ismore likelyto createminorityrightswhen workloadandresultingtimepressures on the chamber decrease.

There is reason to be cautious, however, in arguingthat changes in legislative activity will elicit calls forchanges in minority rights. Although many structuralarrangements clearly are not partisan matters, there isarguably a direct link between procedural rules and thebalance of power within an institution (Knight 1992). Bysetting the bounds of permissible action and therebylimiting choices of an institution's members, rules dis-tribute power among decision makers (Levi 1990;Schauer 1991). Rules, in other words, may be said toreflect the prevailingbalance of forces within an institu-tion. Because the balance of power in Congress isgenerally measured along a partisan dimension andbecause rules governing minority rights affect the allo-cation of power within each chamber, we should expectconflict over minority rights to engage partisan consid-erations directly. Change in parliamentary rights, inother words, is likely to have partisan implications,making it unlikely that majority party members wouldsuppress rights simplyin response to increasing chamberactivity. Alternative explanations of change in minorityrights thus draw on the politics of partisan advantage,rather than collective institutional concerns, to accountfor procedural change.

Party Competition and Procedural ChoiceIn assessing the modern House-in which minorityrights to offer amendments are routinely limited by themajority party and many committees are disproportion-ately stacked in the majority party's favor (Bach andSmith 1988; Smith 1989)-many observers have specu-lated about the impact of the near-permanent Demo-cratic majority and near-permanent Republican minor-ity on procedural choice. Because the majority oftenlimited minority party rights when the Democrats con-trolled the House from 1955 to 1994-the longestperiod of uninterrupted party control of either chamberin American history-many scholars have argued thatthe majoritywas simply incapable of understanding whatit was like to be in the minority.As argued by Mann andOrnstein before Republicans took control of the Housein the 1994 midterm congressional elections. "What maybe missing today is any sense on the part of the minorityof the demands and responsibilities of government, andany appreciation on the part of the majority of thefrustrations and constraints of assuming the role of theopposition. The majority seems to view its power as anentitlement and has set up a structure of patronage thatpervades the institution" (1993, 55). In contrast, Demo-cratic and Republican parties in the modern Senate haveexperienced legislative life in both the majority andminority, and "partisan tensions and their effects havebeen much more subdued" (p. 55). Without a doubt,they conclude, with more frequent party turnover in theHouse, each side would develop an institutional memoryof life in both positions.An implicationof this perspective s that members

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choose procedural arrangements based on their calcula-tions about future parliamentary needs. Recognizing thepartisan impact of procedural rights, majority partymembers seek those procedural rights that would bestserve their longer-term partisaninterests. Assuming thatboth majority and minority party members can make areasonable calculation about their future status in theinstitution, each side would make procedural choicesabout minorityparty rights accordingly.Majority partiesanticipating defeat in the coming election would createminority rights to prepare for their parliamentaryfuture;majority parties anticipating continued control of thechamber would suppress minority rights knowing thatsuch changes would make it easier for them to controlthe House agenda in the future. Linking longer-termelectoral calculations with short-term preferences aboutrules leads to two testable propositions:PARTY COMPETITIONHYPOTHESIS SUPPRESSION). The ma-

joritypartyis more likelyto suppressminorityrightswhenit discounts its chances of losing majority control.PARTY COMPETITION YPOTHESIS CREATION). Themajorityparty is more likely to create minority rights when itanticipateslosing control of the chamber.

A scenario at the close of the Forty-ThirdCongress in1875, however, raises questions about the relevance offuture parliamentary needs to procedural choice. In1875, majority party Republicans brought the Houseback into a lame-duck session, the November 1874elections having cost them control of the coming Con-gress for the first time in nearly 20 years. Facingpersistent obstructionism by the Democratic minorityand anxious to ensure passage of what would be the lastReconstruction-era civil rights bill before losing controlof the House, Republicans changed the rules to limitminority obstructionism (see Foner 1988; Kelly 1959;Wyatt-Brown 1965). Instead of expanding minorityrightsto prepare for their impending minoritystatus, themajority altered chamber rules to secure its immediatepolicy goals. The 1875 case suggests that short-term,rather than long-term, partisan calculations might moti-vate members' procedural choices-a possibility I ex-plore next.

Partisan Preferences and Procedural ChoiceLarge and cohesive majorities can set legislative agen-das, assemble policy coalitions, and secure legislativevictories with relative ease (Brady 1988; Clubb, Flani-gan, and Zingale 1990; Hurley, Brady, and Cooper1977). Unlikely to face factional disputes among theirmembers, such majorities can also easily defeat mostminority obstructionism. Given a strong enough coali-tion, such majorities will rarely be constrained by deci-sion rules requiring either a bare majority or superma-jority vote for passage. Indeed, when a majorityparty sodominates the chamber, there should be little debateover the set of chamber rules: Given the similarity ofmembers' views, nearly any set of rules would producesimilar egislativeresults.It is fairlyunusual,however, or the majorityparty o


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American Political Science Review Vol. 90, No. 1enjoy such unchallenged power within Congress.3 Asmajority party strength declines, it becomes tougher fora majority to successfully pursue its policy agenda. Giventhe difficulties of assembling and maintaining a majoritycoalition under such conditions, the advantages anddisadvantages conferred by existing rules become farmore salient to members (Fink and Humes 1992).Because legislative rules determine, for example, whichproposals may be advanced,who may propose them, andhow the proposals will be pitted against each other,chamber rules have a much larger effect in determiningthe winning legislative coalition when party members'preferences begin to diverge.It follows then that members' procedural choicesshould closely reflect their views about policy. Indeed, assuggested by the 1875 case (as well as by Binder 1995and Fink 1994 for the early Congresses and Dion 1991for part of the nineteenth century), majority parties arelikely to try to change the rules in their favor if theybelieve such changes will increase their chances oflegislative success. Unless such changes are deemednecessary for securing policy goals, a majority partywould not necessarily invest in efforts to alter chamberrules in its interests. Instead, efforts to change Houserules are more likely when the achievement of majorityparty legislative goals is hampered by minority obstruc-tionism. Thus linking partisan preferences to proceduralchoice yields an expectation about the partisan condi-tions leading to suppression:PARTISANNEEDSHYPOTHESIS SUPPRESSION). Thehigher helevel of minority obstructionism, the more likely themajorityparty will suppress minority rights.

Partisan need alone, however, is arguably insufficientto produce restrictive procedural change. Instead, amajority party must also be sufficiently stronger than theminority to succeed in its procedural effort. Becausesuppressing minority rights, by definition, limits theminority's ability to amend, debate, or obstruct themajority's agenda, we should expect the minority partyto oppose any effort to limit its parliamentary rights.Further, because rules protecting the minority partyrarely preclude dissident majority party members fromtaking advantage of the rule (see Appendix), the major-ity party must be sufficiently united over its legislativegoals in order successfully to limit minority rights.Minority obstructionism is unlikely to impel support forrestrictions on minority rights if the majority party itselfis factionalized over policy. Thus sufficient partisancapacity, as well as partisan need, is necessary forsuppressing minority rights,which leads to the followingexpectation:PARTISANCAPACITYHYPOTHESIS SUPPRESSION). Thestron-ger the majorityparty relativeto the minorityparty, themorelikely hemajority artywillsuppressminorityrights.

A reverse logic holds for the creation of minorityrights. The weaker the majority party, the more likely a3 Indeed, according to Brady (1988), the dominant majorities associ-ated with realignment periods have emerged only three times in thenation's political past.

faction of the majoritywill join a cross-party coalition infavor of expanding minority rights. Under such condi-tions, extending minority rights would serve the policyinterests of both minority party members and thosemajority party members desiring to challenge the major-ity party's control of the agenda. If cross-party coalitionsare necessary to extract procedural rights from themajority, then strong minority parties are essential to thecreation of new rights: the stronger the minority party,the fewer the number of majority party defectors neces-sary to form a winning coalition in favor of extendingminority rights. Thus the alignment of partisan policypreferences also leads to a testable proposition:PARTISAN CAPACITYHYPOTHESIS CREATION). The weakerthe majorityparty relativeto the minorityparty,the morelikelya cross-party oalition will createnewminority ights.Immediate short-term policy preferences, rather thanlonger-term calculations about party control or broaderinstitutional concerns about managing the legislativeagenda, would thus motivate members either to suppressor to create minority party rights.Preference alignments, external demands, and partycompetition, of course, might vary independently. Vari-ation across all three factors might influence the proba-bility of changes in House minority rights. My goal is toassess the relative influence of each of these variables inexplaining the suppression and creation of minorityrights across the history of the House. Contrary toconventional expectations about the impact of workloadand changing party control on procedural change, thefindings here will suggest the influence of partisanalignments and inherited rules in structuring change inprocedural rights.DATA AND METHODSI define a minority right as a procedural advantageprotected from arbitrary hange that enables the minorityparty to amend, debate, or obstructthe majority'sagenda.To test the suppression and creation hypotheses, Iassemble a data set of all minority rights that haveexisted at any point during the history of the Housebetween 1789 and 1990.4 I then determine when eachminority rightwas formallycreated and/or suppressed aspart of House rules. This yields two dichotomous depen-dent variables-one indicating when minority rightshave been suppressed and the other indicating whenthey have been created (see appendix).Changes in the procedural context, however, make itinappropriate to model the entire span of House historyin the same way. Because minority parties alter theirprocedural strategies to take advantage of changingrules and political conditions, the particular form ofminority obstructionism changes over time as well. In-herited rules, in other words, make possible certain typesof obstructive activitywhile foreclosing others. To assessappropriately the influence of minority obstructionismand other factors on rights suppression, I divide House

4' Selectionof minority ights s addressed n the appendix.

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Allocating Parliamentary Rights March 1996history into two periods intended to capture a majorshift in ways of conducting chamber business.The first period lasts from 1789 through the readop-tion of Reed's rules in 1894 (lst-53d Congresses), thesecond, from 1895 to 1990 (54th-101st Congresses).5During the first period, House majority parties graduallyaccrued a set of rules ensuring majority party control ofthe legislative process. Indeed, throughout much of theperiod, House rules served the minority party's interests.Majority parties generally needed a two-thirds majorityto obtain consideration of favored bills; and minorityparties persistently exploited traditional individual rightsto offer dilatory motions and often refused to vote,thereby preventing action on legislation preferred by themajority (Bach 1990; Dion 1991; Garfield 1981, 3:17-18). By the beginning of the second period in 1895, themajority party had gained firm procedural control overthe chamber's legislative agenda-control rarely chal-lenged in the twentieth century.To test the hypotheses of rights creation and suppres-sion, I construct several independent variables to tap theconditions underlying changes in minority rights andthen use bivariate statistical tests and multivariate max-imum likelihood logit models to assess the factors influ-encing changes in minority rights over time. I shalldescribe measures used to tap the workload, partycompetition, and partisan factors shaping proceduralchange.WorkloadTapping workload over the history of the House posesseveral measurement problems. First, although the cur-rent CongressionalRecord chronicles levels of legislativeactivity down to minutes in session for each chamber, nosuch records are available for the period prior to 1945.Second, no single measure of legislative activity fullycaptures the scope of legislative demands. Given thesedifficulties, I instead assemble several proximate andcorrelated measures of workload and perform a princi-pal-components analysisto extract a general "workload"factor from the variables for each period.For the first period (1789-1894), I use the number ofHouse members, the number of public laws enacted, andthe length of each Congress in days-measures thatarguably tap the level of demands generated by themembership, the scope of the congressional agenda, andthe amount of time consumed by that agenda.6 For thesecond period, I include only laws enacted and days insession, because the increase in membership is flat after1915. In each period, the principal components analysis5 Reed's rules, originally adopted under Speaker Thomas Reed (R-Maine) by the Fifty-First Congress (1889-91) and readopted by aDemocratic majority in the Fifty-Third Congress (1893-95), ended acentury of minority obstructionism (Chiu 1928; Dion 1991; Follett1902). Reed's rules also capped a century of incremental restrictionson minority rights (appendix). Cooper and Young (1989) and Bach(1990) both note the significance of Reed's rules as a turning point inthe procedural development of the House.6 Size of the House is taken from Martis (1989), laws enacted is fromU.S. Bureau of the Census (1975, 1987, 1993), and days in sessionappears in U.S. Congress 1993a.

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produces a single workload factor. I then generate afactor score for each Congress that represents the levelof "workload" in that Congress.7 Based on the workloadhypotheses, I would expect increases in workload toincrease the chances of suppression and decrease thelikelihood of creation.Change in Party ControlThe hypotheses of future needs assume that membersof the majority party are reasonably able to calculatetheir electoral prospects in the coming election.8 Thus,to test the effects of expected change in party control onprocedural change, I code for each Congress whetherthe majority party lost control of the House in thefollowing election.9 I would expect change in partycontrol to increase the chances of creation and todampen the probability of suppression.

Partisan NeedsTo tap a majority party's need for a procedural fix to itslegislative problems, I need a measure of minority partyobstructionism. No single measure, however, capturesminority obstructionism across House history. Instead, Iuse several different variables to measure obstructiveactivity within the two periods described above.For the period 1789 to 1894, minority parties persis-tently used dilatory motions to obstruct the majority'sefforts to pass its favored legislation. In particular,minority parties resorted to using motions to adjourn todelay and frustrate the majority. Thus, I use the percent-age of floor votes in each Congress consumed by mo-tions to adjourn to tap levels of minority obstruction-ism.10 Because over a third of the suppression casesoccurred at the opening of a new Congress, I lag thelevel of obstructive motions by one Congress. The use ofa lagged measure then tests for whether the majorityparty acts to redress obstructionism experienced in theprevious Congress." Even if a rule change does notoccur at the start of a new Congress, lagged obstruction7 I use the regression method of the SPSS 6.01 for Windows factoranalysis module to estimate factor score coefficients for each variable.Factor scores for each Congress are then obtained by multiplying thestandardized value of each variable by its factor score coefficient.8 There is arguably no easy way to measure whether or not a partyanticipates retaining control of the chamber in the following Congress.Of course, if a Congress meets in a lame-duck session after theNovember elections (as it routinely did before ratification of theTwentieth Amendment in 1933), the two parties already know theirrespective positions in the coming Congress.9 Change in party control is coded as 1, 0 otherwise.10Motions to adjourn were routinely used by the minority party toprevent the majorityfrom taking further action on its agenda (see, e.g.,Garfield 1981, 3:18). Numbers of motions to adjourn appear inInter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research(ICPSR) Congressional Voting Records, 1st to 53d Congresses (File0004). In counting motions to adjourn from ICPSR codebooks, Iexclude motions to set a future time of adjournment, because thesemotions were often used by the majority party as a scheduling tool.11Even if party control of the chamber has switched between the twoCongresses, the lagged obstruction measure still taps the extent towhich the new majority party is likely to face obstruction by the newminority party.


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American Political Science Review Vol. 90, No. 1still taps recent minority partyfloor tactics and the arrayof existing rules. The higher the percentage of obstruc-tive floor motions, the more likely the majority partywillsuppress rights in the following Congress.No single measure accurately taps minority obstruc-tionism in the period after 1895. Instead, I constructseveral measures to tap reported sources of minorityobstructionism. As suggested by the incidence ofchanges in the discharge rule in the early twentiethcentury (see appendix), minority party use of the dis-charge rule motivated majority members repeatedly torevise the discharge rule in that period in an effort tolimit its use by the minority party (Beth 1990;Hasbrouck1927).12 Indeed, after a century of restrictive ruleschanges, the majority party had all but sealed access tothe floor agenda from the minority party, leaving thecommittee discharge process as one of the few meansavailable to the minority to challenge majority agendacontrol. Thus, to measure activity by the minoritydeemed noisome by the majority, I use the total numberof discharge petitions filed in the House, lagged by oneCongress.13The higher the level of discharge efforts, themore likely minority rights will be suppressed.As another proximate measure of minority obstruc-tionism, I use the total number of recorded floor votes ineach Congress, again lagged by one Congress. Limits onmembers' rights to request recorded votes and to offeramendments were clearly motivated by majority partyfrustration with the increase and type of minority-sponsored amendments in the 1970s (Bach and Smith1989; Smith 1989). The higher the number of recordedvotes, the more likely minority rights will be suppressed.Because accounts of the modern period also suggestthat newly created minority rights were often retractedin the following Congress (see Davidson and Oleszek1977; Hasbrouck 1927), I use a dummy variable toindicate whether or not a minority right was created inthe prior Congress.14 If a minority right has just beencreated, the majority party's motivation to retract theconcession is arguably highest when it seeks to changethe rules at the opening of the next Congress.Partisan CapacityParty capacity for assembling a winning coalition (i.e.,party strength) can be considered a function of a party'srelative size and its cohesiveness across all roll-call votes.A large party that is incohesive may be no stronger thana small party that is tightly cohesive. Thus, to measuremajorityand minority partystrength over time, I interact12 But Hasbrouck notes some majority abuse of the discharge rule in1910 in an effort to prevent the minority from using its newly acquiredprocedural right (1927, 142-45).13 Data appear in Beth 1990. Prior to the creation of the discharge rulein the Sixty-FirstCongress (1910), I code each Congress as 0. For theSixty-First through Sixty-Seventh Congresses, I use the number ofdischarge motions (rather than petitions) filed because the dischargepetition was not created until the Sixty-Eighth Congress. Althoughearly changes in the discharge rule affected the ease with whichmembers could file discharge motions and petitions, the number ofdischarge motions and petitions filed is still a reasonable method oftapping efforts to discharge committees.14 The variable is coded 1 if a right was created, 0 otherwise.

each party's percentage share of chamber seats with itsRice cohesion score.15 To relate majority and minorityparty strength in each Congress, I use the difference inmajority and minority party strength.16 The larger thedifference in party strength, the more likely minorityrights will be suppressed; the smaller the difference, themore likely rights will be created.PATTERNS OF SUPPRESSIONIN THE HOUSELooking first at simple bivariate relationships during thefirst period (1789-1894), the conditions fostering sup-pression of rights lend initial support for both workloadand partisan preference hypotheses (Table 1). Minorityrights are more likely to be suppressed under conditionsof higher workload, higher majority party advantage instrength over the minority, and higher levels of minorityparty obstructionism.17 Contrary to the party competi-tion hypothesis, however, subsequent change in partycontrol does not dampen the suppression of minorityrights. In fact, although the difference is statisticallyinsignificant, minority rights are more likely to be sup-pressed prior to a switch in party control than when themajority retains its control of the chamber. Thus, a risein legislative activity, as well as increases in the majorityparty's perceived need and actual capacity for proce-dural change, appear to have statistically significanteffects on the likelihood of suppression.Judging from bivariate tests, suppression in the sec-ond period appears to occur under slightly differentconditions (Table 2). High partisan capacity and partisanneed are still strongly related to the suppression ofminority rights. The relationship between legislativeactivity and suppression, however, is weaker than in thefirst period: workload is not statistically higher in Con-gresses with restrictive rules changes than in thosewithout. There is, however, some support for the partycompetition hypothesis: majority parties retaining con-trol of the chamber in the second period are more likelyto suppress minority rights. To make sense of therelative influence of these partisan and nonpartisan15 Rice cohesion scores are calculated for each party as the meanabsolute difference of the percentage voting aye and the percentagevoting nay over all roll-call votes for each Congress. In measuring partysize, I use each party's share of chamber seats, rather than the share ofseats held by the majority and minority parties, to account for thepresence of minor parties in several mid-nineteenth-century Con-gresses. House cohesion data provided by Garry Young and are basedon roll-call data from ICPSR, File 0004. Members' party affiliationsand party sizes are those reported in Martis 1989.16 An identical measure is used by Hurley, Brady, and Cooper (1977)to measure the majority party's capacity for major policy change.Alternative measures of party strength narrow their focus to partyvotes (a majority of one party opposing a majority of the other) on thegrounds that party strength should only be relevant on votes showinginterparty disagreement (Brady, Cooper, and Hurley 1979; Hurley1979). Arguably, however, a party's capacity to muster a majority forprocedural change will be grounded on its performance across allroll-call votes in a Congress. Moreover, variation in interparty dis-agreement can be captured more directly by measures of minorityparty obstructionism as discussed.17 I report one-tailed significance tests throughout because there areclear expectations about the direction of effects.

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Allocating Parliamentary Rights March 1996

TABLE 1. Conditions Fostering Suppression of Minority Rights, 1789-1894Mean

Suppression NonsuppressionCongresses CongressesHypothesis Variable (n = 10) (n = 41) DifferencePartisancapacity Difference n majority ndminoritypartystrength 15.45 8.70 6.75**Partisanneed % obstructive floormotions (lagged) 13.30 6.1Oa 7.20***Workload Workload actor score .70 -.20 .90***Partycompetition Change in party controlin followingCongress .50 .25b .25

an = 40 (excludes 1st Congress).bn = 40 (excludes 18th Congress due to discontinuity in chamber parties; see Martis 1989).**p< .01, one-tailed test.***p< .001, one-tailed test.

TABLE 2. Conditions Fostering Suppression of Minority Rights, 1895-1990Mean

Suppression NonsuppressionCongresses CongressesHypothesis Variable (n = 9) (n = 37) DifferencePartisancapacity Difference n majority ndminoritypartystrength 19.50 13.00 6.50*Partisanneed Numberof recordedvotes (lagged) 656.00 290.00 366.00*Dischargemotions filed(lagged) 37.00 17.OOa 20.00Newly acquiredminorityright .44 .08 .36*Workload Workload factor score .22 -.10 .32Partycompetition Change in partycontrol in

followingCongress 0.00 .19 .19**an = 36 (missing data for 101st Congress).*p < .05, one-tailed test.**p< .01, one-tailed test.

factors on rules changes in both periods, I turn tomultivariate tests of the politics of rights suppression.Predicting Suppression, 1789-1894A maximumlikelihood logit model of suppression in theeighteenth and nineteenth centuries confirms the impor-tance of partisan need and capacity in shaping proce-duralchoice (Table 3).18In a model assessing the impactof minority obstructionism, the difference in majorityand minority party strength, subsequent change in partycontrol of the chamber, and levels of legislative activity,the coefficients for lagged obstruction and partystrengthdifference are both significant and in the predicted(positive) direction. Coefficients for changes in workloadand change in party control are both insignificant.18 Because the dependent variable is dichotomous, ordinary leastsquares regression is inappropriate (Aldrich and Nelson 1984). Coef-ficients in a logit model are estimated using a maximum-likelihoodmethod: The coefficients making the observed results most likely arechosen.

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Overall, the model correctly classifies 90% of the casesand reduces error by 50%.19Unlike ordinary least squares regression, the impactof each independent variable in a logit model dependson the values of each of the other variables. Thus, tointerpret the model's coefficients, I assess the impact ofeach independent variable over a specified range, hold-19 The model fails to predict suppression when it was observed in theSeventeenth (1822), Twenty-Fifth (1837), Thirty-Sixth (1860), andFortieth (1868) Congresses. Dion (1991), however, shows that majorityparties in both 1837 and 1860 restricted minority rights in an effort toredress prior obstructive activity. Both floor debates and votingalignments on the rules changes provoked sharp partisan divisions. Forthe 1868 case, the model yields a 47% probability of suppression. Inthat year, facing persistent minority obstructionism from Democratsopposed to impeaching Andrew Johnson, majority Republicans in aparty-line vote during consideration of the articles of impeachmentsuppressed the right to offer dilatory motions (Hinds 1907, 5:925). The1822 case, occurring during an era of diminished partisan conflictunder one-party rule by the Republicans, clearly is an outlier, althoughat least one minority party Federalist protested the rule change as arestriction on individual rights (see Annals, 17th Cong. 1st sess. 1299,13 March 1822; U.S. Congress 1983).


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TABLE 3. Minority Rights Suppression, 1789-1894 (Maximum Likelihood Logit Models)Change in X ImpactaHypothesis Variable Coefficient (from, to) (%)

Partisan capacity Difference in majority and .16* (1.95, 18.09) 26minority party strength (.07)Partisan need % obstructive motions 23.46* (.02, .14) 31(lagged) (11.33)Workload Workload factor score .04 (-1.03, .97) 1

(.59)Party competition Change in party control 1.06 (0, 1) 12in following Congress (1.14)

Constant -5.92***(1.9)Note: Entries are unstandardized coefficients (standard errors in parentheses). -2 log likelihood = 30.68; model chi-squared 18.9, p < .001; correctlypredicted = 90%; reduction in error = 50%; N = 49.aFor explanation of "impact," see n. 20.*p < .05.***p< .001.

ing the other variables constant at their means.20 Con-trary to the conventional wisdom, increases in workloaddo not increase the probability of suppression. In fact,increased legislative activityhas virtually no effect on thechoice of restrictive rules.21Instead, suppression is 31%more likely when obstructionism increases from 2% to14% of all floor motions and 26% more likely when themajority party's advantage in strength over the minorityclimbs sixfold. Although the party competition hypoth-esis predicts that suppression is more likely when themajority anticipates retaining control of the House, theresults suggest that suppression is actually more likely(but only nominally so) when the majority party losescontrol.Predicting Suppression, 1895-1990By 1894, when Reed's rules had been readopted by themajority party, the role of party had been formalized inHouse rules, granting the majority party almost unfet-tered control over the floor agenda. Under this differentprocedural context, however, minority parties still de-vised procedural strategies intended to limit the major-ity's control of the agenda. Unlike the earlier period,however, there has been no single form of minorityobstructionism in the latter period. Thus, in modelingthe pattern of suppression after 1895, I try several20 The effect of each independent variable is calculated as P (suppres-sion) = 1/(1 + e-z), where z = bo + b, (difference) + b2 (obstruction)+ b3 (change in party control) + b4 (workload). "Impact"is the changein the probability of suppression as X varies from one standarddeviation below to one standard deviation above the mean value forthe continuous variables. For the dichotomous variable (change inparty control), the impact of the variable is shown as it changes fromo to 1.21 Although workload increases over time, it is not a simple monotonictrend; there is enough variation in the series not to think that it is asimple linear trend. To control for the possible effects of increases inworkload over time, I reran the model to include a "Congress"variable-in effect, controlling for "time." The estimated coefficientfor Congress is statistically insignificant and there is no appreciablechange in the model. The same holds for the twentieth-century models.

alternatives to tap the procedural difficulties encoun-tered by majority parties.One method of capturing the increased incidence ofminority obstructionism is to use a dummy variable thatindicates whether a minority right was created in theprevious Congress. By extending new rights to theminority, the majority party potentially makes itselfvulnerable to nettlesome activity by the minority. Test-ing for the effects of changes in party strength difference,workload, party control of the chamber, and newlycreated minority rights, the first model in Table 4suggests moderate support for the partisan preferencehypotheses. The coefficient for a newly created minorityright is statistically significant and in the predicted(positive) direction. The coefficients for the difference inparty strength and workload variables are also significantin the predicted (positive) direction. As expected, thecoefficient for the change in partycontrol variable is not.The model, however, provides only a 25% reduction inerror over the modal category.As noted, however, changes in the discharge processand floor voting rules opened the majority party toperiodic procedural threats from the minority party.Thesecond model in Table 4 begins to test for the effects ofthese rules changes by adding a variable to tap thenumber of recorded votes cast in the previous Congress.Nearly doubling the model's reduction in error, theaddition of the variable lends further support for thepartisan preference and workload hypotheses. Majorityparties are more likely to suppress minority rights whentheir perceived capacity and need for change increasesand when legislative activity is increasing as well. Theexpectation of retaining control of the House, in con-trast, does not have a measurable effect on the likelihoodof suppression.In the third model in Table 4, I add a variable to tapthe introduction and use of the discharge rule-a rulechange that provides minority members a chance toshape the legislative agenda. Although the dischargevariable does not reach statistical significance, its intro-

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TABLE 5. Conditions Fostering Creation of Minority Rights, 1789-1990Mean

Creation NoncreationCongresses CongressesHypothesis Variable (n = 7) (n = 89) DifferencePartisan capacity Difference in majorityand

minority party strength 6.72 12.39 5.67*Minorityparty strength 31.47 24.47 7.00***Workload Workload factor score .05 -.03 .08Party competition Change in party controlin following Congress .43 .23 .20

*p < .05.***p< .001.

PATTERNS OF CREATION IN THE HOUSEThe politics of suppression suggests that immediatepartisan goals have historically motivated majority par-ties to alter the distribution of minority rights. Thepolitics of creation leads to a similar conclusion. Becausethe distribution of cases makes inappropriate a multiva-riate test of the influence of partisan and nonpartisanfactors on creation, I use bivariate tests to study thecreation pattern.25The size of the majority party's advantage in strengthover the minority is statistically smaller in Congresseswhen rights are created than in Congresses with no newminority rights (Table 5). Thus, as suggested in thepartisan capacity hypothesis, the weaker the majorityparty relative to the minority, the more likely a rightwillbe created. Indeed, minority parties gaining new rightsare statistically stronger than minority parties that fail toprocure new rights. Under these conditions, a cross-party coalition in favor of extending minority rights ismost likely to form. With such a strong minority, only afew majority defectors are necessary to form a winningcoalition in favor of reallocating parliamentaryrights. Incontrast, there is no evidence that declining workload oranticipation of minority status leads majority parties toextend minority rights.The requirement of a cross-partycoalition to procurenew rights is consistent with historical circumstancesunder which rights have been created. The extension ofthe 1970s, there is no evidence that reforms directly "fed" on eachother. Majority party Democrats in those years successfully sought todeal with a host of both recurring and new sources of minorityobstructionism. A successful rule change in any given Congress did notmake it more or less likely that a subsequent majority would alsosuppress rights.25Minority rights were created once in the first period, and in only 7%of the second-period Congresses. Given such a distribution of cases, Iconsider the 1789-1990 span as a single period. I drop from theanalysis Congresses with rights created and suppressed simultaneously(1847 and 1880), because I would not expect similar conditions toprevail when rights are created and when a compromise produces bothcreation and suppression in a single procedural package. I have alsodropped the 1822 case, as it is a clear outlier. In short, the minorityright created in 1822 (requiring a two-thirds vote to suspend the rules)was an inadvertent byproduct of the majority party's attempt tosuppress minority rights. Although the rule today protects minorities,there was no such intent when it was adopted in 1822-precisely theopposite. The politics of the 1822 rule change are treated in detail inBinder 1995.

new minority rights has historically occurred when afaction of the majority party agrees with members of astrong minority party that reinforcing minority rightswould serve both coalitions' interests. Cross-party coali-tions of Progressive "insurgent" Republicans and minor-ity party Democrats in 1910, 1924, and 1931 were drivingforces behind the extension of new minority rights. Forexample, a coalition of Progressive Republicans andminority Democrats in 1924 forced the Republicanleadership to alter the discharge rule in its favor, earningthe right for 150 members to call up a discharge motionon the floor and defeating an effort to increase therequired number to 218 (Hasbrouck 1927). In the 1970sas well, cross-party coalitions were responsible for pro-curing new minority rights. For example, Democratsoffered increases in minority staff and a ban on proxyvoting to entice Republican support for broader institu-tional reforms, many opposed by senior majority partyDemocrats (Davidson and Oleszek 1977).

DISCUSSIONAND CONCLUSIONSContraryto conventional themes about the developmentof the House, the emergence of a partisan, majoritarianinstitution was not inevitable. Far from being the ines-capable consequence of secular trends, restrictive pro-cedural choices in the House appear to reflect short-term partisan goals of the majority party, rather thanlonger-term partisan considerations or broader collec-tive concerns about increasing efficiency of the chamber.When increased partisan capacity and need for proce-dural change coincide, majority parties have been mostsuccessful in limiting minority rights and moving theHouse toward a more partisan and majoritarian cham-ber. But when minority parties strengthen and attractthe support of a majority faction, the process stalls andminority rights are reinforced. There is, in other words,a partisan basis to procedural choice in the House.Across the history of the House, crucial proceduralchoices have been shaped not by members' collectiveconcerns about the institutionbut by narrow calculationsabout partisan advantage.To be sure, students of congressional developmentrecognize that rules battles have at times been foughtalong a partisan dimension. In fact, most studies of

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AllocatingParliamentary ights March 1996congressional change highlight the role of Speaker Reedin silencing minority party obstructionism in 1890 (Dav-idson and Oleszek 1977; Follett 1902; Galloway 1976).Reed's innovations are generally cited as a significantturning point in House procedure, because the majorityparty claimed the right to strictly limit the proceduralrole of the minority in making policy. By taking alonger-term perspective, however, this study suggeststhat Reed's actions were but part of a more gradualcourse of institutional change. Indeed, rules changes inthe 1890s both followed and preceded a century ofstrategic partisan calculations by the majority partyabout favored policy outcomes and the rules necessaryto achieve them.Such an emphasis on the evolution of minority rights,rather than simply on major institutional reforms such asReed's rules, arguably provides a unique theoreticalroute to explaining institutional change. As suggested byAldrich, "the dynamic path, that is to say, the politicalhistory, is the central object of our theoretical inquiry"(1994, 223). What the historical path of House minorityrights suggests is that both partisan preferences andinherited rules shape future institutional choices. Theinfluence of members' goals on institutional choice isseen clearly in the relationship of party strength andchange in minority rights. As the electoral strength ofthe major parties shifts over time, so, too, does thedistribution of parliamentary rights: stronger majorityparties succeed in limiting minority rights, and strongerminority parties attract majority party defectors to rein-force minority rights.Still, the evolution of minority rights suggests thatmembers' goals are themselves both shaped and con-strained by the inherited institutional context. First,members' procedural choices depend in large part onexisting rules. When minority parties devise new ways ofobstructing the majority,the preferences of the majorityparty about desired institutional arrangements shift aswell. If inherited rules did not affect procedural choice,then change in partisan capacity alone would account formost of the variation in minority rights-which it doesnot.26 Instead, minority exploitation of inherited ruleshas a substantial impact on change in minority rights, asmajority parties realize a partisan need for changing therules of the game.Second, and relatedly, members' procedural choicesdepend on past procedural choices. Once majorityrule isfirmly entrenched at the end of the nineteenth century,there should be little reason for subsequent majorityparties newly to suppress minority rights. But whenminority parties procure and then exploit parliamentaryrights after 1900, majority parties once again perceivethat their party goals are threatened, and they proceedto adjust the procedural score accordingly. Changes inthe political landscape, in conclusion, often make past26 The impact of inherited rules on procedural choice is equallydramatic in the case of the Senate. Early procedural decisions thatinadvertently created the filibuster in 1806 had lasting proceduralconsequences: partisan majorities seeking to alter Senate rules in theirfavor were unable to overcome procedural hurdles inherited from thepast. (On the politics of Senate reform, see Binder 1995b and Smith1989.)

18

decisions about procedural arrangements untenable (Al-drich 1995). As goal-seeking actors, politicians will con-tinue to try to alter institutional arrangements in re-sponse to a shifting historical context.

APPENDIXNo single concept accurately captures the nature of congressionalminority rights. At one end of a spectrum are party-based or partisanminority rights-procedural privileges allocated narrowly and explic-itly to the minority party (e.g., the right of the minority party to callwitnesses at committee hearings). At the other end are nonparty orpolitical minority rights-rules writ broadly enough to guaranteeprocedural protection to any individual or minority dissenting from themajority party or its leadership (e.g., guaranteeing debate time foropponents of a conference report).To develop a data set of the full range of minority rights, I start witha definition of minority rights and two criteria for determining what"counts" as such a right. I define a minority right as a proceduraladvantage protected from arbitrary change that enables the minorityparty to amend, debate, or obstruct the majority's agenda. Rulesmeeting either or both of the following criteria are counted as minorityrights:1. Minority identification standard. Rules advocated by the minoritypartyto provide procedural advantages for members of the minorityparty qualify as minority rights.Under the identification standard, any rule considered by the minoritypartyto be a minority right is counted as such, allowing me to count asminority rights rules that do not explicitly mention the minority partyand that might therefore also benefit a faction of the majority party.The second criterion concerns the effects of chamber rules, rather thansimply intent:2. Effects standard. Rules that have the effect of helping the minoritypartyto challenge the majority qualify as minority rights, regardlessof the original purpose or supporting coalition of the rule.Under the effects standard, a rule qualifies as a minority right if overtime the minority party takes advantage of the rule and uses it tochallenge or influence majority control of the agenda. The effectsstandard is essential for identifying minority rights because rules oftendevelop uses contrary to their original purpose. In using these twocriteria, I err on the side of liberally selecting rules that protectminority rights.With these guidelines, I then use several sources to identify allminority rights in House history, including the House rules manual(U.S. Congress 1993b), histories of the House (Alexander 1916;Galloway 1976; Hasbrouck 1927; McConachie 1898), primaryaccountsof rules changes in the Annals of Congress, the Congressional Globe,and the Congressional Record, secondary accounts of rules debatessuch as those appearing in Congressional Quarterly Almanac, anddiaries and biographies of members such as James Garfield (1981),Thomas Reed (Robinson 1930), and Champ Clark (1920). Afteridentifying the universe of minority rights, I determine from thesesources the dates of their creation or suppression by a formal rulechange in the House for the period 1789-1990:

Congress(Year) Rule Change CreatingMinorityRights17th (1822) 2/3 vote required to suspend the rules26th (1840) Previous question motion altered to guarantee voteson pending amendments30th (1847) Guaranteed 5 minutes to debate amendments46th (1880) Required debate on suspensions and previousquestion60th (1909) Calendar Wednesday created61st (1909) 2/3 vote to suspend Calendar Wednesday; motion-to-recommit secured for the minority61st (1910) Discharge petition created65th (1917) Party committee slates not divisible68th (1924) Discharge ignatures educed o 150;Rules'spocketveto banned;2/3 to waive ayoverrules


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Congress(Year) Rule Change CreatingMinorityRights72d (1931) Discharge signatures reduced to 14590th (1967) Equal majority/minority representation on ethicscommittee91st (1970) 1970 legislative reorganization: minority partyguaranteed right to call witnesses; minority partycommittee statutory staff increased; guarantee of1/3 investigatory staff funds; protect minorityreports; guaranteed debate time for opposition onamendments, motion to recommit, and conferencereports; 7-day notice for committee hearings93d (1974) 1974 legislative reorganization: minority partyguaranteed 1/3 committee statutory staff andinvestigatory staff funds; proxy voting banned

Rule Change SuppressingMinorityRights12th (1811) Adoption of the previous question (PQ) motionbrings the House to an immediate vote on thepending question without debate17th (1822) Motion to postpone indefinitely given leastprecedence; only one motion to postpone(indefinitely) per day per member25th (1837) Only one call of the House after PQ called for;questions of order stemming from PQ motion to bedecided without debate27th (1841) One-hour limit per member for floor debate; majorityvote can discharge bill with pending amendmentsfrom Committee of the Whole (COW) at any time30th (1847) Suspensions restricted to Mondays and session's end36th (1860) Limits on quorum calls after PQ ordered; alter effectof PQ on motions to postpone and amendments;alter effect of negative outcome of PQ motion40th (1868) One dilatory motion only pending a vote on motionto suspend the rules (dropped in next Congress)43d (1874) Motions to suspend must be seconded by a majority(dropped in next Congress)43d (1875) Dilatory motions limited to one motion to adjournand one motion to set a date/time of adjournment(dropped in next Congress)46th (1880) Suspensions restricted to 1st and 3d Mondays andsession's end; seconding of suspensions motionsreinstated47th (1882) Dilatory motions limited to one motion to adjournbefore or after PQ ordered on election cases47th (1883) Required votes to suspend the rules reduced from 2/3to simple majority for specified bills51st (1890) Reed's rules: disappearing quorum prohibited (allmembers present counted in a quorum); dilatorymotions not to be recognized; quorum size inCOW reduced from House majority to 100(dropped in 52d Congress)53d (1894) Reed's rules readopted62d (1911) Discharge petition rule tightened: prohibited before15 days after referral;bills read by title, twomotions on calendar per member62d (1912) Discharge Calendar delayed in order of business69th (1925) Discharge petition rule tightened: 218 signaturesrequired; majority of membership vote required topass and second a motion to discharge; restrictedto once a month in the order of business74th (1935) Discharge petition signatures raised to 21889th (1965) Demanding engrossed bills prohibited91st (1970) Reading of Journal dispensed with, unless ordered bya majority92d (1971) Minority party guarantee of 1/3 funds for committeeinvestigatory staff eliminated93d (1973) Number of suspension days increased93d (1974) Quorum calls prohibited: once quorum established,

until additional business transacted, and othersituations; hairmay end call once quorumreached; lustervotingon suspensions

Congress(Year) Rule Change SuppressingMinorityRights94th (1975) Proxy voting ban in committee eliminated; minorityparty guarantee of 1/3 funds for committeeinvestigatory staff eliminated94th (1976) Rules Committee can report resolution waiving two-hour availability of conference reports95th (1977) Increase number of suspension days; quorum callsprohibited during debate, permitted only when votepending; committee markup quorums reduced to1/3 of the committee96th (1979) Increase threshold for demanding a recorded vote;eliminate seconding of suspensions; no quorumnecessary prior to approving Journal; one vote onlyon approving the Journal.98th (1983) Motion to rise must be defeated to offer limitationamendment

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