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WINNING IN HOUSE‐SENATE CONFERENCES: THE “REVISED THEORY” AND THE PROBLEM OF COUNTERTRENDING CONFERENCES
Author(s) -
Carter John J.,
Baker John R.
Publication year - 1987
Publication title -
southeastern political review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1747-1346
pISSN - 0730-2177
DOI - 10.1111/j.1747-1346.1987.tb00239.x
Subject(s) - legislation , compromise , legislature , political science , dominance (genetics) , incentive , law , house of representatives , public administration , economics , chemistry , biochemistry , gene , microeconomics
This study employs data on chamber dominance of legislative conferences involving two House‐Senate committee pairs to study the phenomenon of first acting chamber victories. Previous research has concluded that the second acting chamber tends to win in conference, because the committee of the first acting chamber dominates the pre‐conference shaping of the legislation, leaving its conferees a powerful incentive to compromise differences with the conferees of the second acting chamber in order to ensure that a conference version of the legislation in question can be agreed on. However, previous research has also shown that the first acting chamber inexplicably wins 25 percent of all conferences for which a winner can be determined. This study finds that the critical common factor in these countertrending conferences was the successful attachment of non‐committee amendments on the floor of the second acting chamber. Such successful floor amendments seem to substantially mitigate the strategic advantage of the second acting chamber in conference.