¹ Fenno, Richard F. Jr., “Congressional Committees: A Comparative View,” a paper presented at the 66th Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Los Angeles, September 8–11, 1970 Google Scholar; Goodwin, George Jr., The Little Legislatures (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1970)Google Scholar.

² Fenno, Richard F. Jr., The Power of the Purse: Appropriations Politics in Congress (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1966)Google Scholar; Manley, John, The Politics of Finance: The House Committee on Ways and Means (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1970)Google Scholar.

³ The Congressman: His Work as He Sees It (New York: Doubleday and Co., 1963), p. 207 Google Scholar.

⁴ The classic treatment of the process is Masters, Nicholas A., “Committee Assignments in the House of Representatives,” American Political Science Review, 55 (June, 1961), 345–357 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Assignments are discussed at length in Clapp, , The Congressman, pp. 207–240 Google Scholar, and Goodwin, , The Little Legislatures, pp. 64–79 Google Scholar. Some recent studies include Gawthrop, Louis C., “Changing Membership Patterns in House Committees,” American Political Science Review, 60 (June, 1966), 366–373 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bullock, Charles and Sprague, John, “A Research Note on the Committee Reassignments of Southern Democratic Congressmen,” Journal of Politics, 31 (May, 1969), 493–512 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bullock, Charles, “Correlates of Committee Transfers in the United States House of Representatives,” a paper delivered at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, April 29-May 1, 1971 Google Scholar; Bullock, Charles, “The Influence of State Party Delegations on House Committee Assignments,” Midwest Journal of Political Science, 15 (August, 1971), 525–546 Google Scholar; and Bullock, Charles, “Freshman Committee Assignments and Re-election in the United States House of Representatives,” American Political Science Review, 66 (September, 1972), 996–1007 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵ In addition to our own data, this description relies heavily on Masters, “Committee Assignments,” and on Clapp, The Congressman, Chapter 5.

⁶ The Democratic delegation on Ways and Means is made up almost entirely of members drawn from the South and Border States and from the large industrial states. They are elected to membership by a vote of the full Democratic caucus. During the period covered by this study the committee was dominated by the Southern and Border State group, who were greatly over-represented compared to their proportion of the Democratic delegation in the House. In the 86th-88th Congresses, they had 8 members out of the total of 15, and in the 90th Congress they had 7 of 15. For a discussion of assignments to Ways and Means, see Manley, , Politics of Finance, pp. 22–38 Google Scholar.

⁷ Zone assignments in the 86th Congress are listed in Masters, , “Committee Assignments,” p. 347 Google Scholar. The number of states represented varies greatly, with Keogh of New York, for example, representing only his own state, while Metcalf of Montana represents seven small Western and Midwestern states.

⁸ While party ratios usually reflect the partisan division in the House, it is not unlikely that the decisions on both these questions are influenced by the leadership's knowledge of the requests of the members of their party.

⁹ It is important to note that the only way a requester can be nominated for a committee post is to be nominated by his zone representative.

¹⁰ Fenno, , “Congressional Committees,” p. 3 Google Scholar.

¹¹ Clapp, , The Congressman, p. 207 Google Scholar.

¹² It is clear that such debts are recognized, and that they are called in. One member, commenting on the influence another member had within the House, said, “Much of his power rests with the fact he is on Ways and Means. Since that Committee determines committee assignments, he is in a very important and strategic spot. He makes his deals with various groups as to which people he will support for certain spots. Naturally when the time comes that he wants something, he can make a request and people reciprocate.” Quoted in Clapp, , The Congressman, pp. 29–30 Google Scholar.

¹³ Manley, , Politics of Finance, p. 24 Google Scholar.

¹⁴ See Bullock, “The Influence of State Party Delegations.”

¹⁵ Most of the individual committee studies (e.g., Fenno, Manley) also draw on interviews with committee members to generalize about what led them to seek assignment to the committee and why they were successful.

¹⁶ The standing committees of the House are divided into three classes: exclusive, semi-exclusive, and non-exclusive, and there are rules which govern assignments to each class. Members of exclusive committees may serve on no other committee. Members of semi-exclusive committees may be given a second assignment only on a nonexclusive committee; and members of nonexclusive committees may be given second assignments on any semi- or nonexclusive committee. During the period covered by this study the committees in these classes were: exclusive: Appropriations, Rules, and Ways and Means; semi-exclusive: Agriculture, Armed Services, Banking and Currency, Education and Labor, Foreign Affairs, Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Judiciary, Public Works, and Science and Astronautics; nonexclusive: District of Columbia, Government Operations, House Administration, Interior and Insular Affairs, Merchant Marine and Fisheries, Un-American Activities, and Veterans Affairs. In addition, Post Office and Civil Service was changed from semi-exclusive to non-exclusive status at the beginning of the 88th Congress. Finally, the twenty-first standing committee, Standards of Official Conduct (established in 1967) seems to occupy a special status since it is a third assignment for a number of members.

¹⁷ We do, however, include the requests of two non-freshmen who were first elected in special elections near the end of a Congress. They were not assigned to any committees then, and thus they are in the same position as freshmen.

¹⁸ The reader will note that only 18 committees are listed in Table 1. Ways and Means is excluded here, and throughout the rest of the analysis, because its vacancies are filled by the caucus. Rules and Standards of Official Conduct are excluded because they were never requested, by either freshmen or nonfreshmen. In regard to Rules, this absence of requests probably reflects the special importance this committee has to the leadership, since almost never is a vacancy on Rules filled by a member not first sponsored by the leadership. See Clapp, , The Congressman, p. 218 Google Scholar; and Manley, , Politics of Finance, p. 77 Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Thus a problem with using requests or appointments as a measure of committee desirability results from anticipated reactions. A freshman will probably refrain from requesting the committee he most wants if he believes there is no chance of getting it. Table 1 seems to support this view in regard to requests for Appropriations, which (along with the other two exclusive committees) is generally recognized to be the most sought-after committee. It is, however, also recognized that freshmen have little chance to be appointed. (Indeed, in the four Congresses analyzed here, no freshman was appointed.) There does not, however, seem to be any evidence of anticipated reaction in regard to requests for other committees.

²⁰ Differences among districts on a regional basis are well known, hence the selection of that variable. Regions are defined as follows: Northeast: Conn., Del., Me., Mass, N.H., N.J., N.Y., Penn., R.I., Vt.; Border: Kent., Md., Mo., Okla., W.Va.; South: Ala., Ark., Fla., Ga., La., Miss., N.C., S.C., Tenn., Tex., Va.; Midwest: Ill., Ind., Ia., Kan., Mich., Minn., Neb., N.D., Ohio, S.D., Wisc.; West: Alaska, Ariz., Cal., Colo., Haw., Ida., Mont., Nev., N.M., Ore., Utah, Wash., Wyo.

Population per square mile was selected to tap the relatively urban or rural nature of districts. While percentage urban would have been a preferable measure in this regard, such data were available on a district basis only for the 88th and 90th Congress. To operationalize this variable the districts were divided into three categories: sparse (less than 100 persons per sq. mi.), medium (100–999 persons per sq. mi.), and concentrated (1,000 or more persons per sq. mi.). Population data were obtained from Congressional District Data Book: Districts of the 87th Congress (for the 86th and 87th Congresses) and from Congressional District Data Book: Districts of the 88th Congress and its supplements (for the 88th and 90th Congresses). Both books and the supplements are published by the Bureau of the Census.

²¹ The excluded categories and the number of members in each were: East, sparse (3); Border, sparse (4); Border, medium (5); West, medium (3); Border, concentrated (0); South, concentrated (0); Midwest, concentrated (4).

²² Quoted in Fenno, , “Congressional Committees,” p. 6 Google Scholar.

²³ These committees were selected because of the availability of constituency data which seemed reasonably related to representatives' probable interest in the committee. We borrowed the terms “interested” and “indifferent,” and the basic ideas on measuring interest, from Charles Bullock (see “Correlates of Committee Transfers,” pp. 22–23), although our specific measures are somewhat different. Bullock, in turn, adopted the terms from Mayhew, David R., Party Loyalty Among Congressmen (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

Data on constituency characteristics were obtained from the Congressional District Data Book: Districts of the 88th Congress and its supplements. In this source data were available on freshmen representatives in the 86th and 87th Congress only if they came from states which were not redistricted after the 1960 census. Therefore the number of members considered in Table 3 is 81 instead of 108.

For each committee a constituency measure was selected, and each representative's district was ranked as either above or below the national average on that measure. If the district was above the national average, the congressman was classed as an interested; if the district was below the national average, the congressman was classed as an indifferent. The measures of the committees are as follows (national averages are in parentheses); Banking and Currency and Education and Labor, percentage of population residing in urban areas (69.9 per cent); Interior and Insular Affairs, land area of district (8,159 sq. mi.); Armed Services, percentage of the total labor force who are members of the armed forces (2.5 per cent); and Agriculture, percentage of the employed civilian labor force employed in agriculture (6.6 per cent).

²⁴ The proportion of Armed Services requests made by interesteds is by far the lowest. This is probably because interest in this committee is determined by other things besides a relatively large number of servicemen in a district (e.g., large defense plants or a hope of attracting defense bases or plants to a district in the future).

²⁵ We restrict the following discussion to freshmen because the argument about a nonfreshman's ability to be more specific in his requests applies as well here as it did above.

²⁶ Here we consider opportunities to depend upon certain objective conditions, such as number of vacancies for a given committee (supply), number of requests (demand), and service restrictions regarding dual requests (formal rules), and upon informal norms which may guide the allocation of committee vacancies, such as “same-state” norms for appointment.

²⁷ See Bullock, “The Influence of State Party Delegations,” and Clapp, , The Congressman, pp. 220, 238 Google Scholar.

²⁸ Clapp, , The Congressman, pp. 226–227 Google Scholar.

²⁹ Quoted in Clapp, , The Congressman, p. 226 Google Scholar. We should note here that the data in Tables 6 and 7 indicate only overall success and not success in those instances where the requests of freshmen and nonfreshmen are in direct competition. Masters states that “when two or more members stake a claim to the same assignment, on the ground that it is essential to their electoral success, both party committees usually, if not invariably, will give preference to the member with longer service” ( Masters, , “Committee Assignments,” p. 354 Google Scholar). We do not know what arguments were made about electoral success, but in our data 50 nonfreshmen were in competition with one or more freshmen for assignments to semi- or nonexclusive committees which had insufficient vacancies to satisfy all requests. Of these 50 members, 23 were passed over in favor of freshmen. This does not include instances where the passed-over member received another, more preferred, assignment.

³⁰ We restrict our attention here to freshmen not only because of the effects of seniority on both request behavior and success, but also because the situation is much more complex in regard to nonfreshmen. Minimally we would have to control for whether a representative is already a member of a committee for which he would be classified as an interested. Further, we would probably want to control for whether the requests made are for transfers or dual service assignments. Also we would want to exclude prestige committee requests. These controls would make the Ns so small and would break them into so many categories that a meaningful test would be impossible.

³¹ In addition to our discussion of member goals above, see Masters, , “Committee Assignments,” pp. 354–355 Google Scholar, and Clapp, , The Congressman, pp. 228–230 Google Scholar.

³² See Fenno, , “Congressional Committees,” pp. 33–34 Google Scholar, and Manley, , Politics of Finance, pp. 29–32 Google Scholar.

³³ Using a different definition of safe seats, Wolfinger and Hollinger found that while southerners held only 38 per cent of the Democratic seats in the 88th Congress, they held 63 per cent of the safe seats. See Wolfinger, Raymond E. and Hollinger, Joan H., “Safe Seats, Seniority, and Power in Congress,” in New Perspectives on the House of Representatives, ed. Peabody, Robert L. and Polsby, Nelson W., 2nd ed. (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1969), pp. 60–61 Google Scholar.

³⁴ This finding is all the more striking in light of the southern Democrats' dominance of the Committee on Committees during this period (see footnote 6). It is, admittedly, dangerous to treat a variable like region as a surrogate for, in this case, expected policy behavior. Support for party policies clearly varies within regions. Moreover, other informal, nonpolicy, behavioral norms are likely to cloud the relationship between region and appointment success. A clear indication of this intra-regional variation is the rather startling differential in success between members from the South and those from outside the South when we control for the state of their zone representative. As the data in Table A show, the southern member who is from the same state as his zone representative is much more likely to secure a requested assignment than are his southern colleagues who are not from the same state as their zone representatives. Whereas 60 per cent of the freshmen who are not from the same state as their zone representative fail to receive any committee request, only 18 per cent of those from the zone representative's state delegation are in the same unenviable position. The differential is somewhat smaller for nonfreshmen (75 per cent versus 50 per cent receive no request), but the pattern is the same. For members from outside the South, however, this differential does not appear. There is virtually no difference between the success of members who are from the same state as their zone representative and that of members who are not.

³⁵ We exclude the two nonfreshmen elected in special elections near the close of the preceding Congress, for whom there was no party support score data. For each Congress, a member's party support score is tabulated from his voting behavior in the previous Congress. Party support data is found in the appropriate volumes of the Congressional Quarterly Almanac: vol. XIV (1958), pp. 124–125 Google Scholar; vol. XVI (1960), pp. 140–141; vol. XVIII (1962), pp. 764–765; vol. XXII (1966), pp. 1030–1031.