Critical Elections and Congressional Policy Making

As early as 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville found the House of Representatives 'remarkable for its vulgarity and its poverty of talent'. In 1925, House Speaker Nicholas Longworth said, 'we [the House] were unpopular when Lincoln was a Congressman. We were unpopular even when John Quincy Adams was a Congressman. We were unpopular even when Henry Clay was a Congressman. We have always been unpopular'. One of the major causes of the House's unpopularity throughout the years has been its inability to legislate broad public policies. Yet for all the criticism directed at the House, we know that at certain critical points it has legislated major, long-lasting public policy changes. This book examines the House during three such periods of policy innovations: the Civil War, the 1890's, and the New Deal. How and under what conditions does the House - noted for obstructionism - create majorities capable of governing? The author asserts that critical elections create conditions in the House that enable the majority party to legislate significant policy changes. House elections are normally determined by local factors, but certain elections are dominated by national, cross-cutting issues. The results of these critical elections vary from a change in the majority party to the replacement of both the majority and minority by new parties. The Civil War realignment replaced the Whigs with a new party - the Republicans. In the 1890's realignment the Democratic Party adopted the policy positions of a third party - the Populists. The New Deal realignment saw the Democrats replace the Republicans as the majority power. For each of these critical periods the author uses statistical analysis to examine the way electoral results affected the composition of the congressional parties, the structure of committees, the strength of the party system, and policy decisions. In the final chapter, the author speculates on conditions for policy change outside critical election periods.