Procedural Choice and the House Committee on Rules

Abstract

The Rules Committee has long played a key role in the American legislative process through its ability to craft special amendment rules in the U.S. House. This article develops and tests a formal model of policy-making in Congress, highlighting the central role of the Rules Committee. This model generates simple conditions under which restrictive and nonrestrictive procedures will be used. It also provides a new view of restrictive procedures, one which sees restrictive amendment rules as devices for securing noncentrist policy outcomes on the Floor of the House. Evidence based on rule assignments in the Ninety-fourth through Ninety-eighth Congresses supports the claim that the preferences of the Rules Committee should be incorporated in any attempt to understand the pattern of restrictive rules in the House.