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Book Reviews / 81 1
REFERENCES
CarnegieEndowmentforInternationalPeaceandInstituteforInternationalEconomics (1992), Memorandumto the President-Elect:HarnessingProcess to Purpose(Wash-
ington,DC:Carnegieand Institutefor InternationalEconomics).
Duffy, Michael and Dan Goodgame (1992), Marching in Place: The Status Quo Presidency of GeorgeBush (New York: Simon & Schuster).
Hargrove,ErwinC. and MichaelNelson (1984),Presidents,Politics,and Policy(New
York:Knopf).
Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr. (1965), A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White
House(Boston:HoughtonMifflin).
Sorensen,TheodoreC. (1965),Kennedy(New York:Harper& Row).
Williams, Walter (1990), MismanagingAmerica:TheRise of theAnti-AnalyticPresidency
(Lawrence,KS: UniversityPressof Kansas).
Woodward,Bob (1991),TheCommanders
(New York:Simon & Schuster).
MichaelFitts
Legislative Leviathan: Party Government in the White House, by Gary W. Cox
and Mathew D. McCubbins.Berkeley, CA:University of CaliforniaPress, 1993,
339 pp. Price: $45.00 cloth, $14.00 paper.
The traditional wisdom of American political science has always been that
parties in Europe are stronger than those in the United States. Indeed, beginning in the 1970s, party strength in the United States seemed to be getting
even weaker. Party identification in the public-the psychological attachment of the public to a political party-was becoming more attenuated. And
the organizational strength of parties, especially in Congress, appeared to be
declining. This undermined the ability of party leaders to control members
and, it was thought, reduced the statistical correspondence between party
membership and legislative voting behavior.
Why should we be concerned, especially in a world where "party politics"
is often considered a pejorative term? The consequences for public policy of
weak parties have been much debated. Despite their faults, strong political
parties are said to be an effective mechanism for overcoming the collective
action problems that undermine political organization. To the extent this is
true, their decline, some have argued, has intensified the comparative
strength and influence of better organized constituencies. Subcommittees of
Congress enjoying autonomous control over selected subject matter areas
are captured by those groups most interested in their policies and most
unrepresentative of the public at large. The decline of parties and the decentralization of the decisionmaking in Congress may also make the government
less systemically accountable, that is, less able to respond quickly and appropriately to general public sentiment.
Cox and McCubbinstake issue with much of the old learning on the decline
of parties, at least with respect to the internal operations of Congress. The
authors start by outlining a simple model of why, assuming a strong level
of party identification in the public, it might be in the rational interest of
individual members of Congress to organize a disciplining party mechanism.
They then survey the existing evidence and conclude that the party caucus
has played an important role in controlling the voting decisions of individual
812 / BookReviews
members and overseeing the operations of the relevant subcommittees. The
thesis is bold and provocative. Nevertheless, as I discuss below, it should not
be taken as indicating that party strength and accountability are "strong"
in the United States.
The true importance of this book can be appreciated only against the
backdrop of the received wisdom, which held for many years that political
parties in the United States were weak and getting weaker. Voter surveys
showed a decline of party identification within the public, with more people
either self-identifying themselves as independents or identifying with a particular party only weakly. The reasons for these changes were unclear, but
the increased influence of the media, education of the electorate, and greater
campaign resources available to individual candidates were thought to improve the ability of individual candidates to distinguish themselves from the
party and run on their own reputation. At the same time, the organizational
strength of parties in Congresswas said to have declined. With the diminution
of the powers of the speaker and the party caucus, subcommittees of Congress
seemed to have greater control over their individual areas. This led, it was
argued, to a decentralized system of decisionmaking, dubbed "universalism,"
where each subunit of Congress, rather than the institutional leadership or
the party, controlled substantive decisionmaking. In its most extreme forms,
universalism resulted in substantial budgeting inefficiencies; individual
members on each committee considered only the benefits reaped by their
constituents from the adoption of a program, ignoring the costs to the constituents of other representatives-that is, the public at large.
Needless to say, there have always been questions raised about the internal
logic of this description, as well as its application to legislative areas not
traditionally seen as classic pork barrel. The universalism model offers a
pessimistic story of highly perverse legislative action resulting from rampant
strategic behavior. Yet Congressis a relatively contained unit, with the opportunity in some cases for sustained oversight and interaction between members, especially when legislation is brought to the floor. If the situation were
to get out of hand, as the most extreme forms of universalism would predict,
wouldn't there be an incentive for individual members to establish mechanisms for overseeing and restraining their colleagues, whether in the form
of a rules committee, a budget committee, a party caucus, or presidential
intervention? And if universalism hadn't been constrained, wouldn't we expect to see a budget and legislature more out of control? Many committees
and subcommittees seemed to be acting "semiresponsibly" in developing
expertise and recommending legislation to the floor. Universalism was an
important explanation of legislative behavior, but, like any theory, it did not
seem to be capturing all that was happening.
These concerns were buttressed by evidence of higher levels of party voting
in the House in the 1980s. While there had been a decline in party identification in the public over the years, and in voting decisions of members of
Congress, it had not been as steep as some had suggested.' Clearly parties
mattered-maybe not as much as in GreatBritain, but more than the universalism model might suggest.
SOf course, these changes might be explained by exogenous factors, such as the ideological
polarization of the electorate during the Reagan years, not institutional control by a party elite.
Book Reviews / 8 13
While several scholars have touched on a number of these issues in recent
years, Cox and McCubbins bring all the pieces of the puzzle together in
the course of providing strong evidence that parties in Congress are more
important than has been suggested. The first part of their argument, which
sets the stage for their extended empirical survey of Congress, shows that
members of Congress have an incentive to establish a strong legislative party
and the ability to do it. A voluminous public choice literature, to which they
are responding, has delineated the difficulties of creating group organizations
like a party. In the first part of their book, Cox and McCubbins review more
recent work that indicates it is possible for individuals to organize communally, so long as they are small in number and repeat players. By analogy,
members of Congress would seem to have the ability to create a mechanism
like a party if it was in their individual political interest to do so.
Of course, this raises the separate question of why it would be in the
individualpolitical interest of members to restrain such behavior. If members
of Congress are not held individually accountable to the public for the overall
legislative product, or do not get credit individually for reform of that overall
product, why should they bother to create mechanisms for overcoming strategic behavior? They might be able to overcome such behavior within the
chamber, but they would receive no political advantage outside the chamber
for doing so.
There could be a variety of answers to this question-civic virtue, private
graft, or presidential intervention, to mention only a few. Cox and McCubbins
focus on parties; the party label, they point out, still means something. According to the most recent party identification surveys, the public still relies
on the party label in evaluating the performance of members of Congress.
There should be a political incentive, therefore, for members not to sully
their "brand name," which will have some effect on their individualreelection
prospects. To the extent they are held accountable for actions of the party
in the legislative body, then it will be in their individual and group interest
to create mechanisms within Congress that deliver the party goods.
To hard-core rational choice types, there may seem to be some sleight of
hand in this explanation; it assumes the existence of a strong party in the
mind of the public in explaining the existence of the party in Congress. A
strong party label, however, would seem equally difficult to explain. Why or
how have parties remained important in the public at large? What is the
connection between the party label and legislative performance, especially
in the case of minority parties? And shouldn't the decline in party identification in recent years predict a similar decline in party control in Congress as
the incentive for members of Congress to control universalistic excesses is
reduced? This regress in explanation of the causal chain is beyond the purview
of the Cox and McCubbinsbook, but suggests the complexity of any complete
rational choice explanation for what is going on here.
Having suggested why we should expect to see strong parties in Congress,
Cox and McCubbinsattempt to prove that they in fact exist. Since it is difficult
to come up with a direct measure of party strength, all the evidence presented
tests a different aspect of the party and universalistic theses. Cox and McCubbins show, for example, that the membership of many committees in Congress
is fairly representative of the chamber as a whole, not preference outliers,
as the universalistic model would predict. They also demonstrate that the
leadership has some influence over the placement of members on committees,
814 / BookReviews
and the removal of members from committees. Finally, they suggest ways in
which the party caucus has been able to control committees, and how the
legislative product has not been as unrepresentative as might be expected.
While no one piece of the empirical evidence is dispositive, taken together
Cox and McCubbinsdemonstrate persuasively that there is party control left
in Congress.Committees are not complete outliers; the party has influence, in
some cases important influence. Cox and McCubbinshave offered persuasive
evidence that the extreme variant of universalism does not explain systematically the legislative activities of members of Congress.For this reason alone,
it is an important book. The question is not whether parties matter, but how
much. Cox and McCubbins have helped transform the debate about party
behavior in Congress.
That having been said, I suspect the book will not resolve this more complicated question. As a threshold matter, there is a problem in specifying what
would constitute conclusive evidence of a strong party. There are a number
of possibilities. For example, a welfare economist might suggest that a strong
party can be identified and measured by its consequences. Since a strong
party should be able, from this vantage point, to minimize transaction costs
and constrain strategic behavior, it should maximize the legislative product.
Evaluating the product should measure the strength of the party. Unfortunately, in the absence of any specification of underlying legislative "preferences," it is difficult to determine what that ideal product would look like,
let alone how the current practice deviates from it. Economists have attempted
to construct such models, which have the advantage of asking the right question; their disadvantage is that they are probably not successful in answering
it.
In the absence of this direct evidence, we are left with the type of indirect
measures that Cox and McCubbinsuse, such as simultaneity in voting, turnover in membership, and the like. Unfortunately, these are also unlikely to
be dispositive. Simultaneity in voting may be a sign of similar values, not
party strength. And who can tell whether outliers are voting on important
or unimportant issues without a specification of underlying preferences? In
this sense, I suspect the Cox-McCubbinsbook will ignite a new round of
empirical work exploring the relative strength of parties in Congressin different contexts over time.
At the same time, the new debate over the decline of parties may be beneficial, especially in improving our formal understanding of the operation of
political parties. Few political scientists in the rational choice tradition have
outlined with precision exactly what a political party is, how it functions,
and how its strength can be measured. A party clearly serves as a coordination
device between members, but how it performs this role in the real world is
only vaguely understood, especially on a formal level. If parties were pervasively weak, this may have seemed an unimportant issue. An answer to these
more fundamental questions will be necessary, however, as we explore in
what ways parties may be getting stronger or weaker and to what extent
other substitute institutions have arisen for coordinating political behavior.
Parties control behavior in a variety of ways, some of which may have
strengthened, while others, I suspect, have declined, or been replaced by
other devices.
This formal understanding will also be helpful in exploring the normative
implications of political parties. As noted above, more empirically based
Book Reviews / 815
political scientists have assumed that parties benefit government performance through minimizing the influence of narrower constituencies and facilitating systemic political accountability. Yet the exact method by which this
process occurs has also remained vague, and challenged by legal academics
who perceive parties as sources of centralized tyrannical control. An exploration of their precise function may delineate where parties are likely to serve
each of these different functions.
Finally, the Cox and McCubbins thesis has some interesting implications
for legal academics more generally. In contrast to political scientists, who
view parties as the central focus of government performance, lawyers tend
to ignore parties. This is not only because parties lack formal legal significance; they are supposedly weak and getting weaker. If the power of parties is
not declining, however, there may be a need for lawyers and other academics
outside political science once again to explore their significance in the operation of the legislative and executive branches.
MICHAELFITTS is Professor of Law at the Universityof Pennsylvania.