Are Congressional Black Caucus members more reliable? Loyalty screening and committee assignments of newly elected legislators

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, The, April, 2007 by Franklin G. Mixon, Jr., Amanda C. Pagels

The Coker-Crain (1994) study forms the foundation for the cartel model built later by Mixon and Ressler (2001). Mixon and Ressler examine ADA voting ratings for Democratic members of the 104th Congress and find that the ADA mean (standard deviation) for non-CBC Democrats is 69.16 (24.08), while those for the Democratic leaders and CBC members are 85.83 (6.29) and 90.29 (8.87), respectively. They point out that Democratic leaders and CBC members vote in a similar fashion statistically, while both groups statistically vote more liberally than do non-CBC Democrats. (2)

Next, using a dummy variable to denote the seven most important standing House committees (out of the 14 standing committees) based on the Coker-Crain loyalty measures, Mixon and Ressler (2001) provide regression estimates that suggest that CBC members in the 105th Congress represent a statistically greater percentage of the Democratic portion of "important" House committees than they do for "unimportant" House committees. (3) These results support the notion that Democratic leaders reward those individual legislators who are coherent and consistent in their loyalty (as shown through their voting patterns). Additionally, by examining committee representation for an equal-size group of white representatives with the same voting characteristics as the CBC members, Mixon and Ressler (2001) are able to test the notion that the explicit cartel organization that the CBC represents is the key to CBC success in committee placement. The regression estimates suggest that this group of white Democrats--the artificial "CWC"--fares statistically worse than CBC members, thus providing support for a "cartel effect" in House committee placement.

The present study examines the committee placement of newly elected CBC and non-CBC Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives. These legislative newcomers do not have a federal legislative voting history and, therefore, present screening difficulties for the Democratic leaders. This problem fits neatly into the voter-shopping construct described by Crain and Goff (1988), who make use of both the theory of information (Stigler 1961) and the theory of product advertising (Nelson 1970, 1974). Within this body of literature, Nelson defines search goods as goods for which consumer judgments about product quality can be made at low cost prior to purchase; experience goods, on the other hand, are those for which consumer judgments about product quality cannot be made at low cost prior to purchase. Crain and Goff (1988) state that one point of view holds that legislative services are like search goods because candidates' records are available to voters for evaluation and verification at low cost. (4) However, it may be difficult and expensive for some voters to draw inferences about the future behavior of candidates, even with this information. This may mean that legislative services should be defined as experience goods (Crain and Goff 1988: 11). Crain and Goff correctly characterize attempts at classification using this goods dichotomy by stating: