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The Transformation Of Congressional Policy Making In A Partisan Era, Patrick Rickert

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the transformation of Congressional politics away from traditional practices and the consequences of those changes. In the House of Representatives, I consider this with respect to the party and chamber rule changes introduced by the new Republican majority after the 1994 election, while in the Senate I use the lens of paired voting to evaluate how the Senate has evolved. The first chapter discusses the literature on party government and theorizes how parties have used committees to achieve their goals. Chapters 2 and 3 center how Speaker Newt Gingrich used rule changes to alter the relationship between …