Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Effects Of Australian Ballot Rules On Constituent Spending And Committee Assignments In The U.S. House, 1885-1901, Jill Wittrock, Stephen Nemeth, Howard Sanborn, Brian Disarro, Peverill Squire

Stephen Nemeth

Katz and Sala linked the development of committee property rights in the late-nineteenth-century U.S. House of Representatives to the introduction of theAustralian ballot. If, as they posited, members sought personal reputations to carry them to reelection in the new electoral environment, the current article argues that behaviors with more imme diate political payoffs also should have changed inways their theory would predict. The article examines whether committee assignments, floor voting behavior, and the distribution of pork barrel projects changed in predicted ways and finds supportive outcomes, but usually only when the office bloc ballot, and not the party bloc ballot, …