Subverting the Organizational Cartel: Explaining Cross-Party Leadership Selection in U.S. State Houses

• Date: 01 July 2020
• DOI: 10.1177/1532673X19892002
• Published date: 01 July 2020
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X19892002

American Politics Research

2020, Vol. 48(4) 475 –483

© The Author(s) 2019

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DOI: 10.1177/1532673X19892002

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Article

Introduction

One of the cornerstones of a legislative majority party’s ple-

nary authority is its prerogative to select the top leadership of

its chamber. In the U.S. House of Representatives, this facet

of the majority party’s “organizational cartel” power is espe-

cially significant, because the Speaker of the House may

possess substantial influence over electoral resources, the

policy agenda, and lawmakers’ opportunities for advance-

ment within the legislature (Green, 2010; Jenkins & Stewart,

2013; Jones, 1968; Pearson, 2015). It is thus unsurprising

that majority parties in the House guard their organizational

cartel power jealously. Since the late 19th century, for

instance, the House has always selected the governing par-

ty’s nominee for Speaker and party defections on floor votes

to select the Speaker have been strongly discouraged (Green

& Bee, 2016; Jenkins & Stewart, 2013).

One should expect the same stability in the selection of

the top leader in state houses, especially because many

state chambers grant their leaders formal powers that the

Speaker of the U.S. House lacks (Squire & Hamm, 2005,

p. 103). But oddly, every so often a faction of the majority

party in a state legislative chamber joins forces with the

minority party to select a leader who is opposed by a

majority of the majority party. In fact, 40 elections for the

top leadership post in a state house or senate over the past

four decades were decided by a cross-party organizational

coalition that outvoted the governing party. Some of these

circumventions of the majority’s organizational cartel

power have had important, even profound, political conse-

quences. For instance, the powerful and long-serving

California Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D), who

described himself as the “Ayatollah of the Assembly”

and whose tenure fueled the successful effort to impose

term limits on state lawmakers, was first elected to the

speakership by a cross-party coalition (Richardson,

1996; Rosenthal, 2008; Squire & Moncrief, 2015, p. 106).

The selection of Texas House Speaker Joe Straus (R) via a

cross-party coalition eventually led some disgruntled con-

servatives to form the Texas House Freedom Caucus, a

group which successfully killed scores of bills in the legis-

lature, and open opposition from other conservatives con-

tributed to Straus’ decision to retire (Garrett & Mekelburg,

2017; Ward, 2017). When minority party Republicans

managed to elect their preferred candidates as top leaders

of the Washington State Senate in 2013, they were awarded

chairmanships of most Senate committees, the chamber

892002APRXXX10.1177/1532673X19892002American Politics ResearchGreen

research-article2019

1The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, USA

Corresponding Author:

Matthew N. Green, The Catholic University of America, 620 Michigan

Avenue NE, Washington, DC, 20064, USA.

Email: greenm@cua.edu

Subverting the Organizational Cartel:

Explaining Cross-Party Leadership

Selection in U.S. State Houses

Matthew N. Green1

Abstract

In the U.S. House of Representatives, the majority party constitutes an organizational cartel that monopolizes the

selection of chamber leaders. But in state legislatures, that cartel power is sometimes circumvented by a bipartisan

bloc that outvotes the leadership preferences of a majority of the majority party. Drawing from an original data set of

instances of cross-party organizational coalitions at the state level, I use statistical analysis to test various hypotheses

for when these coalitions are more likely to form. The analysis reveals that party ideology does not adequately

explain the violation of these cartels; rather, violations depend on the costs associated with keeping the party unified

and the benefits that come from selecting the chamber’s top leadership post. This finding underscores the potential

vulnerability of organizational cartels and suggests that governing parties are strategic when deciding how fiercely to

defend their cartel power.

Keywords

organizational cartel, state legislature, legislative party, party leadership