The Relationship Between Institutional and Organizational Party Power: Evidence from the Minnesota House’s Experimental Setting

• Author: Robert Lucas Williams
• Published date: 01 July 2022
• Date: 01 July 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X211053629

Article

American Politics Research

2022, Vol. 50(4) 525–538

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/1532673X211053629

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The Relationship Between Institutional and

Organizational Party Power: Evidence from

the Minnesota House’s Experimental Setting

Robert Lucas Williams

1



Abstract

How parties manage capitols and constituencies in the American context is the subject of much political inquiry. This research

examines whether majority parties’institutional capability depends on their ability to organize beyond the legislative chamber.

An opportunity to examine such a question presents itself in a curious historical occurrence, the Minnesota Legislature’s abrupt

de jure ban on political parties. Using data compiled from the Minnesota House of Representatives, I compare partisan

characteristics in roll call voting in the context of an experimental setting.The results suggest legislative leadership powers lose

efficacy when party’s organizational capacity beyond the chamber diminishes.

Keywords

parties, party organizations, legislative leadership

The Framers express deep concern about the tendencies and

inevitability of factions, and parties have played a central role

in the policy making process throughout the American po-

litical experience. Indeed, scholars like Schattschneider

(1942) find that “…modern democracy is unthinkable save

in terms of parties.”Still, reformers have sought to stifle the

perceived ills of party influence by enacting measures that

blunt the tools party leaders use to exercise influence in

elections and in government. These instances provide

scholars with opportunities to examine how parties influence

legislative politics in particular. For example, Masket (2016)

demonstrates that reform efforts seeking to stifle the influence

of parties often fail as party organizations prove resilient and

adaptable. The present research takes advantage of the case of

the 1913 Minnesota Legislature’s de jure ban on political

parties to examine partisan roll call behavior in an experi-

mental setting. Because the ban on parties in Minnesota was

intended as a poison pill amendment to a broader bill, it was

never expected to come to the floor for a vote, let alone pass

and eventually become law. It was, therefore, a surprise. This

fortuitous empirical occurrence presents a rare opportunity to

employ a quasi-experimental design comparing behavior in a

setting where key party tools are present with a largely similar

setting where they are absent. The results suggest that leg-

islative leadership powers are important tools for parties to

maintain influence over roll call voting, but those tools are

less effective in the absence of party’s organizational capacity

beyond the legislative chamber.

Senate File 412 and the Minnesota Party Ban

As Adrian, C. R. (1952) observes, “When the 38

th

Minnesota

legislature met in January, 1913, probably not a single

member suspected that before the session ended the state

would have a lawmaking body chosen without party des-

ignation.”Tracing the events leading up to the unexpected

elimination of parties from the Minnesota Legislature, Adrian

describes Progressive reformers who believed that state

legislators would be willing to reform partisan institutions in

other state offices, but not in their own branch. These re-

formers shrewdly pushed a bill removing parties from other

elected offices in the state, but not from the legislature itself.

They omitted the legislature from the bill because sitting

legislators would be unwilling to support the dismantling of a

system responsible for their reelection. Being amicable to

their partisan elected counterparts in other offices, party

leaders sought to block the measure by including a poison pill

amendment banning parties in the legislature. Party leaders

had made the same assumption as the Progressive drafters of

the bill, that legislators would not vote to destroy the partisan

1

Department of Political Science, Texas Southern University, Houston, TX,

USA

Corresponding Author:

Robert Lucas Williams, Department of Political Science, Texas Southern

University, 3100 Cleburne Street, Houston, TX 77004-4597, USA.

Email: robert.williams@tsu.edu