The Relationship Between Institutional and Organizational Party Power: Evidence from the Minnesota House’s Experimental Setting
Author | Robert Lucas Williams |
DOI | 10.1177/1532673X211053629 |
Date | 01 July 2022 |
Published date | 01 July 2022 |
Subject Matter | Articles |
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
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