Who Benefits from the Party Organization? Evidence from Republican House Members' Attendance at Caucus Meetings

• Date: 01 May 2018
• Author: Andrew Reeves,Adam M. Dynes
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lsq.12193
• Published date: 01 May 2018

ADAM M. DYNES

Brigham Young University

ANDREW REEVES

Washington University in St. Louis

Who Benefits from the Party

Organization? Evidence from

Republican House Members’

Attendance at Caucus Meetings

As the role of US congressional parties in the legislative process has increased,

so has the importance of understanding the institutions within these organizations. In

this article, we examine the weekly caucus meetings held by Republican House leaders

with their rank-and-file. We consider how members’ characteristics relate to thei r deci-

sion to attend based on the collective and private benefits that caucus participation

affords. Using interviews of members and staffers as well as members’ attendance

records at these meetings from 2007 to 2013, we find, among other things, that members

who vote less with their party or who have more seniority are less likely to attend while

those in leadership positions or who are electorally vulnerable are more likely to do so.

Together, these findings provide additional insights on the relationship between party

leaders and their members and which members benefit from this central party-building

activity.

Legislative parties are part of the foundation of the modern US

Congress and have taken an increasingly active role in both legislative

and electoral politics over the last several decades. In this article, we

examine an understudied institution that is central to contemporary

parties’ management of their affairs—the weekly caucus meetings held

by party leaders with the rank-and-f‌ile members. These meetings are the

only venue where all members of the party meet, hear from the leader-

ship, and discuss the issues facing the party. The caucus meetings

allow for the exchange of information and help the party identify and

implement its legislative agenda.

We focus on the decision of Republican House members to attend

their party’s caucus meetings. These decisions are unusual in that they

are out of the gaze of constituents and interest groups; attendance records

LEGISLATIVE STUDIES QUARTERLY, 43, 2, May 2018 207

DOI: 10.1111/lsq.12193

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C2017 Washington University in St. Louis

are not public. While leaders may strategically allow members to vote

against the party line on particular roll calls in order to please constitu-

ents, members’ decisions to attend do not directly affect their standing

with electorally important groups outside of the party organization.

Examining these meetings and who attends provides unique insights

into whose interests are served by party-building activities and the

relationship between party leaders and their members.

We consider members’ decision to participate as a function of col-

lective and private benef‌its provided to members from attendance.

Collective benef‌its include facilitating legislative strategy to build the

party brand and to gain and maintain majority status. Among the private

benef‌its are the acquisition of information from party leaders and

colleagues and the opportunity to affect the party’s agenda and signal

loyalty to party leaders. Based on these benef‌its, we consider how

members’ characteristics—such as their leadership positions, seniority,

and roll-call voting—are related to decisions to attend.

To test our hypotheses, we analyze original qualitative and quanti-

tative evidence. The former consists of interviews conducted between

2013 and 2016 of f‌ive Republican House members, three chiefs of staff

(in other members’ off‌ices), and multiple staffers in the House Republi-

can Party organization who have extensive experience with caucus

meetings. These interviews provide important insights into members’

relationship with the party organization and their motivations for

participating. They also clarify the costs, benef‌its, and determinants of

attendance.

Our quantitative analyses are based on Republican members’

attendance records at caucus meetings from 2007 to 2013. To preview

our results, we f‌ind that those who vote the least with their fellow

Republicans in public are also less likely to caucus with them in private.

In addition, we f‌ind that party leaders and those who are electorally vul-

nerable attend at higher rates, while more senior members and those who

are leaving off‌ice (e.g., running for other off‌ices or retiring) are less

likely to show up. Consistent with our argument that the primary cost of

attending is time, we f‌ind that the geographic distance between a mem-

ber’s district and Washington, DC has a negative correlation with

attendance. Together, the qualitative and quantitative analyses suggest

that the private benef‌its of caucus attendance are an important driver of

members’ participation.

Our analysis broadens our understanding of Congress by examin-

ing a legislative behavior other than roll-call votes. It also builds on a

small but robust literature that analyzes an important institution within

the party apparatus (e.g., Curry 2015; Forgette 2004; Rohde 1991).

208 Adam M. Dynes and Andrew Reeves

Understanding behind-the-scenes party organization can elucidate

broader puzzles in American politics such as the increase in polarization.

For example, Lee argues that polarization is increased by “stronger,

more effective partisan coordination” (2000, 73), something caucus

meetings facilitate. Understanding participation also clarif‌ies how well

the party agenda represents its members overall.

An Overview of Republican Caucus Meetings

Although caucus meetings

1

are a central component of contempo-

rary legislative parties, they were not a regular feature in the prereform

era apart from their extensive use by the Democratic Party in the 1910s

(Jones 2000; Ripley 1967; Rohde 1991). Democratic House leaders and

conservative committee chairs opposed efforts in the late 1960s and

throughout the 1970s to organize regular meetings of the membership

for fear it could undermine their power (Rohde 1991; Sinclair 1995).

However, the Democrats’ presidential election loss in 1980 and the reali-

zation that their party was “badly split on both policy and strategy”

(Sinclair 1995, 107) pushed Democratic leaders to embrace the potential

role of caucus meetings as a policy seminar and means of intraparty

communication (105–15). In this way, the meetings became an exten-

sion of efforts in the late 1970s to use the whip system and ad hoc policy

committees to “includ[e] as many members as possible in the coalition-

building process” (Hammond and Smock 1998, 298). By the mid-

1980s, the Democratic Party held caucus meetings regularly—about

twice a month—to consider political and policy matters (Sinclair 1995).

Though much less is known about the Republicans’ history with

caucus meetings prior to gaining majority control in the 1990s, the evi-

dence suggests that regular meetings with the rank-and-f‌ile had become

institutionalized prior to their takeover of the House. Forgette (2004)

shows that by the early 1990s, both parties met as a caucus nearly every

week that the House was in session. Caucus meetings also embodied

Rep. Newt Gingrich’s professed leadership strategy to “listen, learn,

help, lead” (Andres 1999; Peters 1997; Strahan 2007). Meetings pro-

vided both the opportunity for the Speaker to hear the concerns of his

members and attempt to persuade them to adopt his vision for the party

(Fenno 1997; Peters 1997; Strahan 2007). This is consistent with

Gingrich’s explicit strategy leading up to the 1994 elections to “capture

70 to 80% of the incoming freshmen every two years” through orga-

nized efforts of persuasion and socialization (quoted in Fenno 1997, 35).

Regular caucus meetings accomplish both of these efforts in service of

“capturing” members to a particular cause. These meetings were also

209Who Benefits from the Party Organization