Partisanship and Integration in Two House Committees: Ways and Means and Education and Labor

VER SINCE 1884 when Woodrow Wilson's Congressional Government was first published, political scientists have been aware of the important role played by committees in the operation of the Congress.1 But until the early 1960s, this awareness tended to be of a rather general sort, centering primarily on the major part such committees played in the making of policy and the oversight of administration. Since then, however, there has been a greatly increased recognition of the dramatic differences among the many committees of the House and Senate. In particular, the works of Fenno, Manley and Jones stand out in this regard.2 The comparative study of congressional committees has answered many questions raised by political scientists, but it has also opened up for reexamination some matters which were previously thought to be fairly well understood. One such matter concerns the relationship between committee integration and committee partisanship. Fenno's early work on the House Education and Labor Committee clearly suggested that its excessive partisanship was at least partially responsible for its lack of integration.3 On the other hand, his study of the Appropriations Committees attributed their high levels of integration to their relative lack of partisanship, among other things.4 In both cases, committee integration and committee partisanship were found to be inversely related. But Manley's study of the House Ways and Means Committee found it to be both well integrated and highly partisan, although its partisanship was "restrained."5 This paper seeks confirmation of the findings of these two authors concerning the relationship between integration and partisanship, when examined with a methodology different from the ones they employed. Two committees are studied: the House Committees on Education and