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The 1970s “reform era” in Congress was the long-delayed culmination of years of unsuccessful efforts by Democrats to repair the growing ideological, geographic, and

demographic cracks within the House Democratic Caucus – and with it, the remains of the New Deal coalition. The inability of party leaders to overcome the disproportionate, and arguably undemocratic, power of southern, conservative committee chairs, and the persistent under- representation of the liberal wing of the party in the legislative process, led to mounting

frustrations among many Democrats (and liberal Republicans). Over time, these fissures became impossible to ignore or suppress, and the party took action to change their internal rules,

leadership, and policy agenda to better reflect so-called “national Democrats.” This historic period of tumultuous change inside and outside of Congress shifted the site of Democratic party power and policy away from the south and increasingly towards western, mid-western, and northern states – permanently dissolving southern members’ coalition with urban, big machine Democrats.1 _{Intra- and inter-party politics today in Congress are defined by this era of}

institutional change.

The majority of reforms were adopted between 1970 and 1975, but the incremental path away from arbitrary committee power towards a more democratic system in the House began in 1961 with the expansion of the Rules Committee (made permanent in 1963). These reforms continued with the temporary adoption of the 21-day rule in 1965, which allowed the party to bypass the Rules Committee and enabled the passage of many Great Society programs; the

1 _{These power shifts arguably benefitted urban interests and constituencies more than the individual power}

of the machine Democrats who represented them. While these Democrats did not lose power or institutional status post-reform (it merely changed form), machine Democrats from cities like Boston, Chicago, and St. Louis held power in the textbook Congress too.

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introduction of regular (monthly) meetings of the Democratic Caucus when Congress is in session (1969); the introduction of recorded teller votes on amendments in the Committee of the Whole, and open committee meetings and hearings (1970); the introduction of formal Caucus votes on committee chairs (1971-1973); empowering the Speaker to appoint majority party members of the Rules Committee and shifting the Democratic Committee-on-Committees to the Steering & Policy Committee (from Ways & Means) (1975); and the transition to a Caucus- elected (rather than leadership-appointed) Democratic whip (1986). Nearly all political scientists and close observers of Congress agree that these reforms – along with many others passed by majority vote in the House and the Democratic Caucus – increased the capacity of the party to be responsive to its members and to unite behind a coherent policy program.

Why did the House adopt so many significant reforms to the committee system, leadership and party power during this period? The dominant theories of reform posit that the incentive structures within the Democratic party shifted such that it was in the broader party’s interest to support the adoption of procedural changes. If Democrats wanted to maintain a majority in Congress, they needed to pass legislation that responded to the needs of new

constituency groups, and allowed for the (re)election of the growing numbers of liberal members in Congress. If the status quo was maintained, the party would have failed to pass legislation on a range of issues, including civil rights, union rights, federal aid to housing and education, and many others. The shifting of new geographic and demographic groups into the party’s electoral coalition shifted members’ governing incentives. The passage of the 1970s reforms to the committee system, leadership power, and rank and file participation, merely provide evidence that the party chose to act on those incentives. These explanations go a long way towards

explaining individual and party-level motivations, but they fall short in explaining why this effort was successful where others had failed. Liberal Democrats had tried and failed to reform

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congressional rules and expand the party’s agenda in the past. In 1949, they succeeded in leading the adoption of the 21-day rule, but it was overturned two years later. In 1957, they developed an expansive liberal policy agenda termed the “Liberal Manifesto,” including proposals to increase federal aid to local schools, provide for federal housing program for low-income families and senior citizens, tax reform, and civil rights legislation. The Manifesto was later widely mocked for revealing their hand to the opposition too early (Ferber 1965), and the proposals went nowhere that session. Why were the efforts of liberals in the 1960s successful, while the earlier efforts failed? Existing spatial theories of institutional change do not explain these failures; ideological, policy, and geographic cohesion remained roughly unchanged.

The struggles of liberal Democrats during the late 1940s and 1950s are not unique. In the late nineteenth and twentieth century, Progressive Republicans emerged as a force for reform within the Republican Conference. They accomplished an extensive list of policy goals (e.g. increased corporate regulation, labor protections) and many governmental reforms (e.g. direct election of U.S. senators, direct democracy in the states). By 1910, the group totaled 47 members in the House – a significant number for a party they held a bare majority (219) of seats. The group was so united that they jointly “declared themselves unbounded by the position of the Republican Conference” in 1910 in a bid to push policies toward the Progressive position

(DiSalvo 2012). Despite the group’s overwhelming policy successes and their historic overthrow of Speaker Joseph G. Cannon (R-IL) in 1910, reform inside the halls of Congress would prove to be too much of a hurdle to overcome. Their comparatively minor proposal to remove the

Speaker’s ability to appoint committees (official House procedure under Cannon) failed.2 _And with time, Progressives gradually faded from the Republican party altogether.

2 _{When Democrats became the majority in 1911 (after winning the majority in the 1910 election), they}

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The unwritten terms of congressional organization – largely absent from the Constitution – elevates the emergence of new groups as natural points of self-reflection for a static institution. But the historical failure of several factional-led change efforts suggest that change is not an “inevitable” or “predictable” consequence of the emergence of new groups. New groups emerge in Congress more often than the institution itself undergoes major change. We have every reason to expect that liberals’ efforts to secure consideration of their policy goals and gain access to leadership positions in the House should have failed. The institution was stacked against their interests – seniority norms that left liberals disproportionately out of the legislative process, incentive structures that prioritized suppression of policy differences over thoughtful debate, the absence of any forum for liberals to question their leaders or even introduce rules reform proposals, and so forth. The prevailing assumption among scholars of congressional reform (Wright 2000; Schickler 2001; Schickler, McGhee and Sides 2003; Rohde 1991) that liberals would recognize – and act on – the incentive to work together does not comport with the realities of the legislative environment, or the pitfalls of group organization and coordination.

How do we explain those relatively rare cases of factions – like liberals in the Democratic Party in the 1960s and 1970s – that successfully overcame these pitfalls and the hurdles to

institutional change in Congress? This chapter proposes a moderating theory of factional-driven institutional change in Congress. It is not sufficient for elections to reveal apparent shifts in public opinion, or for new groups of a sizable number and strong internal cohesion to simply emerge in Congress. The legislative branch is designed to make it extraordinarily difficult for the often-junior members of new groups to gain enough power to receive votes on legislation they sponsored, or gain access to leadership pipelines. I argue that the emergence of new groups or shifting policy preferences is a necessary, but alone insufficient condition to spur major

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institutional change. Rather, the capacity of new groups to serve as critical “agents of institutional change” is moderated by the extent to which they develop organizationally.