Seniority Reconsidered: The Seniority System and Committee Government in the House of Representatives

• In Event: Do it for the Party: Legislative Behavior and Strategic Choices

Brief Overview

We evaluate several empirical claims implicit to the seniority system in the House of Representatives. We find that seniority alone fails to explain all variance in the composition of House committee leadership.

Authors

• Daniel Blyth Magleby, Binghamton University

• Gisela L Sin, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign