Parties in Congress 

The 104th US Congress (1994-96) stands out as one of the most fascinating of recent times. This is only partly because it was the first for 40 years to have Republican majorities in both houses. It is more so because of the attempt by Newt Gingrich and the House Republicans to institute party government as a means both of organising in the House (even the entire system of national government by some accounts) and of promoting a common policy programme - and because of the limits this attempt ultimately encountered.

Since the 1960s party organisations have become the most significant organisational structures on Capitol Hill, as the traditional autonomy of congressional committees has weakened and the powers of central party leaders and caucuses strengthened.

Elected as deputy leader of the House Republicans in 1989, Gingrich was and is a strong believer in party government. He rejected explicitly the Madisonian model of congressional politics based on bargaining, negotiation and compromise across parties, and organised institutionally round the committee system. Republicans, Gingrich argued, should be 'party activists', rather than 'committee-' or 'district guys'. Their efforts needed to be directed towards specific policy goals, including 'replacing the current welfare state with an opportunity society'.

To a large extent, this perspective reflected the built-up frustrations of House Republicans as the seemingly 'permanent minority' (Connelly and Pitney, 1994). Gingrich's enthusiasm for party government and House Republicans' endorsement of his vision led directly to what was effectively a party manifesto, the 'Contract With America'. (For the historical background to, and more details about, the Contract With America, see my 'Party Time in Congress?' in CSD Bulletin 3/2 , Winter 1996.)

After the elections, Gingrich and the Republicans moved quickly to implement party government in the newly elected 104th TTHouse. By the 100 days' deadline, all the Contract items had been brought to a vote on the House floor as promised and, with the single exception of congressional terms limits, won House approval with the support of a highly disciplined Republican majority. In late 1995 Gingrich was quoted as saying that eventually it would be better if the committee system was replaced by party leadership-appointed task forces.

Late 1995 was, however, the high point of party government in the 104th House. In the months round the turn of the year, the Republicans overreached themselves. Instead of accepting half a loaf, they wanted everything. Following opposition from Bill Clinton to many of their most controversial proposals, including welfare reform, and in the mistaken beliefs that they enjoyed public support and that sheer will-power could enact the 'revolution', they elected for confrontation with the president. These proposals were loaded into a massive budget reconciliation bill and sent in late 1995 to Clinton for signature, as the Republicans dared the president to endorse their proposals in their entirety or face closing down the federal government. Clinton opted for the latter course and ultimately, through a deft public relations effort, won the encounter.

Gingrich and his colleagues were guilty of hubris. In the aftermath of the 1994 elections, all the available evidence suggested that the mid-term results were a repudiation of Democratic government more than an endorsement of Republican radicalism. Even in a single-party strong government system, like Britain's, a majority party - such as Margaret Thatcher's Conservative Party in the 1980s - cannot achieve all its policy goals when voters do not want what they are offered. An accurate reading of the 1994 election results results would then have been more provisional, and more modest, than the revolutionary interpretation promoted by Gingrich and his colleagues. Not only did the House Republicans overinterpret their electoral mandate. They overestimated their capacity to achieve their policy goals and to make the 'revolution' happen.

In Learning to Govern: An Institutional View of the 104th Congress  - one of the most insightful analyses of the Republican takeover - Richard Fenno has argued that the root cause of Republicans' ineptitude was their lack of experience. As Fenno points out, none of the House Republicans had ever served with a Republican majority; and only seven of the 73 freshmen/women had any governing experience. There is a lot to Fenno's argument.

However, inexperience was not the only problem. The fundamental problem was the endorsement of a strong party government approach coupled with a bold anti-government policy programme. If a majority party can maintain tight party unity, this approach can work in the House because rules can be written and implemented to assure that the majority party prevails. But Gingrich's call - no matter how intense - for the House to act as the driving force in the system, and the House Jacobins' insistence on 'total victory', could not guarantee compliance in the Senate or the White House. The debacle over the 1995 budget showed how misguided the House Republicans' strategy was. Anyone familiar with the workings of the American constitution knows that the separated system is specifically designed both to thwart such majoritarian ambitions and to prevent big policy changes; and that successful policymaking requires the construction of political coalitions across institutions, and compromises among players articulating different interests and divergent ideological values.

The re-election of Clinton and the continuation of split-party control of the White House and Congress after the 1996 elections; Republican losses in those elections and the consequent narrowing of the party's majority; the unwillingness of Republicans to run on their party record in 1996; and the consequent absence of a strong electoral endorsement on which they could build a governing strategy in the new Congress: all this meant that House Republicans faced a strategic environment in Washington which was even less favourable than it had been in 1995. Their performance in 1997 did not suggest that they assessed this environment accurately or that they developed a coherent governing strategy aimed at maximising their political goals.

Since the 1996 elections, there have been two coup attempts on Gingrich, disagreements over policy direction on the budget and other issues, and, in June 1997, a rerun of the 1995 budget debacle on a disaster relief bill. Party government remains in place in the House but it is now less centralised. As the leadership has made mistakes, as deeper fissures have appeared in Republican unity, and as the enduring decentralising forces so characteristic of congressional politics have begun to reassert themselves more forcibly, it has become clear that the highly centralised legislative organisation of 1995 could not be maintained and the older patterns of committee politics would reappear.

Even before the 104th House adjourned in October 1996, some Republican committee leaders took tentative steps to grab back some of the power they had lost. Early in 1997, Gingrich conceded that the centralisation of power had not worked. And, throughout 1997, committees and chairs reasserted themselves, constraining Gingrich's power and forcing him into political accommodations in order to bolster his own position. The number of subcommittees and the memberships of full committees also increased as rank-and-file Republicans wanted more of the legislative action. Although House Republicans lost again in the showdown with Clinton over the disaster relief bill, they were able, through a deal with Clinton, to achieve one of their most cherished policy goals: balancing the federal budget (by 2002).

Yet the basic problems of learning how to govern remain. In October 1997, Gingrich himself conceded as much: 'We have never learned to govern as a party. It is time we learn to govern', the Republican Speaker declared - this from a leader of a three-year old Republican majority. So while the centralised form of legislative organisation has been relaxed somewhat, the pre-1994 context, reinforced by the euphoria of the Contract governing experience, continues to propel too many House Republicans against Madison and in favour of ideological purity and a no-compromise approach. Too many of the current House majority are still unwilling to accept that such a party government approach to governing is not consistent with the separated system and, therefore, is unlikely to succeed.

Failure seems especially likely when the strategic environment in which they are seeking to govern includes a president who is only too adept at operating the system to his advantage and in which the two main parties are extremely competitive in electoral terms at all levels of government. Whether the House Republican majority can ever learn this lesson which the American system teaches remains to be seen. It could be that a majority of House Republicans might reject the travails of governing for the delights of opposition and ideological purity.

John E. Owens is deputy director of CSD. This is an edited version of a lecture given at the University of Illinois in November 1997.