MAJORITY PARTY"S CAPTURING OF THE HOUSE RULES COMMITTEE: THE DEMOCRATIC MAJORITY PARTY"S ENLARGEMENT OF THE RULES COMMITTEE IN 1961

The purpose of this article is twofold. The first one is to explain the incidence of Rules Committee capturing (the enlargement of the Rules Committee) in the 87th House in 1961; the second is to provide a partisan context for the Rules Committee enlargement. The main argument of the article is as follows: the 1961 Rules Committee enlargement in the 87th House in 1961 was executed for the purpose of legislating the Kennedy programs, which entailed the expansion of the federal government and the increase in federal expenditure. In order to legislate liberal Kennedy programs, it was necessary for the Democratic majority party to capture the Rules Committee. And the capturing took place in the 87th House when the Democratic party had a substantive incentive. In order to emphasize the partisan nature of the Rules Committee reform, I provide crucial background information on the deteriorating relationship between the Democratic majority party and the Republican minority party since the 1958 congressional election. In line with the revitalized inter-party conflict, I also show the way the increased power of the liberal wing within the Democratic party made Speaker Sam Rayburn inevitably consider taking some measures to control the Rules Committee. After that, I develop a formal model to test the incidence of capturing and come to the conclusion that one major necessary condition for the majority party to capture the Rules Committee is that it should be able to increase its policy utility by capturing. In other words, only when the majority party has an incentive to capture the Rules Committee in terms of policy benefit, does capturing take place. The outcome of the test based on the "Rosenthal and Poole data" of the 87th House proved the thesis