The 1984 Presidential Campaign and the Future of Election Studies

This paper examines the role of leadership in the U.S. House in the context of arguments raised in Woodrow Wilson's Congressional Government. It begins with a discussion of the speakerships of Henry Clay and Thomas Reed as counterexamples to Wilson's generalizations (a model that links the degree of preference homogeneity among legislative followers to a leader's decision about whether to exert policy leadership is presented in an Appendix). Next we argue that preference homogeneity, leadership style and institutional structure form a kind of equilibrium, drawing on the history of the House for supporting evidence. Finally we discuss the application of our theory to House Democrats in the 1980s.