Partisan vote buying and suspensions in the Postreform House

Abstract

In the US House, the Suspension of the Rules procedure provides a route by which vote buying may occur. To investigate the conditions under which partisan theories anticipate that this behavior is more likely to happen, I use a dataset of all bills on which a final passage vote was taken in the House between 1975 and 2010. The House is more likely to consider bills by suspension to provide side payments to three types of bill sponsors from the majority party: ideologically distant members of this group; members whose preferences are located within the first 30% of the space in the majority party blockout zone; and members whose preferences are located on the minority party side of the chamber median.