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Partisanship and Pre-Floor Behavior: The Equal Rights and School Prayer Amendments

We examine the effect of issue preferences and partisanship on prefloor behavior by explaining cosponsorship and discharge petition activity over two proposed constitutional amendments, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in 1970 and the School Prayer Amendment (SPA) in 1971. Previous research has largely focused on the ability of the majority party leadership in the post-Reform House to employ party as a solution to the collective action problem inherent to policy making. We extend the conception of the role of party, arguing that non-leadership issue entrepreneurs are also capable of utilizing party to bring about collective policy outcomes even during the less party-centered pre-Reform era. Our results show that when entrepreneurs have access to institutional resources, both issue preferences and partisanship explain discharge petition activity; when they do not, discharge petition behavior is almost exclusively preference-based with inconsistent party effects. This research thus highlights the conditions under which party can be employed to build legislative coalitions.