MODELING STATE REPRESENTATION ON DEFENSE COMMITTEES IN CONGRESS, 1959-1989

Since World War II, why have defense committees in Congress tended to represent some states rather than others? To address this question we use a variation of two-stage least squares (2SLS) to analyze the effec ts of each state's share of prime military contracts, military payroll s, delegation size, and legislator ideology on representation on the H ouse and Senate Armed Services Committees and the Appropriations Subco mmittees of the Department of Defense. We find that during the period 1959-1989 defense committees have been dominated by large ideologicall y conservative states that received the largest shares of defense cont racts and payrolls. The only exception is Democrats on these committee s, who did not tend to overrepresent states with above average levels of defense contracts. These findings correct earlier studies that have stressed the influence of only some of these factors (ideology or pay rolls) in models of defense committee membership.