Rifle Shots and Republicans: Controlling the Bureaucracy Through the Appropriations Process, 1995-2002.

I examine the incidence of limitation riders in appropriations legislation from the Republican ascendancy to majority party status in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1995 to 2002. I hypothesize that the use of such riders is a function of disagreement between coalitions who control outcomes in the House Appropriations Committee and the authorizing committees with oversight jurisdiction over agencies whose regulatory authority is circumscribed by the riders, controlling for disagreement between Congress and the President, and various elements of the policy process. Employing data on the use of these riders within different policy jurisdictions, I find that policy disagreement between the specified coalitions and the authorizing committees does lead to a higher incidence of riders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]