Hostile Takeover

This detailed analysis examines the structure of Republican committee membership in the U.S. House of Representatives between 1980 and 1995. Douglas Koopman's account of the House Republicans' rise to majority status describes the strategies adopted by the Republican minority to oppose the majority's legislative efforts. The author explains how their actions as a minority provide insight into the current and future Republican policy agenda. Delineating the motives of the House Republican leadership and their varying degrees of party loyalty, Hostile Takeover astutely explains that by transforming their resistance to Democratic initiatives into aggressive assaults on the entire majority agenda, House Republicans positioned themselves to take power after the watershed 1994 elections and to define a new range of legitimate political discourse.

After serving on the professional staff of the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress, Douglas L. Koopman is now assistant professor of political science at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan.