Paul Ryan's Leadership Style

Recently, the House has become increasingly divided. The democrats and the Republicans have been increasingly unable to work together to pass legislation. The hallmark of this division was the constant last minute deals and broken promises to constituents. The person any blamed for this style was historically John Boehner. In October, Boehner resigned and a new speaker took office, Paul Ryan. Paul Ryan has moved towards a more decentralized and open style which allows for him to address lower the conformity costs of being a Republican house representative and to help curb collective action problems such as free riders within his own party. While John Boehner was Speaker, he used a more centralized type of leadership. This allowed the Republicans

Ryan shifted from the smoke filled rooms of Boehner to a much more open and transparent style of leadership. What Ryan did to decentralize the leadership was shift the privilege of crafting legislation to the committees rather than having legislation crafted by party leadership. As well, Ryan has adopted a more casual type of leadership, even texting representatives to keep in touch. This stands in sharp contrast to the previous style of leadership. Boehner preferred to meet almost exclusively with his closest advisors at an Italian restaurant in Washington while Ryan prefers to have larger dinners with his a rotating roster of Republican representatives. This more open style of leadership has lowered the conformity cost of being a republican in the House of

Very early in its history, the House began to establish standing committees in order to deal with recurring problems congress faced. This served to deal with collective action problems and to lower transaction costs in congress. To further lower transaction costs in the House, the Speaker started acting as the head of the majority party and appointing the chairmen of each committee. This set up the committee system that exists in congress today. Today, Congress does most of its governing in committees. Submitted bills are almost always sent to a committee that the speaker feels is appropriate to deal with the bill and then it moves to the main floor for a vote. This system serves two purposes to both lower transaction costs for the whole Congress and to lower conformity costs within each party in Congress. It does this by allowing Representatives to become experts in a few policy areas rather than have to gain deep knowledge of every policy area. Through this specialization the Congress as a whole lowers transaction cost while simultaneously lowering the conformity costs for the