Download or read book Indecision in American Legislatures written by Justin Howard Kirkland and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2018-08-01 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lawmaking provides many opportunities for proposals to be altered, amended, tabled, or stopped completely. The ideal legislator should assess evidence, update his or her beliefs with new information, and sometimes be willing to change course. In practice, however, lawmakers face criticism from the media, the public, and their colleagues for “flip-flopping.” Legislators may also only appear to change positions in some cases as a means of voting strategically. This book presents a systematic examination of legislative indecision in American politics. This might occur via “waffling”—where a legislator cosponsors a bill, then votes against it at roll call. Or it might occur when a legislator votes one way on a bill, then switches her vote to the other side. In Indecision in American Legislatures, Jeffrey J. Harden and Justin H. Kirkland develop a theoretical framework to explain indecision itself, as well as the public’s attitudes toward indecision. They test their expectations with data sources from American state legislatures, the U.S. Congress, and survey questions administered to American citizens. Understanding legislative indecision from both the legislator and citizen perspectives is important for discussions about the quality of representation in American politics.

Download or read book The Influence of Campaign Contributions in State Legislatures written by Lynda W. Powell and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2012-03-06 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Campaign contributions are widely viewed as a corrupting influence but most scholarly research concludes that they have marginal impact on legislative behavior. Lynda W. Powell shows that contributions have considerable influence in some state legislatures but very little in others. Using a national survey of legislators, she develops an innovative measure of influence and delineates the factors that explain this great variation across the 99 U.S. state legislative chambers. Powell identifies the personal, institutional, and political factors that determine how much time a legislator devotes to personal fundraising and fundraising for the caucus. She shows that the extent of donors' legislative influence varies in ways corresponding to the same variations in the factors that determine fundraising time. She also confirms a link between fundraising and lobbying with evidence supporting the theory that contributors gain access to legislators based on donations, Powell's findings have important implications for the debate over the role of money in the legislative process.

Download or read book The Illusion of Accountability written by Justin H. Kirkland and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-08-25 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does open governance strengthen democracy? The Illusion of Accountability contends that it does not. Leveraging a wealth of data from decades of legislative politics in the American states, the book assesses the causes and consequences of 'open meetings laws,' which require public access to proceedings in state legislatures. The work traces the roots of these laws back to the founding constitutions of some states and analyzes the waves of adoptions and exemptions to open meetings that occurred in the twentieth century. The book then examines the effects of these transparency laws on a host of politically consequential outcomes both inside and outside the legislature. This analysis consistently finds that open meetings do not influence legislators' behavior or citizens' capacity to alter that behavior. Instead, a link between transparent legislatures and an expanded system of organized interests is established. This illuminating work concludes that transparency reform only creates the illusion of accountability in state government.

Download or read book Leadership Organizations in the House of Representatives written by Scott Meinke and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2019-01-24 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent Congresses, roughly half of the members of the U.S. House of Representatives served in whip organizations and on party committees. According to Scott R. Meinke, rising electoral competition and polarization over the past 40 years have altered the nature of party participation. In the 1970s and 1980s, the participation of a wide range of members was crucial to building consensus. Since then, organizations responsible for coordination in the party have become dominated by those who follow the party line. At the same time, key leaders in the House use participatory organizations less as forums for internal deliberations over policy and strategy than as channels for exchanging information with supporters outside Congress, and broadcasting sharply partisan campaign messages to the public.

Download or read book Congress Reconsidered written by Lawrence C. Dodd and published by CQ Press. This book was released on 2020-12-03 with total page 545 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since its first edition, Congress Reconsidered was designed to make available the best contemporary work from leading congressional scholars in a form that is both challenging and accessible to undergraduates. With their Twelfth Edition, Lawrence C. Dodd, Bruce I. Oppenheimer, and C. Lawrence Evans continue this tradition as their contributors focus on how various aspects of Congress have changed over time: C. Lawrence Evans partners with Wendy Schiller to discuss the U.S. Senate and the meaning of dysfunction; Molly E. Reynolds analyzes the politics of the budget and appropriations process in a polarized Congress; and Danielle M. Thomsen looks at the role of women and voter preferences in the 2018 elections. With a strong new focus on political polarization, this bestselling volume remains on the cutting edge with key insights into the workings of Congress.

Download or read book The Committee written by Bryan William Marshall and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2021-09-16 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For three years while serving as a senior adviser to Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-CA), chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce—one of the most powerful committees in Congress—Bruce C. Wolpe kept a diary, a senior staffer’s look at how committees develop and promote legislation. With its insider’s view of the rough-and-tumble politics of cap-and-trade, healthcare reform, tobacco, oversight, and the debt ceiling agreement, The Committee uniquely melds the art of politics and policymaking with the theory and literature of political science. The authors engage with the important questions that political science asks about committee power, partisanship, and the strategies used to build winning policy coalitions both in the Committee and on the floor of the House. In this new edition, the authors revisit the relationship between the executive and Congress in the wake of the sweeping changes wrought by the Trump administration, as well as thoughts about how that relationship will change again as President Biden faces a 117th Congress that is strikingly similar to Obama’s 111th. The insider politics and strategies about moving legislation in Congress, from internal and external coalition building to a chairman’s role in framing policy narratives, will captivate both novice and die-hard readers of politics.

Download or read book On Parliamentary War written by James Ian Wallner and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2019-12-02 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dysfunction in the Senate is driven by the deteriorating relationship between the majority and minority parties. Regular order is virtually nonexistent and unorthodox parliamentary procedures are frequently needed to pass important legislation. Democrats and Republicans are fighting a parliamentary war in the Senate to steer the future of the country. James Wallner presents a bargaining model of procedural change to explain the persistence of the filibuster in this polarized environment, focusing on the dynamics responsible for contested procedural change. Wallner’s model explains why Senate majorities have historically tolerated the filibuster, even when it has defeated their agendas, despite having the power to eliminate it. It also shows why the then-Democratic majority deployed the nuclear option to eliminate the filibuster for an Obama judicial nominee in 2013. On Parliamentary War’s game-theory approach unveils the relationship between partisan conflict and procedural change in the Senate.

Download or read book The Whips written by C. Lawrence Evans and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2018-08-01 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The party whips are essential components of the U.S. legislative system, responsible for marshalling party votes and keeping House and Senate party members in line. In The Whips, C. Lawrence Evans offers a comprehensive exploration of coalition building and legislative strategy in the U.S. House and Senate, ranging from the relatively bipartisan, committee-dominated chambers of the 1950s to the highly polarized congresses of the 2000s. In addition to roll call votes and personal interviews with lawmakers and staff, Evans examines the personal papers of dozens of former leaders of the House and Senate, especially former whips. These records allowed Evans to create a database of nearly 1,500 internal leadership polls on hundreds of significant bills across five decades of recent congressional history. The result is a rich and sweeping understanding of congressional party leaders at work. Since the whips provide valuable political intelligence, they are essential to understanding how coalitions are forged and deals are made on Capitol Hill. “This is a superb treatment of an important subject. Every scholar of Congress, every practitioner of congressional politics, and every student, graduate and undergraduate, will learn important lessons about Congress from this book. The book is exceptionally well researched, written with flare, and remarkably comprehensive. The new data brought to bear on important issues is unparalleled in the field.” —Steven Smith, Washington University in St. Louis “Evans provides us with an engaging, well-written, and detailed study of the whip system that sheds new light on congressional coalition-building and intra-party politics. I highly recommend Evans's significant empirical and theoretical contribution to scholars' understanding of congressional party leadership, congressional procedure, members' voting decisions, and the legislative process more generally.” —Kathryn Pearson, University of Minnesota “Some noteworthy advances in the understanding of Congress stem from new theoretical contributions, while others are the result of gathering significant new data. This book scores on both counts. Larry Evans has thought deeply about the roles of party whips and he has also marshalled remarkable empirical evidence to support his contentions. Everyone interested in Congress will want to read this book.” —David Rohde, Duke University

Download or read book On Legislatures written by Gerhard Loewenberg and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-11-17 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On Legislatures looks at why people support their individual representatives but continue to criticise the legislative system at every opportunity. Although legislatures exist in every political system and are meant to represent the people, they are generally disparaged because they appear both unrepresentative and indecisive. Gerhard Loewenberg explains this puzzling contradiction by examining what representation means and what it takes for a large number of equally representative members to reach decisions. It also describes the methods for studying legislatures that have been developed in the social sciences in the last half century and shows their importance in democratic societies throughout the world. On Legislatures gets to the heart of the current disconnect between legislatures and the public they are supposed to represent.

Download or read book The Jeffords Switch written by Nathan Monroe and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2019-07-03 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Senator Jim Jeffords left the Republican Party in May 2001 and became an independent. Because he agreed to vote with the Democrats on organizational votes, this gave that party a 51–49 majority in the Senate. Using the “Jeffords switch,” Chris Den Hartog and Nathan W. Monroe examine how power is shared and transferred in the Senate, as well as whether Democratic bills became more successful after the switch. They also use the data after the switch, when the Republican Party still held a majority on many Democratic Party-led committees, to examine the power of the committee chairs to influence decisions. While the authors find that the majority party does influence Senate decisions, Den Hartog and Monroe are more interested in exploring the method and limits of the majority party to achieve its goals.

Download or read book Losing to Win written by Jeremy Gelman and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2020-07-22 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most everyone, voters, political scientists, even lawmakers, think Congress is dysfunctional. Instead of solving problems, Democrats and Republicans spend their time playing politics. These days Capitol Hill seems more a place to bicker, not to pass laws. The reality is more complicated. Yes, sometimes Congress is broken. But sometimes it is productive. What explains this variation? Why do Democrats and Republicans choose to legislate or score political points? And why do some issues become so politicized they devolve into partisan warfare, while others remain safe for compromise? Losing to Win answers these questions through a novel theory of agenda-setting. Unlike other research that studies bills that become law, Jeremy Gelman begins from the opposite perspective. He studies why majority parties knowingly take up dead-on-arrival (DOA) bills, the ideas everyone knows are going to lose. In doing so, he argues that congressional parties’ decisions to play politics instead of compromising, and the topics on which they choose to bicker, are strategic and predictable. Gelman finds that legislative dysfunction arises from a mutually beneficial relationship between a majority party in Congress, which is trying to win unified government, and its allied interest groups, which are trying to enact their policies. He also challenges the conventional wisdom that DOA legislation is political theater. By tracking bills over time, Gelman shows that some former dead-on-arrival ideas eventually become law. In this way, ideas viewed as too extreme or partisan today can produce long-lasting future policy changes. Through his analysis, Gelman provides an original explanation for why both parties pursue the partisan bickering that voters find so frustrating. He moves beyond conventional arguments that our discordant politics are merely the result of political polarization. Instead, he closely examines the specific circumstances that give rise to legislative dysfunction. The result is a fresh, straightforward perspective on the question we have all asked at some point, “Why can’t Democrats and Republicans stop fighting and just get something done?”

Download or read book Roll Call Rebels written by Justin H. Kirkland and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-12-20 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholars of legislative politics often note the many differences between the British House of Commons and the United States House of Representatives. These include differences in party strength, members' partisan loyalty on votes, and general institutional structure. Because of these differences, scholars have rarely compared these chambers directly. This Element aims to do precisely that. The authors point out the many similar motivations of members in both chambers, and leverage these similar motivations to theorize that member ideology, as well as how party agenda interact to produce party disloyalty. Using data on legislative voting following changes in agenda control, the authors demonstrate that ideological extremists in both the US and UK use party disloyalty to connect with ideologically extreme constituents. The similarities in patterns across these chambers suggest that legislative scholars have much to gain by considering the commonalities across American and British politics, and in general, by thinking more frequently about US legislative politics in a comparative context.

Download or read book It s Not Personal written by Logan Dancey and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2020-04-21 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In order to be confirmed to a lifetime appointment on the federal bench, all district and circuit court nominees must appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee for a confirmation hearing. Despite their relatively low profile, these lower court judges make up 99 percent of permanent federal judgeships and decide cases that relate to a wide variety of policy areas. To uncover why senators hold confirmation hearings for lower federal court nominees and the value of these proceedings more generally, the authors analyzed transcripts for all district and circuit court confirmation hearings between 1993 and 2012, the largest systematic analysis of lower court confirmation hearings to date. The book finds that the time-consuming practice of confirmation hearings for district and circuit court nominees provides an important venue for senators to advocate on behalf of their policy preferences and bolster their chances of being re-elected. The wide variation in lower court nominees’ experiences before the Judiciary Committee exists because senators pursue these goals in different ways, depending on the level of controversy surrounding a nominee. Ultimately, the findings inform a (re)assessment of the role hearings play in ensuring quality judges, providing advice and consent, and advancing the democratic values of transparency and accountability.

Download or read book Committees and the Decline of Lawmaking in Congress written by Jonathan Lewallen and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2020-08-14 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The public, journalists, and legislators themselves have often lamented a decline in congressional lawmaking in recent years, often blaming party politics for the lack of legislative output. In Committees and the Decline of Lawmaking in Congress, Jonathan Lewallen examines the decline in lawmaking from a new, committee-centered perspective. Lewallen tests his theory against other explanations such as partisanship and an increased demand for oversight with multiple empirical tests and traces shifts in policy activity by policy area using the Policy Agendas Project coding scheme. He finds that because party leaders have more control over the legislative agenda, committees have spent more of their time conducting oversight instead. Partisanship alone does not explain this trend; changes in institutional rules and practices that empowered party leaders have created more uncertainty for committees and contributed to a shift in their policy activities. The shift toward oversight at the committee level combined with party leader control over the voting agenda means that many members of Congress are effectively cut out of many of the institution’s policy decisions. At a time when many, including Congress itself, are considering changes to modernize the institution and keep up with a stronger executive branch, the findings here suggest that strengthening Congress will require more than running different candidates or providing additional resources.

Download or read book The Politics of Herding Cats written by John Lovett and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2021-01-22 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Politics of Herding Cats, John Lovett looks at the relationship between media, Congress, and public policy, showing that leaders in Congress under normal circumstances control public policy on issue areas due to their status both within Congress and in the media by and large. When issue coverage on topics increases in media, however, other members seize on the opportunities to engage in the issue and shift public policy away from leader desires. As more members engage and more groups become involved, leaders lose the ability to control the process and are more likely to have problems actually getting public policy enacted. Lovett look at this phenomenon using newspaper coverage in the Washington Post over a 40-year period, both in terms of general analysis as well as individual case studies exploring agricultural subsidies (a low coverage topic), immigration (a changing coverage topic), and health care (a high coverage topic). As coverage increases, the amount leaders can control in the process decreases. Only under extreme circumstances, as seen in the Affordable Care Act, can leaders get anything done at all. The Politics of Herding Cats would be useful for those who wish to better understand the relationship between the media and Congress. It will also be useful to those who want to understand the relationship between actors in government and how the media has influenced American politics, as well as how individual members of Congress can go against party leaders on major issues.

Download or read book The Factors and Behaviors Associated with Legislator Use of Communication Technology written by Joe West and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-08-23 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few will doubt the importance of the role that communication technology played in American politics in 2020. The Factors and Behaviors Associated with Legislator Use of Communication Technology examines the various factors and behaviors associated with legislator use of communication technology. Offering both macro and micro level perspectives as well as quantitative and qualitative data analyses, a broad perspective of the role that communication technology plays in driving legislator behavior is provided. Building a theoretical structure, this book begins with an examination of how communication technology can destabilize the policymaking process and offers an overview of media and policy process theories, and legislator roles and the association of these roles with the use of communication technology. Moving to the micro level, the authors present quantitative and qualitative evidence associated with legislator behaviors associated with the use of communication technology including compromise behaviors and political ideological polarization, closing with an examination of the use of communication technology by legislators during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.

Download or read book Minority Party Misery written by Jacob F.H. Smith and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2021-03-30 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the role of minority party status on politicians’ engagement in electoral politics. Jacob Smith argues that politicians are more likely to be engaged in electoral politics when they expect their party to be in the majority in Congress after the next election and less likely when they anticipate their party will be in the minority. This effect is particularly likely to hold true in recent decades where parties disagree on a substantial number of issues. Politicians whose party will be in the majority have a clear incentive to engage in electoral politics because their preferred policies have a credible chance of passing if they are in the majority. In contrast, it is generally difficult for minority party lawmakers to get a hearing on—much less advance—their preferred policies, particularly when institutional rules inside Congress favor the majority party. Instead, minority party lawmakers spend most of their time fighting losing battles against policy proposals from the majority party. Minority Party Misery examines the consequences of the powerlessness that politicians feel from continually losing battles to the majority party in Congress. Its findings have important consequences for democratic governance, as highly qualified minority party politicians may choose to leave office due to their dismal circumstances rather than continue to serve until their party eventually reenters the majority.