Download or read book Legislative Effectiveness in the United States Congress written by Craig Volden and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-10-27 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores why some members of Congress are more effective than others at navigating the legislative process and what this means for how Congress is organized and what policies it produces. Craig Volden and Alan E. Wiseman develop a new metric of individual legislator effectiveness (the Legislative Effectiveness Score) that will be of interest to scholars, voters, and politicians alike. They use these scores to study party influence in Congress, the successes or failures of women and African Americans in Congress, policy gridlock, and the specific strategies that lawmakers employ to advance their agendas.
Download or read book Congressional Record written by United States. Congress and published by . This book was released on 1968 with total page 1324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Broken Branch written by Thomas E. Mann and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two nationally renowned congressional scholars review the evolution of Congress from the early days of the republic to 2006, arguing that extreme partisanship and a disregard for institutional procedures are responsible for the institution's current state of dysfunction.
Download or read book White Collar Government written by Nicholas Carnes and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-11-05 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eight of the last twelve presidents were millionaires when they took office. Millionaires have a majority on the Supreme Court, and they also make up majorities in Congress, where a background in business or law is the norm and the average member has spent less than two percent of his or her adult life in a working-class job. Why is it that most politicians in America are so much better off than the people who elect them— and does the social class divide between citizens and their representatives matter? With White-Collar Government, Nicholas Carnes answers this question with a resounding—and disturbing—yes. Legislators’ socioeconomic backgrounds, he shows, have a profound impact on both how they view the issues and the choices they make in office. Scant representation from among the working class almost guarantees that the policymaking process will be skewed toward outcomes that favor the upper class. It matters that the wealthiest Americans set the tax rates for the wealthy, that white-collar professionals choose the minimum wage for blue-collar workers, and that people who have always had health insurance decide whether or not to help those without. And while there is no one cause for this crisis of representation, Carnes shows that the problem does not stem from a lack of qualified candidates from among the working class. The solution, he argues, must involve a variety of changes, from the equalization of campaign funding to a shift in the types of candidates the parties support. If we want a government for the people, we have to start working toward a government that is truly by the people. White-Collar Government challenges long-held notions about the causes of political inequality in the United States and speaks to enduring questions about representation and political 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 Congress Overwhelmed written by Timothy M. LaPira and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2020-12-07 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Congress today is falling short. Fewer bills, worse oversight, and more dysfunction. But why? In a new volume of essays, the contributors investigate an underappreciated reason Congress is struggling: it doesn’t have the internal capacity to do what our constitutional system requires of it. Leading scholars chronicle the institutional decline of Congress and the decades-long neglect of its own internal investments in the knowledge and expertise necessary to perform as a first-rate legislature. Today’s legislators and congressional committees have fewer—and less expert and experienced—staff than the executive branch or K Street. This leaves them at the mercy of lobbyists and the administrative bureaucracy. The essays in Congress Overwhelmed assess Congress’s declining capacity and explore ways to upgrade it. Some provide broad historical scope. Others evaluate the current decay and investigate how Congress manages despite the obstacles. Collectively, they undertake the most comprehensive, sophisticated appraisal of congressional capacity to date, and they offer a new analytical frame for thinking about—and improving—our underperforming first branch of government.
Download or read book Act of Congress written by Robert G. Kaiser and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2014-01-28 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Washington Post Notable Book An eye-opening account of how Congress today really works—and how it doesn’t— Act of Congress focuses on two of the major players behind the sweeping financial reform bill enacted in response to the Great Crash of 2008: colorful, wisecracking congressman Barney Frank, and careful, insightful senator Christopher Dodd, both of whom met regularly with Robert G. Kaiser during the eighteen months they worked on the bill. In this compelling narrative, Kaiser shows how staffers play a critical role, drafting the legislation and often making the crucial deals. Kaiser’s rare insider access enabled him to illuminate the often-hidden intricacies of legislative enterprise and shows us the workings of Congress in all of its complexity, a clearer picture than any we have had of how Congress works best—or sometimes doesn’t work at all.
Download or read book Enactment of a Law written by Robert B. Dove and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Setting Course written by Craig Schultz and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Republic No More written by Jay Cost and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2016-07-12 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin was asked, “Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?” Franklin’s response: “A Republic—if you can keep it.” This book argues: we couldn’t keep it. A true republic privileges the common interest above the special interests. To do this, our Constitution established an elaborate system of checks and balances that disperses power among the branches of government, which it places in conflict with one another. The Framers believed that this would keep grasping, covetous factions from acquiring enough power to dominate government. Instead, only the people would rule. Proper institutional design is essential to this system. Each branch must manage responsibly the powers it is granted, as well as rebuke the other branches when they go astray. This is where subsequent generations have run into trouble: we have overloaded our government with more power than it can handle. The Constitution’s checks and balances have broken down because the institutions created in 1787 cannot exercise responsibly the powers of our sprawling, immense twenty-first-century government. The result is the triumph of special interests over the common interest. James Madison called this factionalism. We know it as political corruption. Corruption today is so widespread that our government is not really a republic, but rather a special interest democracy. Everybody may participate, yes, but the contours of public policy depend not so much on the common good, as on the push-and-pull of the various interest groups encamped in Washington, DC.
Download or read book Congress and the Politics of Problem Solving written by E. Scott Adler and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-14 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do issues end up on the agenda? Why do lawmakers routinely invest in program oversight and broad policy development? What considerations drive legislative policy change? For many, Congress is an institution consumed by partisan bickering and gridlock. Yet the institution's long history of addressing significant societal problems - even in recent years - seems to contradict this view. Congress and the Politics of Problem Solving argues that the willingness of many voters to hold elected officials accountable for societal conditions is central to appreciating why Congress responds to problems despite the many reasons mustered for why it cannot. The authors show that, across decades of policy making, problem-solving motivations explain why bipartisanship is a common pattern of congressional behavior and offer the best explanation for legislative issue attention and policy change.
Download or read book The Pig Book written by Citizens Against Government Waste and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2005-04-06 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compendium of the most ridiculous examples of Congress's pork-barrel spending.
Download or read book Insecure Majorities written by Frances E. Lee and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2016-08-23 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “[A] tour de force. Building upon her argument in Beyond Ideology, she adds an important wrinkle into the current divide between the parties in Congress.” —Perspectives on Politics As Democrats and Republicans continue to vie for political advantage, Congress remains paralyzed by partisan conflict. That the last two decades have seen some of the least productive Congresses in recent history is usually explained by the growing ideological gulf between the parties, but this explanation misses another fundamental factor influencing the dynamic. In contrast to politics through most of the twentieth century, the contemporary Democratic and Republican parties compete for control of Congress at relative parity, and this has dramatically changed the parties’ incentives and strategies in ways that have driven the contentious partisanship characteristic of contemporary American politics. With Insecure Majorities, Frances E. Lee offers a controversial new perspective on the rise of congressional party conflict, showing how the shift in competitive circumstances has had a profound impact on how Democrats and Republicans interact. Beginning in the 1980s, most elections since have offered the prospect of a change of party control. Lee shows, through an impressive range of interviews and analysis, how competition for control of the government drives members of both parties to participate in actions that promote their own party’s image and undercut that of the opposition, including the perpetual hunt for issues that can score political points by putting the opposing party on the wrong side of public opinion. More often than not, this strategy stands in the way of productive bipartisan cooperation—and it is also unlikely to change as long as control of the government remains within reach for both parties.
Download or read book Congressional Government written by Woodrow Wilson and published by . This book was released on 1901 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Federalist Papers written by Alexander Hamilton and published by Read Books Ltd. This book was released on 2018-08-20 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Classic Books Library presents this brand new edition of “The Federalist Papers”, a collection of separate essays and articles compiled in 1788 by Alexander Hamilton. Following the United States Declaration of Independence in 1776, the governing doctrines and policies of the States lacked cohesion. “The Federalist”, as it was previously known, was constructed by American statesman Alexander Hamilton, and was intended to catalyse the ratification of the United States Constitution. Hamilton recruited fellow statesmen James Madison Jr., and John Jay to write papers for the compendium, and the three are known as some of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Alexander Hamilton (c. 1755–1804) was an American lawyer, journalist and highly influential government official. He also served as a Senior Officer in the Army between 1799-1800 and founded the Federalist Party, the system that governed the nation’s finances. His contributions to the Constitution and leadership made a significant and lasting impact on the early development of the nation of the United States.
Download or read book Under the Iron Dome written by Paul S. Herrnson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-09-19 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a glimpse into the professional lives of members of Congress and the staff, political consultants, and others who work beneath the Capitol’s iconic dome. It shows some of the historic challenges, daily trials and tribulations, and public and private triumphs and failures that defi ne working life on the Hill. Original chapters by practitioners who have been there off er a fresh understanding of congressional elections, policy making, and party leadership, as well as landmark institutional developments, such as the growing influence of women and minorities in the legislative process. Each author brings a personal knowledge of Congress, providing unique insight into the opaque world of committee assignments, the hustle and bustle of fl oor activity, the cross- examination of committee testimony, and the beehive of activity in a member’s Washington or district offi ce, or committee’s office. Collectively, they provide keen insights into the institutions, procedures, and politics that shape congressional policy making. Additionally, the historic two impeachments of then- President Donald J. Trump are examined to showcase some of the extraordinary politics taking place on Capitol Hill. Aimed at anyone working in Congress or wanting to infl uence public policy, this book is also an excellent classroom supplement for political science courses at every level and a compelling read for citizens who want to understand how Congress works and why it sometimes does not.
Download or read book The American Congress written by Julian E. Zelizer and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2004-09-21 with total page 800 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Congress is the heart and soul of our democracy, the place where interests are brokered, laws are established, and innovation is turned into concrete action. It is also where some of democracy's greatest virtues clash with its worst vices: idealism and compromise meet corruption and bitter partisanship. The American Congress unveils the rich and varied history of this singular institution. Julian E. Zelizer has gathered together forty essays by renowned historians to capture the full drama, landmark legislation, and most memorable personalities of Congress. Organized around four major periods of congressional history, from the signing of the Constitution to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, this volume brings a fresh perspective to familiar watershed events: the Civil War, Watergate, the Vietnam War. It also gives a behind-the-scenes look at lesser-known legislation debated on the House and Senate floors, such as westward expansion and war powers control. Here are the stories behind the 1868 vote to impeach President Andrew Johnson; the rise of Jeannette Rankin, the first woman elected to Congress and a leading advocate for pacifism; and the controversy surrounding James Eastland of Mississippi, who carried civil rights bills in his pockets so they could not come up for a vote. Sidebars further spotlight notables including Huey Long, Sam Rayburn, and Tip O'Neill, bringing the sweeping history of our lawmaking bodies into sharp focus. If you've ever wondered how Congress worked in the past or what our elected officials do today, this book gives the engaging, often surprising, answers.
