Congressional Record

Congressional Record PDF Author: United States. Congress
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 1324

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Book Description

Congressional Record

Congressional Record PDF Author: United States. Congress
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 1324

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Book Description


Choosing the Leader

Choosing the Leader PDF Author: Matthew N. Green
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300222572
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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Book Description
The first comprehensive study in more than forty years to explain congressional leadership selection How are congressional party leaders chosen? In the first comprehensive study since Robert Peabody's classic Leadership in Congress, political scientists Matthew Green and Douglas Harris draw on newly collected data about U.S. House members who have sought leadership positions from the 1960s to the present--data including whip tallies, public and private vote commitments, interviews, and media accounts--to provide new insights into how the selection process truly works. Elections for congressional party leaders are conventionally seen as a function of either legislators' ideological preferences or factors too idiosyncratic to permit systematic analysis. Analyzing six decades' worth of information, Harris and Green find evidence for a new comprehensive model of vote choice in House leadership elections that incorporates both legislators' goals and their connections with leadership candidates. This study will stand for years to come as the definitive treatment of a crucial aspect of American politics.

Congressional Giants

Congressional Giants PDF Author: J. Michael Martinez
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793616086
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
The Congress of the United States operates in the shadow of the American presidency, which can make the legislative branch appear less important than the executive in our constitutional system of government. And yet Congress is a co-equal branch of government, deriving its powers from Article I of the United States Constitution. Love it or hate it, the institution is a source of incredible power. It behooves all Americans to learn more about Congress. Although a single slender volume cannot provide information on all there is to know about Congress, it can begin the journey. In Congressional Giants, political scientist J. Michael Martinez explores the careers and achievements of 14 influential leaders of Congress—men who either held formal positions within the chambers of Congress, such as speaker of the House of Representatives or Senate majority leader, or who served on important committees--to determine how they shaped the course of American history.

The Oxford Handbook of the American Congress

The Oxford Handbook of the American Congress PDF Author: Eric Schickler
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191628263
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1444

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Book Description
No legislature in the world has a greater influence over its nation's public affairs than the US Congress. The Congress's centrality in the US system of government has placed research on Congress at the heart of scholarship on American politics. Generations of American government scholars working in a wide range of methodological traditions have focused their analysis on understanding Congress, both as a lawmaking and a representative institution. The purpose of this volume is to take stock of this impressive and diverse literature, identifying areas of accomplishment and promising directions for future work. The editors have commissioned 37 chapters by leading scholars in the field, each chapter critically engages the scholarship focusing on a particular aspect of congressional politics, including the institution's responsiveness to the American public, its procedures and capacities for policymaking, its internal procedures and development, relationships between the branches of government, and the scholarly methodologies for approaching these topics. The Handbook also includes chapters addressing timely questions, including partisan polarization, congressional war powers, and the supermajoritarian procedures of the contemporary Senate. Beyond simply bringing readers up to speed on the current state of research, the volume offers critical assessments of how each literature has progressed - or failed to progress - in recent decades. The chapters identify the major questions posed by each line of research and assess the degree to which the answers developed in the literature are persuasive. The goal is not simply to tell us where we have been as a field, but to set an agenda for research on Congress for the next decade. The Oxford Handbooks of American Politics are a set of reference books offering authoritative and engaging critical overviews of the state of scholarship on American politics. Each volume focuses on a particular aspect of the field. The project is under the General Editorship of George C. Edwards III, and distinguished specialists in their respective fields edit each volume. The Handbooks aim not just to report on the discipline, but also to shape it as scholars critically assess the scholarship on a topic and propose directions in which it needs to move. The series is an indispensable reference for anyone working in American politics. General Editor for The Oxford Handbooks of American Politics: George C. Edwards III

Parties and Leaders in the Postreform House

Parties and Leaders in the Postreform House PDF Author: David W. Rohde
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226724065
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Since the Second World War, congressional parties have been characterized as declining in strength and influence. Research has generally attributed this decline to policy conflicts within parties, to growing electoral independence of members, and to the impact of the congressional reforms of the 1970s. Yet the 1980s witnessed a strong resurgence of parties and party leadership—especially in the House of Representatives. Offering a concise and compelling explanation of the causes of this resurgence, David W. Rohde argues that a realignment of electoral forces led to a reduction of sectional divisions within the parties—particularly between the northern and southern Democrats—and to increased divergence between the parties on many important issues. He challenges previous findings by asserting that congressional reform contributed to, rather than restrained, the increase of partisanship. Among the Democrats, reforms siphoned power away from conservative and autocratic committee chairs and put control of those committees in the hands of Democratic committee caucuses, strengthening party leaders and making both party and committee leaders responsible to rank-and-file Democrats. Electoral changes increased the homogeneity of House Democrats while institutional reforms reduced the influence of dissident members on a consensus in the majority party. Rohde's accessible analysis provides a detailed discussion of the goals of the congressional reformers, the increased consensus among Democrats and its reinforcement by their caucus, the Democratic leadership's use of expanded powers to shape the legislative agenda, and the responses of House Republicans. He also addresses the changes in the relationship between the House majority and the president during the Carter and Reagan administrations and analyzes the legislative consequences of the partisan resurgence. A readable, systematic synthesis of the many complex factors that fueled the recent resurgence of partisanship, Parties and Leaders in the Postreform House is ideal for course use.

Party Discipline in the U.S. House of Representatives

Party Discipline in the U.S. House of Representatives PDF Author: Kathryn Pearson
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472119613
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
A breakthrough study that looks at the disciplinary measures which party leaders employ to command loyalty from members

Insecure Majorities

Insecure Majorities PDF Author: Frances E. Lee
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022640918X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
“[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.

Congressional Government

Congressional Government PDF Author: Woodrow Wilson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Executive power
Languages : en
Pages : 374

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Legislating in the Dark

Legislating in the Dark PDF Author: James M. Curry
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022628185X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Political science scholar James M. Curry explores the inner workings of Congress’s House of Representatives in this thought-provoking analysis. The 2009 financial stimulus bill ran to more than 1,100 pages, yet it wasn’t even given to Congress in its final form until thirteen hours before debate was set to begin, and it was passed twenty-eight hours later. How are representatives expected to digest so much information in such a short time? The answer? They aren’t. With Legislating in the Dark, James M. Curry reveals that the availability of information about legislation is a key tool through which Congressional leadership exercises power. Through a deft mix of legislative analysis, interviews, and participant observation, Curry shows how congresspersons—lacking the time and resources to study bills deeply themselves—are forced to rely on information and cues from their leadership. By controlling their rank-and-file’s access to information, Congressional leaders are able to emphasize or bury particular items, exploiting their information advantage to push the legislative agenda in directions that they and their party prefer. Offering an unexpected new way of thinking about party power and influence, Legislating in the Dark will spark substantial debate in political science. “Curry brings fresh insight and a breadth of evidence to bear on the role of information in lawmaking, including extensive interviews with legislators and staff and in-depth case studies of several pieces of legislation. Engagingly written, the book will enhance our understandings of congressional lawmaking and leadership and will be of interest to scholars of legislative studies and public policy.” —Tracy Sulkin, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Party Influence in Congress

Party Influence in Congress PDF Author: Steven S. Smith
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139465252
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 17

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Book Description
Party Influence in Congress challenges current arguments and evidence about the influence of political parties in the US Congress. Steven S. Smith argues that theory must reflect policy, electoral, and collective party goals. These goals call for flexible party organizations and leadership strategies. They demand that majority party leaders control the flow of legislation; package legislation and time action to build winning majorities and attract public support; work closely with a president of their party; and influence the vote choices for legislators. Smith observes that the circumstantial evidence of party influence is strong, multiple collective goals remain active ingredients after parties are created, party size is an important factor in party strategy, both negative and positive forms of influence are important to congressional parties, and the needle-in-the-haystack search for direct influence continues to prove frustrating.