[PDF] Critical Elections And Congressional Policy Making eBook
Critical Elections And Congressional Policy Making Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle version is available to download in english. Read online anytime anywhere directly from your device. Click on the download button below to get a free pdf file of Critical Elections And Congressional Policy Making book. This book definitely worth reading, it is an incredibly well-written.
This book argues that, despite the scholarly emphasis on 20th-century congressional history, it is necessary to study the nation's first 150 years in order to understand more fully the evolution and functioning of the modern Congress—a time when parties emerged, developed, realigned, and dissapeared; Congressional standing rules changed; the workload of Congress increased dramatically; and both houses grew greatly in size.
How do public laws, treaties, Senate confirmations, and other legislative achievements help us to gain insight into how our governmental system performs? This well-argued book edited by Scott Adler and John Lapinski is the first to assess our political institutions by looking at what the authors refer to as legislative accomplishment. The book moves beyond current research on Congress that focuses primarily on rules, internal structure, and the microbehavior of individual lawmakers, to look at the mechanisms that govern how policy is enacted and implemented in the United States. It includes essays on topics ranging from those dealing with the microfoundations of congressional output, to large N empirical analyses that assess current theories of lawmaking, to policy-centered case studies. All of the chapters take a Congress-centered perspective on macropolicy while still appreciating the importance of other branches of government in explaining policy accomplishment. The Macropolitics of Congress shines light on promising pathways for the exploration of such key issues as the nature of political representation. It will make a significant contribution to the study of Congress and, more generally, to our understanding of American politics. Contributors include E. Scott Adler, David Brady, Charles M. Cameron, Brandice Canes-Wrone, Robert S. Erikson, Grace R. Freedman, Valerie Heitshusen, John D. Huber, Ira Katznelson, Keith Krehbiel, John S. Lapinski, David Leblang, Michael B. MacKuen, David R. Mayhew, Nolan McCarty, Charles R. Shipan, James A. Stimson, and Garry Young.
Contributors to this remarkable volume on the development and current status of the United States Congress use perspectives from history and comparative politics to study congressional law making, congressional debate, public support, the absence of leaders in congress, congressional oversight of administration, congress and public finance, and corruption. The Essays are based on the Thomas P. O'Neill, Jr., Symposium on the U.S. Congress held at Boston College in 1981. The United States Congress gives us a portrait of the national legislature at a critical moment in its history, and seeks to provide timely answers to fundamental questions: What is deliberation and how can Congress become a more deliberative institution? How have congressional elections changed? Has the relationship between voters and congressmen gone sour? Can Congress write a budget, direct the federal bureaucracy, or devise a sensible foreign policy? How has the nature of leadership within the Congress changed in recent years? And, above all, what is the Congress of the United States supposed to be and to do?
Author : David R Jones Publisher : University of Michigan Press Page : 234 pages File Size : 12,70 MB Release : 2010-07-22 Category : Political Science ISBN : 047203409X
"Jones and McDermott restore meaning to democratic responsibility by finding that public evaluations affect Congress. In contrast to the popular depiction of the representatives controlling the represented rampant in the political science literature, Jones and McDermott show that the people are in control, determining not only the direction of policy in Congress, but also who stays, who retires, and who faces difficult reelection efforts. This book makes an important correction to our understanding of how Congress operates." ---Sean M. Theriault, University of Texas at Austin Voters may not know the details of specific policies, but they have a general sense of how well Congress serves their own interests; and astute politicians pay attention to public approval ratings. When the majority party is unpopular, as during the 2008 election, both voters and politicians take a hand in reconfiguring the House and the Senate. Voters throw hard-line party members out of office while candidates who continue to run under the party banner distance themselves from party ideology. In this way, public approval directly affects policy shifts as well as turnovers at election time. Contrary to the common view of Congress as an insulated institution, Jones and McDermott argue that Congress is indeed responsive to the people of the United States. David R. Jones is Professor of Political Science at Baruch College, City University of New York. Monika L. McDermott is Associate Professor of Political Science at Fordham University.
'...Valuable for its chronological scope and for the many facets of American political history, state as well as national, which the authors cover from their theoretical perspective. It is also well organized and clearly written.' -- Canadian Journal of History, April l982
Author : Robert G Boatright Publisher : University of Michigan Press Page : 454 pages File Size : 47,46 MB Release : 2013-03-19 Category : Political Science ISBN : 0472029045
Each of the past few election cycles has featured at least one instance of "primarying," a challenge to an incumbent on the grounds that he or she is not sufficiently partisan. For many observers, such races signify an increasingly polarized electorate and an increasing threat to moderates of both parties. In Getting Primaried, Robert G. Boatright shows that primary challenges are not becoming more frequent; they wax and wane in accordance with partisan turnover in Congress. The recent rise of primarying corresponds to the rise of national fundraising bases and new types of partisan organizations supporting candidates around the country. National fundraising efforts and interest group–supported primary challenges have garnered media attention disproportionate to their success in winning elections. Such challenges can work only if groups focus on a small number of incumbents. Getting Primaried makes several key contributions to congressional scholarship. It presents a history of congressional primary challenges over the past forty years, measuring the frequency of competitive challenges and distinguishing among types of challenges. It provides a correction to accounts of the link between primary competition and political polarization. Further, this study offers a new theoretical understanding of the role of interest groups in congressional elections.