How committee staffers clear the runway for legislative action in Congress
Admittedly, the audience at this spring’s “The State of Congressional Capacity Conference” was a receptive one. Congressional scholars from across the country gathered and presented research asking and… Read More
Concentrating implementation: How ideological agreement between the House and Senate affects delegation to the bureaucracy
Image source: The Hill By Jordan Carr Peterson Many scholars and observers of American legislative politics focus on the substantive public policies contained in laws Congress enacts. For instance,… Read More
What do Senators actually want for their states and what do they receive? The importance of priorities and easy political wins
Image source: Senate Appropriations By Jeremy Gelman When Congress is doling out money or projects, the evergreen question is who won and who lost? Indeed, after the passage of the… Read More
Democratic decay, legislative diplomacy, and the House Democracy Partnership
Image source: HDP By Ryan Dukeman Until very recently, “democratic backsliding” was a term consigned mostly to the annals of academic theory, concerned chiefly with perceived “democracy deficits”… Read More
Evaluating Congress’s information processing capacity
Two big questions emerged from the recent congressional capacity conference: “capacity for what?” and “capacity for whom?” These are great questions that ask us to think… Read More
Do competitive elections influence legislators’ productivity?
By Michael J. Barber and Soren J. Schmidt In terms of passing bills, the most recent congressional sessions have been the least productive of any during the past… Read More
What is “regular order” worth?
Image source: Washington Times By James M. Curry and Frances E. Lee Last month, Congress passed its latest omnibus spending deal, and it did so using legislative processes that… Read More
Building Article I Conservatism
By Philip Wallach The Federalist Society has been famously influential in shaping conservatives’ constitutional vision since its founding in 1982. Its promotion of original-meaning originalism and the concept of… Read More
The Senate – At War With Itself? A discussion with Molly Reynolds and James Wallner
In this Legislative Branch Capacity Working Group session, Senate experts James Wallner and Molly Reynolds consider the reasons for the Senate’s dysfunction. The wide ranging discussion touches on partisan dynamics,… Read More
Nothing is inevitable in politics, even in the Senate
Image source: CNN By James Wallner The future is not inevitable. And it cannot be predicted with certainty. There is no iron law of history according to which events unfold… Read More