Week 1
Week 2: Theories of legislative behavior
What sets the field of legislative studies apart from journalism and punditry is that it is guided by theories of behavior. Those theories have changed over time, however. This week, we’ll take a tour of the theoretical landscape to gain an appreciation of how it has developed over time, and how it continues to guide academic research into Congress.
Assignment due
- Discussion agenda memos
Week 3: Congressional representation
The principal idea behind legislatures is that they are representative in some way of the citizens. But in what way? This week, we examine one major theme in the representation literature as it has been applied to Congress: dyadic representation, which can be thought of as the policy responsiveness of legislators to the preferences of constituents.
Assignment due
- Discussion agenda memos
Week 4: Representation of race, gender, religion, and class
Descriptive representation has long been a topic in the study of legislative institutions. It particularly comes to the forefront of scholarship at times of social and political unrest. This appears to be such a time. Rather than subsume these important questions under the general rubric of dyadic representation, now seems an apt time to visit this literature in its own right.
Assignment due
- Discussion agenda memos
Week 5: Congressional elections
Representation in Congress is affected in the first instance by elections. Intervening between constituents and their representatives are the electoral institutions that structure how congressional seats are contested. This week we focus on those institutions, primarily districting and campaign finance.
Assignment due
- Discussion agenda memos
Week 6: Congressional candidates, careers, and the incumbency advantage
As they say, you can’t beat someone with no one. Although recent years have seen a decline in the “personal vote” and a rise of partisanship-as-vote-queue in congressional elections, it’s still the case that who runs for Congress and how candidates behave can have important influences on the outcomes of congressional elections. This week we look at some classic and newer works that attempt to puzzle out the influence that candidates themselves have on the outcomes of elections.
Assignment due
- Discussion agenda memos
Week 7: Committees
Congress, of course, is an institution. Institutions are characterized by formalized internal complexity. Despite what we observe with present-day gridlock, the American Congress has a reputation of being the most autonomous and capable of national legislatures, especially when considered against the power of the executive. Some would argue that this is because of the constitutional system of checks and balances, but constitutional doctrines aren’t self-executing. How Congress has organized itself has been of interest to political scientists since the dawn of political science. (Woodrow Wilson’s classic Congressional Government, which explored the practical functioning of Congress and its power in the American political system, was based on his doctoral dissertation, one of the very first dissertations written in the field of political science.) Here, we start with the committee system, which is often considered to be the source of Congress’s institutional capacity.
Assignments due
- “General exam” essay #1
- Discussion agenda memos
Week 8: Parties and leadership I
The second major institutional feature of Congress is leadership. The leadership of both chambers is organized around the political parties, which has been true pretty much since the Civil War. Because of the close association of leadership and party, we consider both together. However, this association has waxed and waned over the years, which justifies separating it out into two sessions. We start here by focusing on the organization of the leadership system and the notion of “conditional party government.”
Assignment due
- Discussion agenda memos
Week 9: Parties and leadership II
One of the topics that has provided focus for research into congressional leadership has been that of agenda-setting. Here, we are introduced to the “cartel theory” of Cox and McCubbins, and other efforts to explore in a focused way the implications of having party and leadership so closely aligned.
Assignment due
- Discussion agenda memos
Week 10: Decision-making
What happens on the floor of the two chambers of Congress is but the most visible part of legislative behavior. Political scientists have long been interested in explaining the decisions made by members of Congress, particularly their roll call behavior. This has led to rich literatures that have focused both on the decision-making process itself and on the evidentiary trail the process leaves, that is, roll call votes.
Assignment due
- Discussion agenda memos
Week 11: Policymaking and interbranch relations
Congress doesn’t act alone, of course. It exists in a system of power relations at the nation level. Despite the fact that one of the hallmarks of American institutions is the separation of power system—or more accurately, the system of separated institutions sharing power—the dynamics of this system are only occasionally the subject of scholarship. This week, we examine several of the most important approaches to this difficult subject of making sense of the consequences of this power-sharing arrangement in the constitutional system.
Assignments due
- “General exam” essay #2
- Discussion agenda memos
Week 12: Party polarization and the new “New Congress”
Two related questions have drawn the attention of scholars for at least a quarter of a century. The first is the presence of “gridlock” in the policymaking process since at least the Carter Administration. The second is the presence of “polarization” since at least the Reagan Administration. Both are phenomena that are front and center in both popular discourse and research. Here, we examine a set of readings that mostly attempt to locate the source of polarization/gridlock in public opinion and elections.
Assignment due
- Discussion agenda memos
Week 13: History and development of Congress
I typically finish up the semester with the topic near and dear to my heart, congressional history. There is something about the institutional development of Congress that has drawn virtually every prominent congressional scholar to its study, at least once. Furthermore, in a period when institutional scholarship has languished, developmental scholarship about Congress has continued to flourish. The following readings provide an introduction to the developmental/historical study of Congress, which should be examined by anyone serious about understanding the institution.
Assignments due
- “General exam” essay #3
- Discussion agenda memos
