[M] David R. Mayhew. 2004. Congress: The Electoral Connection. 2nd ed. Yale University Press. ISBN: 9780300105872.
[K] Keith Krehbiel. 1998. Pivotal Politics. University of Chicago Press. ISBN: 9780226452722.
[R] David W. Rohde. 1991. Parties and Leaders in the Postreform House of Representatives. University of Chicago Press. ISBN: 9780226724072.
[C] Gary W. Cox and Mathew D. McCubbins. 2005. Setting the Agenda. Cambridge University Press. ISBN: 9780521619967.
Week 1
No readings assigned.
Week 2: Theories of legislative behavior
Donald R. Matthews. 1959. “The folkways of the United States Senate.” American Political Science Review, vol. 53, pp. 1064–1089.
Richard F. Fenno. 1962. “The House Appropriations Committee as a political system.” American Political Science Review, vol. 56, pp. 310–324.
[M] Introduction, Chap. 1, and pp. 141–158. [Preview with Google Books]
Kenneth A. Shepsle and Barry R. Weingast. 1994. “Positive theories of congressional institutions.” Legislative Studies Quarterly, vol. 19, pp. 149–179.
[K] Chaps. 1–2. [Preview with Google Books]
Week 3: Congressional representation
Warren Miller and Donald Stokes. 1963. “Constituency influence in Congress.” American Political Science Review, vol. 57, pp. 45–56.
Richard F. Fenno. 1977. “U.S. House members and their constituencies: An exploration.” American Political Science Review, vol. 71, pp. 883–917. (The book-length treatment is Home Style, which you should be familiar with eventually.)
Brandice Canes-Wrone, David W. Brady, and John F. Cogan. 2002. “Out of step, out of office: Electoral accountability and House members’ voting.” American Political Science Review, vol. 96, pp. 127–140.
Jamie Carson, et al. 2010. “The electoral costs of party loyalty in Congress.” American Journal of Political Science, vol. 54, pp. 598–616.
Justin Grimmer. 2013. “Appropriators not position takers: The distorting effects of electoral incentives on congressional representation.” American Journal of Political Science, vol. 57, pp. 624–642.
David E. Broockman. 2016. “Approaches to studying policy representation.” Legislative Studies Quarterly, vol. 41, pp. 181–215.
Week 4: Representation of race, gender, religion, and class
David T. Canon. 1999. Race, Redistricting and Representation, chap. 4. University of Chicago Press. ISBN: 9780226092713.
Michele L. Swers. 1998. “Are women more likely to vote for women’s issue bills than their male colleagues?” Legislative Studies Quarterly, vol. 23, pp. 435–448.
Nicholas Carnes. 2012. “Does the numerical underrepresentation of the working class in Congress matter?” Legislative Studies Quarterly, vol. 37, pp. 5–34.
Nicole Asmussen Mathew. 2018. “Evangelizing Congress: The emergence of evangelical Republicans and party polarization in Congress.” Legislative Studies Quarterly, vol. 43, pp. 409–455.
Week 5: Congressional elections
Edward R. Tufte. 1975. “Determinants of the outcomes of midterm congressional elections.” American Political Science Review, vol. 69, pp. 812–826.
Gary Jacobson. 1978. “The effects of campaign spending on congressional elections.” American Political Science Review, vol. 72, pp. 469–491.
Donald P. Green and Jonathan S. Krasno. 1988. “Salvation for the spendthrift incumbent: Reestimating the effects of campaign spending in House elections.” American Journal of Political Science, vol. 32, pp. 884–907.
Robert S. Erikson and Thomas R. Palfrey. 2000. “Equilibria in campaign spending games: Theory and data.” American Political Science Review, vol. 94, pp. 595–609.
Jowei Chen and Jonathan Rodden. 2013. “Unintentional gerrymandering: Political geography and electoral bias in legislatures.” Quarterly Journal of Political Science, vol. 8, pp. 239–269.
Nicholas O. Stephanopoulos and Eric M. McGhee. 2015. “Partisan gerrymandering and the efficiency gap.” University of Chicago Law Review, vol. 82, pp. 831–900.
Week 6: Congressional candidates, careers, and the incumbency advantage
Robert S. Erikson. 1971. “The advantage of incumbency in congressional elections.” Polity, vol. 3, pp. 395–405.
David R. Mayhew. 1974. “Congressional elections: The case of the vanishing marginals.” Polity, vol. 6, pp. 295–317.
Thomas E. Mann and Raymond E. Wolfinger. 1980. “Candidates and parties in congressional elections.” American Political Science Review, vol. 74, pp. 617–632.
Bruce E. Cain, John A. Ferejohn, and Morris P. Fiorina. 1984. “The constituency service basis of the personal vote for US representatives and British members of Parliament.” American Political Science Review vol. 78, pp. 110–125. (NB: This is essentially the same argument as the Cain, Ferejohn, and Fiorina book, The Personal Vote, in the “additional readings.”)
Gary C. Jacobson. 1989. “Strategic politicians and the dynamics of U.S. House elections, 1946–1986.” American Political Science Review, vol. 83, pp. 773–793. (NB: This is essentially the same argument as the Jacobson and Kernell book, Strategy and Choice, in “additional readings.”)
Stephen Ansolabehere, James M. Snyder, Jr., and Charles Stewart III. 2000. “Old voters, new voters, and the personal vote: Using redistricting to measure the incumbency advantage.” American Journal of Political Science, vol. 44, pp. 17–34.
———. 2001. “Candidate positioning in U.S. House elections.” American Journal of Political Science, vol. 45, pp. 136–59.
Jamie Carson, Eric Engstrom, and Jason Roberts. 2007. “Candidate quality, the personal vote, and the incumbency advantage in Congress.” American Political Science Review, vol. 101, pp. 289–301.
Gary C. Jacobson. 2015. “Its Nothing Personal: The decline of the incumbency advantage in U.S. House elections.” Journal of Politics, vol. 77, pp. 861–73.
Week 7: Committees
Richard F. Fenno. 1973. Congressmen in Committees, Introduction, chaps. 1–2. Little, Brown.
Kenneth A. Shepsle. 1979. “Institutional arrangements and equilibrium in multidimensional voting models.” American Journal of Political Science, vol. 23, pp. 27–59.
Kenneth A. Shepsle and Barry R. Weingast. 1987. “The institutional foundations of committee power.” American Political Science Review, vol. 81, pp. 85–104.
Thomas W. Gilligan and Keith Krehbiel. 1990. “Organization of informative committees by a rational legislature.” American Journal of Political Science, vol. 34, pp. 531–564. {NB: The core of this article’s argument is further developed — along with a comprehensive critique of then-extant theories of legislative organization — in Krehbiel’s book, Information and legislative organization, in the “additional readings” section.)
Forrest Maltzman and Steven S. Smith. 1994. “Principals, goals, dimensionality, and congressional committees.” Legislative Studies Quarterly, vol. 19, pp. 457–476.
James M. Curry. 2019. “Knowledge, expertise, and committee power in the contemporary Congress.” Legislative Studies Quarterly, vol. 44, pp. 203–237.
Week 8: Parties and leadership I
[R] Chaps. 1–3, skim the rest. [Preview with Google Books]
Joseph Cooper and David W. Brady. 1981. “Institutional context and leadership style: The House from Cannon to Rayburn.” American Political Science Review, vol. 75, pp. 411–425.
David W. Brady. 1985. “A reevaluation of realignments in American politics: Evidence from the House of Representatives.” American Political Science Review, vol. 79, pp. 28–49.
Jason M. Roberts and Steven S. Smith. 2003. “Procedural contexts, party strategy, and conditional party voting in the U.S. House of Representatives, 1971–2000.” American Journal of Political Science, vol. 47, pp. 305–317.
David R. Rohde. 2013. “Reflections on the practice of theorizing: Conditional party government in the twenty-first century.” Journal of Politics, vol. 75, pp. 849–864.
Sarah Binder. 2018. “Dodging the rules in Trump’s Republican Congress.” Journal of Politics, vol. 80, pp. 1454–1463.
Andrew Ballard and James Curry. 2021. “Minority party capacity in Congress.” American Political Science Review, vol. 115, pp. 1388– 1405.
Week 9: Parties and leadership II
[C] Chaps. 1 and 2. [Preview with Google Books]
Keith Krehbiel. 1993. “Where’s the party?” British Journal of Political Science, vol. 23, pp. 235–266.
Stephen Ansolabehere, James M. Snyder, and Charles Stewart III. 2001. “The effects of party and preferences on congressional roll-call voting.” Legislative Studies Quarterly, vol. 26, pp. 533–572.
Frances E. Lee. 2009. Beyond Ideology. Chaps. 1, 7, and 8. University of Chicago Press. ISBN: 9780226470764. [Preview with Google Books]
Andrew J. Clarke. 2020. “Party sub-brands and American party factions.” American Journal of Political Science, vol. 64, pp. 452–470.
Week 10: Decision-making
John Jackson and John W. Kingdon. 1992. “Ideology, interest group scores, and legislative votes.” American Journal of Political Science, vol. 36, pp. 805–823.
John Kingdon. 1973. Congressmen’s voting decisions. ISBN: 9780060436568. (Read Chaps. 1 and 10, and then skim through Chaps. 2–8.)
Clyde Wilcox and Aage Clausen. 1991. “The dimensionality of roll-call voting reconsidered.” Legislative Studies Quarterly, vol. 16, pp. 393–406.
Keith T. Poole and Howard Rosenthal. 1991. “Patterns of congressional voting.” American Journal of Political Science, vol. 35, pp. 228–278.
Joshua Clinton, Simon Jackman, and Douglas Rivers. 2004. “The statistical analysis of roll call data.” American Political Science Review, vol. 98, pp. 355–370.
Keith T. Poole, and Howard Rosenthal. 2001. “D-NOMINATE after 10 years: A comparative update to Congress: A political-economic history of roll-call voting.” Legislative Studies Quarterly, vol. 26, pp. 5–29.
Jason M. Roberts, Steven S. Smith, and Stephen R. Haptonstahl. 2015. “The dimensionality of congressional voting reconsidered.” American Politics Research, vol. 44, pp. 794–815.
Devin Caughey and Eric Schickler. 2016. “Substance and change in congressional ideology: NOMINATE and its alternatives.” Studies in American Political Development, vol. 30, pp. 128–146.
Week 11: Policymaking and interbranch relations
Mathew D. McCubbins and Thomas Schwartz. 1984. “Congressional oversight overlooked: Police patrols versus fire alarms.” American Journal of Political Science, vol. 28, pp. 165–179.
Terry M. Moe. 1987. “An assessment of the positive theory of congressional dominance.” Legislative Studies Quarterly, vol. 28, pp. 475–520.
Nolan M. McCarty and Keith T. Poole. 1995. “Veto power and legislation: An empirical analysis of executive and legislative bargaining from 1961 to 1986.” Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization, vol. 11, pp. 282–312.
Jeffrey A. Segal. 1997. “Separation-of-powers games in the positive theory of Congress and courts.” American Political Science Review, vol. 91, pp. 28–44.
Charles M. Cameron and Nolan McCarty. 2004. “Models of vetoes and veto bargaining.” Annual Review of Political Science, vol. 7, pp. 409–435. (NB: This article contains much of the core of Cameron’s book, Veto Bargaining, which is listed among the additional readings.)
Hans J. G. Hassell and Samuel Kernell. 2015. “Veto rhetoric and legislative riders.” American Journal of Political Science, vol. 60, pp. 845–859.
Week 12: Party polarization and the new “New Congress”
Sarah A. Binder. 1999. “The dynamics of legislative gridlock, 1947–96.” American Political Science Review, vol. 93, pp. 519–534.
Erik Schickler, Eric McGhee, and John Sides. 2003. “Remaking the House and Senate: Personal power, ideology, and the 1970s reforms.” Legislative Studies Quarterly, vol. 28, pp. 297–331.
Nolan M. McCarty, Keith T. Poole, and Howard Rosenthal. 2016. Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches, chap. 2. 2nd ed. MIT Press. ISBN: 9780262528627. [Buy at MIT Press.] [Preview with Google Books]
Nolan McCarty, Keith T. Poole, and Howard Rosenthal. 2009. “Does gerrymandering cause polarization?” American Journal of Political Science, vol. 53, pp. 666–680.
Thomas L. Brunell and Justin Buchler. 2009. “Ideological representation and competitive congressional elections.” Electoral Studies, vol. 28, pp. 448–457.
Joseph Bafumi and Michael C. Herron. 2010. “Leapfrog representation and extremism: A study of American voters and their members in Congress.” American Political Science Review, vol. 104, pp. 519–542.
Marc Trussler. 2020. “Get information or get in formation: The effects of high-information environments on legislative elections.” British Journal of Political Science, vol. 51, pp. 1529–1549.
Week 13: History and development of Congress
Nelson W. Polsby. 1968. “The institutionalization of the U.S. House of Representatives.” American Political Science Review, vol. 62, pp. 144–168.
Jeffery A. Jenkins and Charles Stewart III. 2018. “The deinstitutionalization (?) Of the House of Representatives: Reflections on Nelson Polsby’s ‘The Institutionalization of the House of Representatives’ at Fifty.” Studies in American Political Development, vol. 32, pp. 166–187.
Jonathan N. Katz and Brian R. Sala. 1996. “Careerism, committee assignments, and the electoral connection.” American Political Science Review, vol. 90, pp. 21–33.
Sarah Binder. 1996. “The partisan basis of procedural choice: Allocating parliamentary rights in the House, 1789–1990.” American Political Science Review, vol. 90, pp. 8 – 20. (NB: This is a boiled-down version of her book, Minority rights, majority rule, in the “additional readings” section for this week.)
Eric Schickler. 2000. “Institutional change in the House of Representatives, 1867–1998.” American Political Science Association, vol. 94, pp. 269–288.
Sarah Binder. 2006. “Parties and institutional choice revisited.” Legislative Studies Quarterly, vol. 31, pp. 513–532.
Eric Schickler and Gregory Wawro. 2004. “Where’s the pivot? Obstruction and lawmaking in the pre-cloture Senate.” American Journal of Political Science, vol. 48, pp. 758–774. [NB: This is a boiled-down version of their book, Filibuster, in the “additional readings” section for this week.]
Sarah Binder. 2019. “How we (should ?) study Congress and history.” Public Choice, vol. 185, pp. 415–427.
