Description
Book SynopsisLawmaking is crucial to American democracy because it completely defines and regulates the public life of the nation. This title draws on a range of historical and empirical data to better understand how lawmaking works across different policy areas.
Trade Review"Lapinski develops a new tool kit to measure and analyze an expansive set of legislation and lawmakers' policy preferences from 1877 to 2010. His key contribution to the study of the American national legislature is his coding approach and the data development, which develops a deeper understanding of lawmaking. Through these, Lapinski offers findings about polarization, elite leadership in Congress, and the influence and impact of members of Congress and their policy preferences across different areas. This work will certainly contribute to developing a new discussion within the legislative studies field and give future political scientists new possibilities of expanding the research in the area."--Choice "He offers an astutely crafted schema that seems to this observer to avoid the trap of time boundedness and enables the APD enterprise to more systematically track the evolution of policy."--Ross K. Baker, Congress & The Presidency
Table of ContentsPreface vii Chapter I Policy Issue Substance and the Revitalization of Legislative Studies 1 * Why We Need to Restore Policy Issue Substance to Congressional Studies 4 * A Natural Connection: Congressional Studies, American Political Development, and Policy Studies 12 * The Organization of the Book 14 Chapter II Bringing Policy Issue Substance Back In 19 * Pitfalls of the Substantive Tradition 20 * Introducing a New Policy Classification Schema 24 * Conclusion 41 * Appendix: Coding Schema 41 Chapter III Political Polarization and Issues: A New Perspective 54 * Estimating Induced Preferences of Members of Congress 55 * Political Polarization and Policy Issue Substance 57 * House and Senate Party Unity Scores, 1877-2011 58 * Disaggregating Political Polarization 60 * Conclusion 64 * Appendix 65 Chapter IV The Case Studies: Policy Issue Substance and the Political Behavior of Members of Congress (with David Bateman) 69 * Reassessing the 95th Congress 69 * The Case Studies: Examining Sovereignty Policy across Time 74 * Conclusion 102 * Appendix 103 Chapter V Legislative Accomplishment and Policy Issue Substance 104 * Needed: Direct Measures of Legislative Accomplishment 105 * Measuring Legislative Significance 106 * Constructing Macro-Level Measures of Legislative Accomplishment 128 * Conclusion 132 Chapter VI Explaining Lawmaking in the United States, 1877-1994 133 * Critical Hypotheses and Covariates of Lawmaking 134 * Empirically Analyzing Lawmaking 138 * Conclusion 149 Chapter VII At the Crossroads: Policy Issue Substance, Congress, and American Political Development 150 * Ideas for American Political Development 152 * Ideas for Congressional Studies 159 Bibliography 161 Index 171
