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Do Republican and Democratic presidents vary in their geographic allocations of federal spending? Recent scholarship suggests that US presidents provide more federal outlays to districts represented by their co-partisans, but leave the issue of partisan affiliation unanswered. We explore that question using an updated database that covers federal spending programs over the 1984–2014 period. We show that the alignment effect found in previous studies cannot be observed for Republican presidents. We argue that Republican presidents may not use pork as much as Democratic presidents because their core constituency is fiscally conservative. One implication of the results reported herein is that the electoral benefits of distributive politics depend on the fiscal preferences of the electorate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relying on a multilevel approach to the behavior of members of Congress, this article explains why Arthur Vandenberg, J. William Fulbright, and Jesse Helms were particularly active chairs of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. It draws parallels between their careers and shows that similar factors explain why they were active: (a) crucial international events convinced them to play a leading role in the foreign policy debate; (b) the US political and social environments created policy windows for their activism; and (c) they possessed the necessary skills, interests, and convictions to play such a role. Our approach also explains why the three chairs displayed different types of activism (Vandenberg relied on legislative and nonlegislative collaboration with Harry Truman, Fulbright primarily on nonlegislative opposition to Lyndon Johnson, and Helms on legislative and nonlegislative opposition to Bill Clinton). Furthermore, this article explains why Fulbright was less successful than Vandenberg and Helms in convincing Congress and the President to adopt key legislations he introduced in the Senate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women are drastically underrepresented in American political institutions. This has prompted speculation about the impact of electing more women on policy and the functioning of government. Examining the growing presence of women in Congress, I demonstrate that women do exhibit unique policy priorities, focusing more on the needs of various groups of women. However, the incentive structure of the American electoral system, which rewards ideological purity, means that women are not likely to bring more consensus to Washington. Indeed, women's issues are now entrenched in the partisan divide. Since the 1990s, the majority of women elected to Congress have been Democrats, who have pursued their vision of women's interests while portraying Republican policies as harmful to women. In response, Republican women have been deployed to defend their party, further reducing the potential for bipartisan cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine patterns of congressional action and inaction on immigration issues in the USA over the past two decades, with attention to the impact of partisan polarisation and examples of the effects of public opinion on members' votes and the immigration agenda itself. Our analysis covers 391 immigration policy votes between 1993 and 2012. Analysing 10 Congresses allows us to test hypotheses about the effects of partisan polarisation on immigration policy-making in Congress over time. Congressional attention to immigration issues has waxed and waned, and relatively few bills were enacted in the period under study, although there were a considerable number of procedural votes on immigration measures. The relatively short list of enacted legislation over the 20-year period is due to the mechanisms that exist for stifling major change such as comprehensive immigration reform. On the other hand, in 2012 pressure for meaningful immigration reform increased as the result of powerful pro-reform coalitions, and the rising importance of a constituency of Latino voters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the prominence of the national news media, it is unclear whether elected officials are affected by the national news media in policy-consequential ways because of the difficulty of disentangling the influence of the media on Congress from Congress’s influence on the media. We use a unique opportunity to determine whether position-taking behavior in Congress and the likelihood of reelection is affected by the national news media. Using the fact that the Fox News Channel spread gradually across the United States after being launched in October of 1996 in ways unrelated to the ideology of congressional districts and the incumbent representatives, we show that representatives become less supportive of President Clinton in districts where Fox News begins broadcasting than similar representatives in similar districts where Fox News was not broadcast. Moreover, the effects took a few years to be realized, and the entry of Fox News in a district did not appear to affect which representatives were reelected. Consistent with theories emphasizing the anticipatory actions taken by elected officials to maximize their electoral security in the face of changing electoral conditions, our results suggest that the national media may slightly affect the prospects for policy change by altering representatives’ expectations and the positions that they take. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since controversy began to swirl surrounding then-President-elect Barack Obama's alleged overreliance on policy czars in late 2008, political scientists and pundits alike have been quick to view this approach to White House staffing as an extension of the imperial presidency and, to some, a threat to the constitutional order. In this article, I take a step back and ask whether the phenomenon under attack is exactly what scholars assume it is. In doing so, I investigate the conceptualization problem czars pose as well as how and why presidents actually use czars. I conclude with a series of suggestion for future presidents on how best to use policy czars to advance the interests of their administration and manage the executive institution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What explains the behavior of legislators on bills that restrict the rights of marginalized minorities? Studies of representation typically focus on factors like party or public opinion but seldom account for theories of minority representation like electoral capture or subconstituency politics. One reason for this is that data allowing for the comparison of these theories are seldom available for U.S. House districts. We overcome this hurdle by implementing multilevel regression with post-stratification to estimate opinion on gay marriage during the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act vote. We show that subconstituency politics explains legislators’ behavior better than electoral capture, party, or public opinion. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article focuses on the theory of Conditional Party Government (CPG). It seeks to recapitulate the development of the argument for CPG, pulling together various strands articulated during work on the theory over the last four decades in order to explain why the theory took the form it did. The discussion focuses on some of the most important evidence that relates to the predictions of CPG, in order to account for the evolution of the theory over time in interaction with that evidence. It also offers some reflections at various points on the implications of this theoretical and empirical effort for the study of Congress. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Signing statements constitute a salient executive power that has recently captured scholarly and political attention. Prior literature suggests that presidents use signing statements to gain additional policy concessions from Congress. Evidence of policy motivations are, however, difficult to demonstrate and policy motives fail to explain a wide range of existing statements. The authors propose an additional incentive mechanism based on defending traditional presidential authority. Using original data on approximately 8,500 public laws and 1,250 signing statements, the authors investigate when and why signing statements occur. They find presidents are likely to issue constitutional signing statements on bills traditionally falling under the president’s purview. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

While Congress can attempt to overrule constitutional decisions of the Supreme Court by initiating the constitutional amendment process, an amendment is rarely a practicable option. Instead, Congress regularly tries to modify the impact of constitutional decisions with ordinary legislation. I analyze policy-based responses to the Supreme Court's constitutional decisions that were initiated in Congress between 1995 and 2010. For each responsive proposal, I consider the relationship between the proposed legislation and the Court's legal holding and the relationship between the proposal and the public policy associated with the Court's decision. I find that Congress enjoys considerable success in reversing the policy impacts of the Court's decisions but is limited in its ability to overcome the Court's legal rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Natural experiments help to overcome some of the obstacles researchers face when making causal inferences in the social sciences. However, even when natural interventions are randomly assigned, some of the treatment–control comparisons made available by natural experiments may not be valid. We offer a framework for clarifying the issues involved, which are subtle and often overlooked. We illustrate our framework by examining four different natural experiments used in the literature. In each case, random assignment of the intervention is not sufficient to provide an unbiased estimate of the causal effect. Additional assumptions are required that are problematic. For some examples, we propose alternative research designs that avoid these conceptual difficulties. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Growing concern over gerrymandering has led some states to transfer redistricting responsibility from legislatures to commissions, boards, or other less overtly partisan bodies. These transfers in redistricting responsibility offer scholars an opportunity to study the impact of redistricting processes on elections. This study, focusing on congressional elections for the years 1982-2008, suggests that non-legislative methods of redistricting encouraged strong, well-financed challengers to step forward, and decreased the likelihood that incumbents would run unopposed. The data, however, do not show that non-legislative redistricting either reduced the typical margins of incumbents' victories or increased the likelihood that incumbents would lose. In fact, the data sometimes run contrary to expectations. This raises questions about the common contention (especially by reformers) that non-legislative approaches (NLA) will promote turnover of elected officials. The benefits of non-legislative redistricting depend both on the types of outcomes that are desired, and on the specific NLA that is adopted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article discusses weaknesses in the U.S. Congress' oversight of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The discussion focuses on the institutional deficiencies of the legislators' limited expertise in national security and the Congress not having enough budgetary power over the intelligence community. The constitutional foundation for Congress' intelligence oversight responsibilities is mentioned. The the electoral incentives for legislators, term limits on intelligence oversight committees, and secrecy in government which prevent effective oversight are discussed. How Congressional oversight can be improved is also discussed.

Identifying policy status quo locations is a precondition for testing key predictions of many spatial models of legislative politics, but such measures have proved to be extremely difficult to construct. This study applies a novel technique that measures policy locations in relation to legislators’ preferences. The resulting status quo estimates allow for a direct test of the policy consequences predicted by pivotal politics and party cartel theories of legislative politics. The empirical tests indicate that parties interact with pivotal politics to contribute to policy gridlock and shape policy change. By bringing pressure to bear on pivotal politics “pivots” and by blocking policy changes that would “roll” the party, parties increase the range of policies subject to gridlock in the American political system. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Few would dispute that federalism and intergovernmental relations in the United States are dynamic and ever-changing. The actions of the U.S. Congress and executive branch, U.S. Supreme Court cases, state innovations, and political, economic, and international events have direct effects on the relationships between and among governments—often advantaging one governmental level with more power, more discretion, or more responsibilities. It is important for scholars to recognize these actions and trends as they develop and test federalism and intergovernmental relations theories in the United States and as they compare these with federalism events and trends in other federal countries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Legislative committee hearings have attracted little attention from scholars, yet Schlozman and Tierney (1986) found that testifying is the advocacy tactic most frequently used by interest group lobbyists. I argue that opportunities to testify are valuable enough to lobbyists that they may be willing to put aside competitive differences with rival groups to jointly support committee agendas. I test this argument using data on lobbyist testimony before 20 committees on six issues from 1999 to 2002. The results suggest that whether legislators actually desire competing lobbyists to present a united front behind the committee may depend on the committee's own ideological relationship with the parent chamber. I also find that the attractiveness of the incentive to testify is less enticing to lobbyists when it requires them to compromise their organization's position on issues of importance to their members, or when competition between interest groups is especially great. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A theory of partisan control might expect that during times of divided government, approval of Congress and the presidency would move in opposite directions. Yet, the congressional approval question is an ambiguous one in the minds of voters and makes understanding the movement of the aggregated series much more difficult. Here, monthly congressional and presidential approval data for the 1995-2005 period are studied and found to move in tandem, even during periods of divided government. Multivariate ARFIMA models show a strong and positive relationship between congressional approval and lagged presidential approval, even during the period of fiercely divided government under President Clinton. This means that, rather than paying attention to partisan control, the electorate transfers feelings about the president to the institution of Congress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although numerous studies have assessed the influence of the 1990s redistricting on U.S. House elections, without exception, these published studies rely on aggregate data (e.g., district-level data). Likewise, the author uses aggregate data, but he also departs from previous studies by using survey data to assess the influence of redistricting on vote choice in the 1992 and 1994 U.S. House elections. Unlike past studies, with the use of survey data, the author makes more definitive statements regarding the effects of redistricting on vote choice. The 1990s redistricting was an important factor contributing to the Republicans' House majority because voters drawn into districts with a different incumbent standing for reelection were much more likely to vote Republican. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we provide a comprehensive, systematic examination of media coverage of Congress in the 1990s. Specifically, we content analyze over 2,600 congressional news stories from the New York Times and CBS Evening News from 1990 through 1998. We find that the news media covered substantive policy concerns and the legislative process quite regularly and that stories focusing on individual personalities and political scandals were comparatively infrequent. We also find that legislative maneuvering is a mainstay of congressional media coverage, and the democratic process is most often framed as conflict between parties and Congress and the president. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the "new federalism" political movement within U.S. state-federal governance in the 1990s and 2000s, outlining its history and profiling several Supreme Court cases which illustrate its jurisprudence philosophy. The Supreme Court verdicts concerning laws such as the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Family and Medical Leave Act, and the interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment are cited and analyzed. Further comments are given highlighting efforts in 2004 to resist such moves. The author criticizes the new federalist movement and advocates its opposition through the direct confrontation and appropriation of its ideological principles.

The article presents an exploration into redistricting, gerrymandering, and political representation in the United States as of 2004. Details are given noting the verdict of the 2004 Supreme Court case Vieth v. Jubelirer which, despite evidence of gerrymandering, upheld a state redistricting plan. Episodes are mentioned where incumbent Congressmen have allegedly redesigned districts to foster their own political ends. Further discussion is given discussing the adoption of winner-take-all full representation systems in elections since the 1980s. Calls for electoral reform from the political sector are then given.

This article discusses Congressional activity regarding the Persian Gulf war after it started. Intense media coverage of the war and the personal involvement many Americans felt in it meant that the public had little capacity to absorb news that did not come from the Persian Gulf. Unfortunately, the same seems to be true of members of Congress. A western senator up for election in 1992 related that he had postponed the crucial "benchmark" poll that would mark the beginning of his campaign, for fear that the war would have a distorting effect. Some senators who had supported continuing sanctions reported receiving heavy negative mail and editorial opposition. Some who were most strongly opposed to the war were forced to sit on the sidelines as their bosses "kept their heads down "during the first weeks of the war.

This article discusses how the United States congress engaged in genuine debate over the federal budget. The congressional debate on the military budget is real this year. In the past, the issue has been decided in high-level "summits" between administration officials and a handful of key members of Congress. The Pentagon received its allotment as part of a political deal on social programs, deficit reduction, and taxes. Rank-and-file members, even those on committees with primary jurisdiction over the budget, had very little say in the process. But congressional Democrats--feeling abused by last year's fight over the capital gains tax and other skirmishes--have sworn off budget summits with the Bush White House.