Legislative Research Reports.

The article discusses research papers presented at the 2005 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, held in Washington, DC. The paper "An Old Trend for a New Majority: Explaining the Higher Retirement Rate of Republicans." by Michael Murakami, University of California, Berkeley, sheds light on why over the past few decades, the Republicans in the U.S. House have retired at a higher rate than Democrats. The researchers conclude that this as an effect of their being in the minority party, without access to committee chairmanships, staff resources, and legislative clout. The paper "Party Leaders Under Investigation; Three Ethics Committee Cases Over the Past 25 Years." by Beth A. Rosenson, University of Florida, examines the congressional ethics investigations of Democratic House Speaker James Wright, Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. The paper "The Powers and Limits of Parties in the US. Senate." by Chris Den Hartog University of California, San Diego, evaluate the rates at which individual members of the democrat and the Republican party "won" and "lost" on Senate final passage votes, before and after U.S. Senator James Jeffords's announcement that he was switching from Republican to independent and would vote with Democrats on organizational matters.