Congress Overwhelmed

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Release : 2020-12-07
Genre : Political Science
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Book Rating : 57X/5 ( reviews)

Congress Overwhelmed - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Congress Overwhelmed write by Timothy M. LaPira. This book was released on 2020-12-07. Congress Overwhelmed available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Congress today is falling short. Fewer bills, worse oversight, and more dysfunction. But why? In a new volume of essays, the contributors investigate an underappreciated reason Congress is struggling: it doesn’t have the internal capacity to do what our constitutional system requires of it. Leading scholars chronicle the institutional decline of Congress and the decades-long neglect of its own internal investments in the knowledge and expertise necessary to perform as a first-rate legislature. Today’s legislators and congressional committees have fewer—and less expert and experienced—staff than the executive branch or K Street. This leaves them at the mercy of lobbyists and the administrative bureaucracy. The essays in Congress Overwhelmed assess Congress’s declining capacity and explore ways to upgrade it. Some provide broad historical scope. Others evaluate the current decay and investigate how Congress manages despite the obstacles. Collectively, they undertake the most comprehensive, sophisticated appraisal of congressional capacity to date, and they offer a new analytical frame for thinking about—and improving—our underperforming first branch of government.

Policy Dynamics

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Release : 2002-06-15
Genre : History
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Book Rating : 412/5 ( reviews)

Policy Dynamics - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Policy Dynamics write by Frank R. Baumgartner. This book was released on 2002-06-15. Policy Dynamics available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. While governmental policies and institutions may remain more or less the same for years, they can also change suddenly and unpredictably in response to new political agendas and crises. What causes stability or change in the political system? What role do political institutions play in this process? To investigate these questions, Policy Dynamics draws on the most extensive data set yet compiled for public policy issues in the United States. Spanning the past half-century, these data make it possible to trace policies and legislation, public and media attention to them, and governmental decisions over time and across institutions. Some chapters analyze particular policy areas, such as health care, national security, and immigration, while others focus on institutional questions such as congressional procedures and agendas and the differing responses by Congress and the Supreme Court to new issues. Policy Dynamics presents a radical vision of how the federal government evolves in response to new challenges-and the research tools that others may use to critique or extend that vision.

More Than a Feeling

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Release : 2017-04-27
Genre : Political Science
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Book Rating : 98X/5 ( reviews)

More Than a Feeling - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook More Than a Feeling write by Adam J. Ramey. This book was released on 2017-04-27. More Than a Feeling available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Whatever you think about the widening divide between Democrats and Republicans, ideological differences do not explain why politicians from the same parties, who share the same goals and policy preferences, often argue fiercely about how best to attain them. This perplexing misalignment suggests that we are missing an important piece of the puzzle. Political scientists have increasingly drawn on the relationship between voters’ personalities and political orientation, but there has been little empirically grounded research looking at how legislators’ personalities influence their performance on Capitol Hill. With More Than a Feeling, Adam J. Ramey, Jonathan D. Klingler, and Gary E. Hollibaugh, Jr. have developed an innovative framework incorporating what are known as the Big Five dimensions of personality—openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism—to improve our understanding of political behavior among members of Congress. To determine how strongly individuals display these traits, the authors identified correlates across a wealth of data, including speeches, campaign contributions and expenditures, committee involvement, willingness to filibuster, and even Twitter feeds. They then show how we might expect to see the influence of these traits across all aspects of Congress members’ political behavior—from the type and quantity of legislation they sponsor and their style of communication to whether they decide to run again or seek a higher office. They also argue convincingly that the types of personalities that have come to dominate Capitol Hill in recent years may be contributing to a lot of the gridlock and frustration plaguing the American political system.

Why Congressional Reforms Fail

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Release : 2002-06-15
Genre : Political Science
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Book Rating : 561/5 ( reviews)

Why Congressional Reforms Fail - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Why Congressional Reforms Fail write by E. Scott Adler. This book was released on 2002-06-15. Why Congressional Reforms Fail available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. For decades, advocates of congressional reforms have repeatedly attempted to clean up the House committee system, which has been called inefficient, outmoded, unaccountable, and even corrupt. Yet these efforts result in little if any change, as members of Congress who are generally satisfied with existing institutions repeatedly obstruct what could fairly be called innocuous reforms. What lies behind the House's resistance to change? Challenging recent explanations of this phenomenon, Scott Adler contends that legislators resist rearranging committee powers and jurisdictions for the same reason they cling to the current House structure—the ambition for reelection. The system's structure works to the members' advantage, helping them obtain funding (and favor) in their districts. Using extensive evidence from three major reform periods—the 1940s, 1970s, and 1990s—Adler shows that the reelection motive is still the most important underlying factor in determining the outcome of committee reforms, and he explains why committee reform in the House has never succeeded and probably never will.

Less Than Meets the Eye

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Release : 1994-06
Genre : Political Science
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Book Rating : 439/5 ( reviews)

Less Than Meets the Eye - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Less Than Meets the Eye write by Barbara Hinckley. This book was released on 1994-06. Less Than Meets the Eye available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Focusing on cases involving major military action, foreign aid authorization, and key controversial votes in both legislative branches, Hinckley shows that—appearances to the contrary—Congress more often than not votes with the President, and has done so for the last few decades. Despite occasional flurries of activity on carefully chosen symbolic issues, most foreign policy issues never even make the Congressional agenda. Those that do are often dispatched with demands for reports that are left unread or with tough restrictions having built-in "escape provisions." Both branches, Hinckley argues, encourage this image of conflict and profit from the symbolic political capital it produces. This process comes to light in her analysis of aid to Nicaragua. What Hinckley reveals is sharply at odds with conventional wisdom and unflattering to both the executive and the legislative branches of government. More than a critical reassessment, this book also proposes reforms than might result in real congressional participation in the making of foreign policy. With its insight into how our system of checks and balances works—and doesn't—this book takes a first step toward making the peoples' representatives accountable for crucial American interests in foreign matters.