Social Science Research Council Anxieties of
Social Science Research Council Anxieties of Democracy Program Negotiating Agreement in Congress Research Grants 2017-2018 Grantees Ruth Bloch Rubin Assistant Professor, Political Science, University of Chicago Project Title: How Factional Discord Shapes Patterns of Party Leadership and Policymaking in Congress Congressional leaders often prioritize policies and adopt rules that limit factional disagreement within their parties. Yet they sometimes structure the legislative agenda in ways that expose members’ divergent preferences. Why? Examining the papers of House and Senate leaders from both parties, this book project explores (1) how leaders evaluate the risks posed, as well as the opportunities created, by intraparty discord; (2) when and why leaders broker intraparty compromise, or, alternatively, back one faction over another; (3) what constrains leaders’ capacity to resolve intraparty conflict; and (4) how leaders’ approach to management affects their ability to work across party lines.
Logan Dancey Assistant Professor, Government, Wesleyan University Project Title: Caught in the Middle: Congressional Moderates in a Polarized Era The overarching purpose of this project is to better understand the conditions under which moderate legislators are able to both exert legislative influence and survive electoral challenges in an increasingly polarized era. The project explores this topic from multiple angles, drawing on media coverage of congressional moderates, analysis of legislative behavior, interviews, and analysis of public opinion data. By taking a comprehensive approach to understanding the legislative and electoral challenges moderate legislators face, this project aims to further our understanding of the barriers and opportunities for bipartisan agreements in Congress.
Jonathan Lewallen Assistant Professor, Government, University of Tampa Project Title: Turnover, Agreement, and Dissent in Congressional Committees Committees are traditionally where members of Congress have developed the issue expertise and personal connections needed to forge agreement over policy problems and solutions. The proposed research will collect new data on agreement and dissent within committee reports sending legislation to the chamber and analyze how turnover and leadership term limits hinder agreement on how to make policy. This research would extend a larger book project on the decline of legislating in Congress and enable future projects on committee policymaking in a way that combines political science with the study of organizations, turnover, and capacity.
Mamie Locke Professor, Political Science, Hampton University Project Title: Strategies of The Congressional Black Caucus in Negotiating Agreements in Congress:2000 –Present Utilization of quantitative and qualitative methodology will be the basis for which this research project will explore how the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) negotiates agreements in support of its mission to advance causes supportive of minority communities throughout the United States. Incorporating disciplines of political science, history, race and ethnic studies and gender, the study examines how the CBC, as underrepresented minorities themselves, use the caucus format even in a polarized environment, to negotiate agreements for their constituents. The major question to be addressed is what strategies have been used by the CBC to meet legislative policy objectives since 2000?
Lynda Powell Professor, Political Science, University of Rochester Project Title: Negotiating Bipartisan Agreements: A Comparative Study of Congress and the Fifty US State Legislatures Electoral and institutional structures can impede or facilitate bipartisan coalition building to pass legislation. Studying the Congress together with the state legislatures provides considerable institutional and electoral variability to model and test novel hypotheses about the circumstances when such negotiated settlements are most likely to occur. My hypotheses are, in part, derived from case studies of negotiation in state legislatures (a completed project funded by Hewlett in which I participated). My own project is based on a completed national survey of legislators. I am requesting funds to finish collecting and coding matching hard data on the legislators and their chambers.
Jason Roberts Professor, Political Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Project Title: Party Effectiveness in Congress Negotiating agreement in the U.S. Congress is difficult by design Members of the U.S. Congress are chosen by constituencies that are politically and electorally heterogeneous. As such, members arrive in the two chambers with diverse preferences, priorities, and electoral security. All of these factors can combine to make agreement elusive. The goal of this project is to assess and analyze how effective congressional parties and their leaders are at negotiating the parties’ twin goals of electoral success and policy enactments from 1957 – 2016. I will also be able identify characteristics of effective party leaders
Tracy Sulkin Professor, Political Science, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign Project Title: On Good Behavior: Self-Policing of Norms in the U.S. House of Representatives I examine how members of the House of Representatives self-police within and across party lines to punish “bad” behavior and encourage adherence to norms of ethics, hard work, civility, and reciprocity. I argue that these norms comprise the infrastructure upon which the negotiation of agreement over policy becomes possible. Using data on legislative activity that spans three decades (the 101st-114th congresses), I explore the effects of transgressions on the success of individual MCs and on the relationships among legislators that comprise the congressional network. I show that even in an era of heightened disagreement, such norms are alive and well.
Danielle Thomsen Assistant Professor, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University Project Title: Do Primary Voters Want Partisan Polarization? Primary voters are widely believed to be a driving force behind partisan polarization, but there is a dearth of data on how they perceive extreme and moderate candidates. This project examines whether primary voters are less supportive of ideologues when they receive information about partisan conflict in Congress. I use experimental data to test whether primary voters are more likely to support moderates when their vote choice is connected to congressional polarization. While the conventional wisdom is that primary voters are motivated by ideological extremity above all else, I analyze the conditions under which they may select moderates over ideologues.
Sophia Wallace Associate Professor, Political Science, University of Washington Project Title: Immigration Reform Breakdown: Examining the Causes of Failure in Congress and Possibilities for Agreement This book project focuses on gridlock on immigration reform in Congress since the last major legislation in 1986. The first part focuses on what factors lead to the breakdown in negotiations. The second question asks how and under what circumstances could coalitions and agreement in Congress occur to pass various types of immigration bills. The role of partisanship, polarization, framing, legislative strategies, and race and ethnicity, will be central to understanding patterns of breakdown and agreement. To examine these questions, I adopt a multi-method approach utilizing a host of quantitative data in addition to interviews with MCs and case studies.
Michelle Whyman Postdoctoral Research Associate, The Political Institutions and Public Choice Program, Duke University Project Title: The Provision Timeline Database: Connecting Compromise in Congress with Legislative Durability I am applying for this grant to produce an interactive data visualization website that houses the “Provision Timeline Database” and allows users to explore patterns of lawmaking and durability over the entire span of United States history. The visualization tool imbedded in the proposed website would enable users to see the big picture of U.S. lawmaking by aggregating all provisions of federal law and following their progress through Congress and their lifecycle after passage. The research using this data demonstrates that the legislators’ willingness to compromise on policy throughout the legislative process increases the durability of the provisions they enact. Passing durable law requires that legislators refrain from using omnibus legislation as a vehicle for controversial provisions, convince a supermajority of legislators to compromise on the substance of legislation, and adopt procedures that democratize the House and allow sufficient time for deliberation.
Logan Dancey Assistant Professor, Government, Wesleyan University Project Title: Caught in the Middle: Congressional Moderates in a Polarized Era The overarching purpose of this project is to better understand the conditions under which moderate legislators are able to both exert legislative influence and survive electoral challenges in an increasingly polarized era. The project explores this topic from multiple angles, drawing on media coverage of congressional moderates, analysis of legislative behavior, interviews, and analysis of public opinion data. By taking a comprehensive approach to understanding the legislative and electoral challenges moderate legislators face, this project aims to further our understanding of the barriers and opportunities for bipartisan agreements in Congress.
Jonathan Lewallen Assistant Professor, Government, University of Tampa Project Title: Turnover, Agreement, and Dissent in Congressional Committees Committees are traditionally where members of Congress have developed the issue expertise and personal connections needed to forge agreement over policy problems and solutions. The proposed research will collect new data on agreement and dissent within committee reports sending legislation to the chamber and analyze how turnover and leadership term limits hinder agreement on how to make policy. This research would extend a larger book project on the decline of legislating in Congress and enable future projects on committee policymaking in a way that combines political science with the study of organizations, turnover, and capacity.
Mamie Locke Professor, Political Science, Hampton University Project Title: Strategies of The Congressional Black Caucus in Negotiating Agreements in Congress:2000 –Present Utilization of quantitative and qualitative methodology will be the basis for which this research project will explore how the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) negotiates agreements in support of its mission to advance causes supportive of minority communities throughout the United States. Incorporating disciplines of political science, history, race and ethnic studies and gender, the study examines how the CBC, as underrepresented minorities themselves, use the caucus format even in a polarized environment, to negotiate agreements for their constituents. The major question to be addressed is what strategies have been used by the CBC to meet legislative policy objectives since 2000?
Lynda Powell Professor, Political Science, University of Rochester Project Title: Negotiating Bipartisan Agreements: A Comparative Study of Congress and the Fifty US State Legislatures Electoral and institutional structures can impede or facilitate bipartisan coalition building to pass legislation. Studying the Congress together with the state legislatures provides considerable institutional and electoral variability to model and test novel hypotheses about the circumstances when such negotiated settlements are most likely to occur. My hypotheses are, in part, derived from case studies of negotiation in state legislatures (a completed project funded by Hewlett in which I participated). My own project is based on a completed national survey of legislators. I am requesting funds to finish collecting and coding matching hard data on the legislators and their chambers.
Jason Roberts Professor, Political Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Project Title: Party Effectiveness in Congress Negotiating agreement in the U.S. Congress is difficult by design Members of the U.S. Congress are chosen by constituencies that are politically and electorally heterogeneous. As such, members arrive in the two chambers with diverse preferences, priorities, and electoral security. All of these factors can combine to make agreement elusive. The goal of this project is to assess and analyze how effective congressional parties and their leaders are at negotiating the parties’ twin goals of electoral success and policy enactments from 1957 – 2016. I will also be able identify characteristics of effective party leaders
Tracy Sulkin Professor, Political Science, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign Project Title: On Good Behavior: Self-Policing of Norms in the U.S. House of Representatives I examine how members of the House of Representatives self-police within and across party lines to punish “bad” behavior and encourage adherence to norms of ethics, hard work, civility, and reciprocity. I argue that these norms comprise the infrastructure upon which the negotiation of agreement over policy becomes possible. Using data on legislative activity that spans three decades (the 101st-114th congresses), I explore the effects of transgressions on the success of individual MCs and on the relationships among legislators that comprise the congressional network. I show that even in an era of heightened disagreement, such norms are alive and well.
Danielle Thomsen Assistant Professor, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University Project Title: Do Primary Voters Want Partisan Polarization? Primary voters are widely believed to be a driving force behind partisan polarization, but there is a dearth of data on how they perceive extreme and moderate candidates. This project examines whether primary voters are less supportive of ideologues when they receive information about partisan conflict in Congress. I use experimental data to test whether primary voters are more likely to support moderates when their vote choice is connected to congressional polarization. While the conventional wisdom is that primary voters are motivated by ideological extremity above all else, I analyze the conditions under which they may select moderates over ideologues.
Sophia Wallace Associate Professor, Political Science, University of Washington Project Title: Immigration Reform Breakdown: Examining the Causes of Failure in Congress and Possibilities for Agreement This book project focuses on gridlock on immigration reform in Congress since the last major legislation in 1986. The first part focuses on what factors lead to the breakdown in negotiations. The second question asks how and under what circumstances could coalitions and agreement in Congress occur to pass various types of immigration bills. The role of partisanship, polarization, framing, legislative strategies, and race and ethnicity, will be central to understanding patterns of breakdown and agreement. To examine these questions, I adopt a multi-method approach utilizing a host of quantitative data in addition to interviews with MCs and case studies.
Michelle Whyman Postdoctoral Research Associate, The Political Institutions and Public Choice Program, Duke University Project Title: The Provision Timeline Database: Connecting Compromise in Congress with Legislative Durability I am applying for this grant to produce an interactive data visualization website that houses the “Provision Timeline Database” and allows users to explore patterns of lawmaking and durability over the entire span of United States history. The visualization tool imbedded in the proposed website would enable users to see the big picture of U.S. lawmaking by aggregating all provisions of federal law and following their progress through Congress and their lifecycle after passage. The research using this data demonstrates that the legislators’ willingness to compromise on policy throughout the legislative process increases the durability of the provisions they enact. Passing durable law requires that legislators refrain from using omnibus legislation as a vehicle for controversial provisions, convince a supermajority of legislators to compromise on the substance of legislation, and adopt procedures that democratize the House and allow sufficient time for deliberation.
