Legislative Agenda Research Articles

Gender Stereotypes and the Policy Priorities of Women in Congress

Scholars find that women who run for Congress are just as likely to win as men are, yet women face considerable challenges related to their sex on the campaign trail. Women are more likely to face challengers than men are, the challengers they face are typically more qualified, and gender stereotypes paint women as less able to handle important issues like defense and foreign affairs. We examine how women succeed in the face of these obstacle, arguing that women are successful, in part, because they craft large, diverse legislative agendas that include bills on a mix of topics. These topics include district interests, women’s interests, and the masculine issues on which women are disadvantaged. We believe this balancing strategy allows women to develop reputations for competence on a wide range of issues, which in turn, helps them deter electoral challengers. We test our hypotheses by analyzing a comprehensive database of all bills introduced in the U.S. House between 1963 and 2009. We find that female MCs propose more bills, spread across more issues, than do men. Further, the topics of the bills women sponsor span a range of women’s issues, masculine issues, and gender-neutral topics—giving support to the idea that women balance their legislative portfolios. Finally, we examine the electoral benefits to women of this strategy by analyzing rates of challenger emergence in Congressional races. We find that women must introduce twice as much legislation as men to see the probability of challenger emergence decrease to a level that is indistinguishable from that of men. The added effort and staff hours female MCs typically devote to crafting legislation, vis-a-vis male MCs, only serves to put them on equal footing with men. It does not give them an advantage.

The implementation of EU environmental policy: Why the scope conditions have improved?

Implementation gaps of European Union (EU) environmental policy are explained, inter alia, by shortcomings in knowledge, a lack of administrative capacities and weak enforcement practices. However, this article presents evidence that the scope conditions have improved, based on document analysis and semi-structured interviews with actors involved in the implementation process. Four main factors are considered. First, the Commission’s monitoring capacities benefit from an improved access to data sources other than those provided by the member states, and from a reduced legislative agenda, allowing for a more intense focus on implementation. Second, subnational actors have improved their implementation capacity through knowledge transfers and strategic planning, facilitated by improved statistical data. Third, inspection networks benefitted from technical advances, such as the access to satellite images, presenting new opportunities for the detection of environmental crimes, and new software programs facilitating risk-based inspections. Finally, citizens’ and non-governmental organizations’ improved access to justice in environmental matters contributes to a stricter enforcement of EU law.
 
 Keywords: networks; European Union; software programs

Strategic Coalitions and Agenda-Setting in Fragmented Congresses: How the PRI Sets the Legislative Agenda in Mexico

This essay suggests a theory of strategic legislative agenda control. It argues that a single party can effectively set the agenda under majoritarian gatekeeping rules without obtaining majority or even plurality status. The agenda-setting party need not be the median party in the assembly nor supported by executive-led parliamentary coalitions. The Mexican Chamber of Deputies provides a case study of how majoritarian gatekeeping and political context establish the conditions necessary for one-party-led agenda-setting in a fragmented congress with or without enduring coalitions. The failure of opposition coalitions to roll the ‘Partido Revolucionario Institucional’ evinces that party's ability to set the agenda through strategic coalition formation since 2000. High levels of party unity combined with strategic positioning have allowed the PRI to do so. The strategic nature of the PRI's coalition-making is documented and analyzed in the context of its historically pragmatic approach to coalition-making. The argument is supported by roll-call data analysis, using WNOMINATE, WRice scores, and roll rates.

Marching Orders? U.S. Party Platforms and Legislative Agenda Setting 1948–2014

What is the relationship between the priorities expressed in party platforms before an election and the subsequent legislative agenda? The agenda setting literature often deemphasizes the role of political parties in agenda setting, instead focusing on the importance of problems bubbling up to the surface and demanding attention from policymakers. However, parties will often express different issue priorities during elections, and compete based on those priorities. If those promises are credible, voters should be able to choose between different sets of priorities during elections. The paper utilizes new data from the U.S. Policy Agendas Project and Wolbrecht on policy attention in U.S. party platforms to study the relationship between U.S. parties and legislative activities in Congress. A time-series cross-sectional analysis finds strong evidence to support the proposition that legislative agendas are influenced by the platform of the President’s party in the short term, although the relationship differs for different types of agendas and by issue, and fades over time.

Johns Hopkins Science Policy Group: Training scientists to be effective advocates and communicators

Legislative and regulatory affairs in science policy play a central role in shaping the practice of biomedical research. However, there are limited opportunities allowing scientists to practice techniques in effective policy advocacy. Since its inception in 2016, the Johns Hopkins Science Policy Group has provided trainees in the biological and health sciences with immersive training and professional development opportunities in advocacy, policy analysis, and strategic communications. Our student‐led initiatives, such as our flagship “Eat and Advocate” program, trains researchers to engage their Congressional representatives with targeted advocacy messages promoting pro‐science legislation. Trainees attending our advocacy training seminars learn how to communicate the value of federally‐funded research to policy‐makers, honing their science outreach and communication skills. Further, our members develop educational content, including fact sheets, infographics, message templates, and call‐to‐action memos, to incentive fellow researchers to engage in civic action supporting pro‐research legislative agendas. Past student‐led projects have provided training and professional development opportunities through advocacy initiatives on NIH appropriations, the Affordable Care Act, 21st Century Cures, the Paris Climate Accord, prescription drug pricing regulation, and the Clean Water Act of 2015. The Johns Hopkins Science Policy Group is a model of a highly effective trainee‐led program that is capable of training researchers in 1) organizational leadership by leading grassroots advocacy initiatives 2) strategic communications in advocacy, policy analysis, and science communication 3) civic engagement and public outreach.Support or Funding InformationJohns Hopkins Graduate Student Association, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health Student Assembly, and the Johns Hopkins University Alumni AssociationThis abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2018 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.

Do Constituents Influence Issue-Specific Bill Sponsorship?

Bill sponsorship is a valuable form of legislative activity in which all legislators are free to signal priorities, stake out positions, and influence legislative agendas. However, decisions to hone in on specific issues have been mostly overlooked, resulting in drivers of issue-specific sponsorship remaining unclear. A reasonable place to look for drivers is constituent preferences, given the representational responsibilities underlying most legislative behavior. To address this question, I leverage advances in opinion estimation to generate a new fine-grained measure of constituent issue preferences at the district level. By keeping the focus on issues, this approach is preferable to other measures of constituent preferences, in that it assumes nothing about constituents’ ideology. Through numerous tests across several issues spanning the 109th to 113th Congresses, I find a largely indirect effect of preferences on sponsorship through employment proxies, yet no consistent direct impact from constituents, opposite expectations of the delegate model of representation.

The legislative representation of public opinion policy priorities in Italy

Normative democratic theory requires political actors in parliament and government to represent not only the citizens’ policy preferences, but also their issue priorities. This article investigates Italian dynamic agenda representation – the transmission of public priorities into the policy priorities of the Italian political system. To assess the public’s policy priorities, data on the Most Important Problem from the Eurobarometer polls are used, while the legislative agendas of the members of parliament (MPs) and government are built following the rules of the Comparative Agendas Project. The results of longitudinal analyses across 10 policy areas and 20 semesters (2003–13) suggest a persistent link between the public’s agenda and the prioritization of legislation by the Italian parliament, majority MPs, and government. Contrary to expectations, the opposition does not seem to be responsive to public opinion policy problems when introducing bills.

Participant or Spectator? Victim‐Focused Political Activity since 2010

AbstractThe public significance of the victim has shifted over successive governments. Each party, when in power, has utilised and politicised the victim to support its policy and legislative agenda. However, on the whole, this attention has been reserved for those who are victims of serious crime (such as murder, sexual violence and domestic abuse) and not volume offences (such as burglary, criminal damage, theft). Recent years have seen the inquiry rising in popularity, a ‘quick political fix’ to satisfy victims—and the public—that action on societal ills is being taken. However, in so doing, successive governments have, perhaps inadvertently, tended to replicate the ‘hierarchy of victimisation’ that is witnessed in frontline criminal justice activities. This has the result of affording victims only a spectator role when policy and legislative changes are being developed in their name. By contrast, the actions taken in developing expert and practitioner‐led policy around victim experience have proved to be more ‘successful’ in generating lasting change. This article suggests that there is no single ‘right’ approach to involving victims in policy development, but that each particular incident or situation needs consideration as how most ‘effectively’ to involve first‐hand victim experience.

#LOLNothingMatters

Institutions matter in antitrust, at least as much as ideas. Most antitrust arguments, and especially the contretemps currently enjoying some attention in the popular press, imagine that antitrust problems are short- or medium-term matters, and that they can be corrected with local doctrinal steps. I suggest there is a deeper problem, a phenomenon more deeply inherent in the nature of competition itself. The problem will cyclically recur, so long as institutional brakes are unavailable to keep it at bay. Specifically, it seems that competitive markets are difficult to preserve without some prospective, no-fault rule to control concentration for its own sake. At least nominally, American antitrust has such a rule in its basic merger law, Clayton Act § 7, but the rest of it consists of retrospective, fault-based, law-enforcement rules that in their application are by nature somewhat piecemeal. A prospective concentration rule is needed because once markets become concentrated, situations are common in which neither disciplinary new entry nor retrospective conduct remedies can restore competition. The deeper problem inherent in competition policy, which demonstrates the significance of institutions as well as ideas, is that such a rule is also most difficult to enforce. That is so because markets in their ordinary operation are confusing and contradictory to watch, and the hardest interventions for government to defend to a skeptical public are those that are prospective. Finally, however, it so happens that one institutional correction currently on the legislative agenda could conceivably do some good in correcting for this problem—a specific plank in congressional Democrats’ “Better Deal” platform.

Women and the Vote: The Parliamentary Path to Equal Franchise, 1918–28

AbstractFollowing the Speaker's conference on electoral reform of 1916–17, the Representation of the People Act 1918 gave women over the age of 30 years who met minimum property qualifications the parliamentary vote for the first time. After a decade of continued suffrage campaigning and pressure in parliament, the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928 gave women the vote on the same terms as men, at age 21 years, with no age or any other restrictions. Although important in itself, votes for women also carried along a wider agenda of legislation relating to gender equality and issues affecting women and children during the interwar period. This essay gives an overview of how the Speaker's conference and the 1918 act affected women, considers the immediately‐related legislation in 1918–19 which allowed women to become MPs and removed other sex disqualifications, and traces progress in parliament towards equal franchise over the next decade, including a pledge by Stanley Baldwin in 1924 and an undertaking by William Joynson‐Hicks in 1925. It explains the changes in personnel and attitudes over time which finally enabled a Conservative government to grant equal franchise in 1928.

Do Party Manifestos Matter in Policy-Making? Capacities, Incentives and Outcomes of Electoral Programmes in France

A key factor in modern democracies’ legitimisation is the extent to which policies submitted for public approval before an election translate into material outcomes once a political party has won power. Current research finds no clear empirical evidence for partisanship in policy-making nor has any unified theory been offered or tested systematically. This article addresses that gap by offering a conditional approach to policy-making undertaken by parties in government. It suggests that partisan influence on policy depends on both office-holders’ capacity for implementing policies evoked during their electoral campaigns and on governing parties’ incentives to implement electoral promises. Data from French Agendas Project datasets is used to compare the contents of governing parties’ pre-election manifestos with legislation passed in France between 1981 and 2012. Panel negative binomial regressions on electoral and legislative agendas support the expected outcome, namely that issues featuring in governing parties’ electoral manifesto have had an impact on their subsequent legislative agendas, with the effect depending on both partisan capacities and incentives. Party programmes do matter in policy-making, albeit only under certain conditions.

Never Let a Good Crisis Go to Waste: Agenda Setting and Legislative Voting in Response to the EU Crisis

The European Union’s policy response to the recent global economic crisis transferred significant powers from the national to the European level. When exogenous shocks make status quo policies less attractive, legislators become more tolerant to proposed alternatives, and the policy discretion of legislative agenda setters increases. Given control of the EU agenda-setting process by pro-integration actors, we argue that this dynamic explains changes in voting patterns of the European Parliament during the crisis period. We observe voting coalitions increasingly dividing legislators along the pro-anti integration, rather than the left-right dimension of disagreement, but only in policy areas related to the crisis. In line with more qualitative assessments of the content of passed legislation, the implication is that pro-integration actors were able to shift policy further toward integration than they could have without the crisis.

Over a Decade of Scholarship on the Politics and Policy of Science and Technology

Over a Decade of Scholarship on the Politics and Policy of Science and Technology

Trickle-Down Urbanism

A few years ago, as Republican obstinacy was grinding Barack Obama's legislative agenda to a halt, a novel argument took shape among political thinkers on the center and left. By destiny or by default, this argument went, had become the great hope of those who would like to see U.S. governments tackle important social problems. In the new political school dubbed do-it-yourself urbanism, New York City's last two mayors, Michael Bloomberg and Bill de Blasio, embody its two different reform styles—Bloomberg, the data-driven manager; de Blasio, the sworn enemy of urban inequality. Their records show the promise of the cities rising paradigm, but also the limits of going it alone and a progressivism that evades fundamental issues of race and class. Mason B. Williams reviews The Creative Destruction of New York City: Engineering the City for the Elite by Alessandro Busa, Reclaiming Gotham: Bill de Blasio and the Movement to End America's Tale of Two Cities by Juan Gonzalez, Bloomberg: A Billionaire's Ambition by Chris McNickle, and The Pragmatist: Bill de Blasio's Quest to Save the Soul of New York by Joseph P. Viteritti.

Debating Same-Sex Marriage: Lessons from Loving, Roe, and Reynolds

The United States Supreme Court, in its 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision, declared a constitutional right to same-sex marriage (SSM). With Republicans now controlling the Congress and presidency, and with value-traditionalists and ‘strict’ constitutionalists influencing the party’s legislative agenda and judicial nominees, Obergefell’s future and the contours of SSM rights are uncertain. Proponents assume the decision will delegitimate opponents, just as Loving v. Virginia (1967) accelerated the delegitimation of racial segregationists. SSM opponents counter with the Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling and argue that, like Roe, Obergefell undermines the democratic process, which is better suited to resolve a highly-charged moral dispute. Like Roe, Obergefell will not resolve the debate but, instead, trigger a durable opposition. We add a third possible path, drawing on the evolving public discourse on polygamy since the Supreme Court upheld prohibitions in Reynolds v. United States (1878). The politics of polygamy shows that, if SSM opponents are delegitimated, they may reemerge as legitimate participants in the public sphere. These paths offer insights into uncertainties, contingencies, and predictions regarding the durability of SSM resistance and other oppositional movements. They also lead to revisionist interpretations of the effect on public discourse flowing from these three seminal court decisions. The politics of interracial marriage (after Loving) shunned the losing political faction from the public forum, while those of abortion (after Roe), and, recently, polygamy, illustrate a more vibrant, pluralist model of deliberation. Whether SSM opponents will mimic a Roe model, or follow the trajectory of Loving or Reynolds, is now the question.

Gender and Policy Agendas in the Post‐War House

For decades, critical mass theory shaped expectations about the ways female politicians would behave in office. Newer studies, however, have challenged the theory's premise that “token” women will avoid championing women's interests while women serving in more gender‐diverse bodies will work together to advance them. In fact, many in the discipline now believe it is time to leave the idea of critical mass behind. These new studies have significantly advanced our knowledge of the link between women's descriptive and substantive representation. But the move away from critical mass leaves unresolved the question of how female legislators will adapt their policy priorities based on changes in the size of the female delegation. I seek to answer this question and hypothesize that the more women who serve in Congress, the less attention each female member of Congress will give to women's issues, and the more diverse the female agenda will become. This diversification should not, however, result in lower overall levels of attention to women's issues. Because responsibility for substantive representation is shared, with each woman continuing to contribute as the delegation grows, the women's agenda can diversify while attention to women's issues actually increases. An analysis of bill sponsorship data spanning 60 years provides support for my theory. I show that when the size of the female delegation grows, women increase both the breadth and depth of their collective legislative agenda—simultaneously offering increased substantive representation and representation across a wider range of topics.

When Does Government Listen to the Public? Voluntary Associations and Dynamic Agenda Representation in the United States

AbstractThe aim of the article is to examine how the population size of voluntary associations affects the process through which the public's issue priorities are translated into policy priorities. We conduct a time series analysis of political attention in executive and legislative agendas at the U.S. federal level in the period 1971–2001, covering all issues addressed by the U.S. government. We show that the number of voluntary associations in a policy area has a positive conditioning effect on the link between public priorities and attention for the president's State of the Union Address. However, our results do not find a positive effect for voluntary associations at later stages of the policy cycle, which experience a higher degree of institutional friction. The findings underline the importance of distinguishing between different stages of policymaking when considering the impact of voluntary associations on dynamic agenda responsiveness.

Top Boy : Cultural Verisimilitude and the Allure of Black Criminality for UK Public Service Broadcasting Drama

In the early 2000s, a new form of multicultural television drama began to emerge in the UK, exploring contemporary gang life within Britain's black communities. A notable example of this ‘black urban crime’ genre is Top Boy, screened by the UK's leading multicultural public service broadcaster, Channel 4, in 2011 and 2013. This article produces an analysis, drawing on sociological and media studies perspectives, and through historicisation and contextualisation, that seeks to understand the fascination of the black urban crime genre for programme-makers, broadcasters and audiences in the contemporary British mediascape. It locates Top Boy at the intersection of complex media relations and modes of production that are themselves intertwined with political, legislative and cultural agendas tied to post-multiculturalist and neoliberal tendencies within public service broadcasting frameworks. The article suggests that black urban crime narratives do not advance understandings of the organisational structure of urban gangs or drug-related crime that are so central to these texts, nor do they offer a progressive contribution to contemporary debates or the representation of black criminality.

Parliamentary debates on death with dignity in Argentina: the rights of terminal patients on the legislative agenda, 1996-2012.

This article examines the regulation on terminal patients' rights in Argentina at two points in time: the first attempts to regulate end-of-life rights (1996), and the "death with dignity" law passed by the National Congress (2011-2012). Comparative analysis allows us to observe variations among the individuals and situations included in the legislation, as well as in the conceptualization of autonomy and the interventions that is considered lawful refuse. The political context and the differential way that "death with dignity" entered the legislative agenda in each period determined the public's construction of the problem and thus the extent and result of the debates.

Cross-Border Data Access Reform: A Primer on the Proposed U.S.-U.K. Agreement

Cross-border data access reform may be on the legislative agenda in late 2017, with recent House and Senate judiciary committee hearings revisiting the topic. In light of this increasing interest, we thought it would be helpful to provide a brief primer on how cross-border data access requests currently work, options for reform, and major challenges to reform ahead. This document presents a short, high-level background review of the debate as it currently stands, particularly focusing on the DOJ’s 2016 proposal for reform. Governments need evidence to investigate and prosecute crimes, but increasingly that evidence takes the form of data stored on the servers of U.S. tech companies. In July 2016, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) released draft legislation that would address some of the challenges foreign governments face when seeking data related to criminal investigations from U.S. companies. Interest in making such changes continues to grow, with relevant laws, including the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), maybe seeing Congressional attention in late 2017, especially as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) comes up for renewal. To access electronic content – including email, social media messages, and more – held by U.S. companies, a foreign country currently relies primarily on the processes set out in agreements called Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties (MLATs), if that country has negotiated one with the U.S. MLATs with the U.S. require countries to meet U.S. legal standards when making requests for electronic content data, with less strict standards for metadata. Countries have grown frustrated with both the normative implications of the MLAT process and its typical lengthiness. After substantial debate, and with many proposed ideas from civil society, industry, and academia, the Department of Justice (DOJ) in July 2016 released draft legislation intended to address these concerns. The proposal moves away from the treaty-based system currently underpinning the mutual legal assistance process. Instead, the new legislation would require “lighter touch” bilateral agreements on this issue between the United States and participating countries. Once countries are approved for these bilateral agreements, the legislation would allow them to submit requests for data, made pursuant to the requesting countries’ laws and stipulations in the legislation, directly to U.S. electronic service providers, instead of first going through U.S. courts. The U.K. would likely be the first country approved to make requests under this new legislation, but the legislation would also pave the way for agreements with other qualifying countries. This legislation advances a legal solution for crossborder data access that proponents hope is sufficiently appealing to foreign governments to forestall more damaging alternative responses to data access concerns, including country-wide service bans, mandated data localization, or forcing companies to make decisions in the face of a conflict of laws.