Legislative Success Research Articles

The Price of Legislative Success: The President's Legislative Agenda and Midterm Seat Loss

The Price of Legislative Success: The President's Legislative Agenda and Midterm Seat Loss

Fluoroscopy for Advanced Practice Registered Nurses: Legislative Success in Connecticut

Fluoroscopy for Advanced Practice Registered Nurses: Legislative Success in Connecticut

Can legislative majorities shape budgets? A comparative analysis of presidential systems in Latin America

AbstractIn separation of powers systems, in theory, legislative and executive branches must concur for policies to be enacted. However, empirical research, especially on Latin American cases, suggests that rather than reaching a compromise, it is common for the executive to make unilateral decisions, leaving the legislature marginalized in the policymaking process. Contrary to this trend, I argue that understanding important policy choices, including the national budget, requires considering the formal powers assigned to the president and the assembly, in interaction with their ideological divergence. Examining 12 presidential democracies for the past 20 years, I investigate the legislative majority's success in determining government expenditures under various policymaking institutions. I identify a number of institutional scenarios where legislative majorities are highly likely to succeed, while in other configurations, their success depends on their ideological divergence from the president.

Gender politics in Costa Rica: from descriptive to substantive representation

ABSTRACT Costa Rica is a democratic exemplar, having maintained a critical mass of female legislators over two decades and approached gender parity in political offices; thus, it is a useful context for examining theories of change for gender representation. We use process-tracing to track the evolution of descriptive representation and examine when and how critical actors affect the legislative process in Costa Rica. We evaluate the extent to which critical mass representation has advanced substantive gender representation—the adoption of legislation favorable to women’s interests—through case studies of the 2020 law on street sexual harassment, and the 2022 law on violence against women in politics. We find that greater descriptive representation provides a pivot point for substantive representation, although critical actors in the form of key legislators and women’s organizations provide the necessary agency for legislative successes. The case study contributes to both theories and methods for understanding how descriptive representation and substantive representation interact in the democratic legislative process.

Geographic representation and requests for federal funds in the U.S. senate

AbstractAn essential component of a representative's job centers on deciding where to allocate scarce resources. How do legislators attempt to allocate spending across the geographic units of their constituencies, and what determines a legislator's success in securing these resources? To answer these questions, we create a new dataset of all earmark requests made by U.S. senators in the 117th Congress. This data was recently made available as part of reforms, allowing researchers to examine both requests and outcomes. We show that senators prioritize seeking earmarks for areas of their constituencies critical to their electoral success. We then match these requests to earmarks funded by the Appropriations Committee and show that a legislator's institutional standing and the behavior of their same‐state colleague—but not electoral concerns—shape whether projects are successfully funded. We provide insight into a behind‐the‐scenes aspect of representation and illuminate the strategic dynamics that shape federal spending.

Legislative Network and Factors Affecting the Success of Regulatory Legislation

Legislative Network and Factors Affecting the Success of Regulatory Legislation

The Public Power Observatory

We are entering a period of abrupt and irreversible environmental change. Currently dominant assumptions about what is politically appropriate and realistic will be obliterated as vast masses of people find the conditions for their collective survival annihilated in coming decades. This article argues that it is imperative we deepen the debate about strategies to provoke revolutionary ruptures within the fossil‐capitalist world system. We need viable strategies to generalize mutual aid and disaster communism, and these strategies must provide concrete solutions to the intersecting climate crises on different scales, from the local to the global. The abolition of fossil capital through the building of counterpower—in all senses of that term—should be a key strategic priority of the global movement for ecosocialism. The article discusses the Public Power NY campaign, which has established itself as a potent counterpower within the corporate‐dominated US energy system. Constituted on the heels of the campaign's legislative success, the Public Power Observatory is an interdisciplinary formation dedicated to monitoring and building this counterpower and, in so doing, reclaiming the energy commons. The article discusses some of the suite of transmedia tools currently being developed by the Public Power Observatory.

Crediting Invisible Work: Congress and the Lawmaking Productivity Metric (LawProM)

Congressional observers have long been interested in the distinction between legislative “workhorses” and “showhorses.” However, when scholars operationalize this by measuring legislator productivity, they often neglect many realities of modern lawmaking by focusing on the traditional bill sponsorship and passage process. To better align measurement with practice, we compile widely available data on bill sponsorship, cosponsorship, and amendments; we also use text-as-data methods to credit instances of behind-the-scenes lawmaking via text reuse between bills. We weight achievements from each of these lawmaking methods to create the Lawmaking Productivity Metric for House Members of the 101–113th Congresses. Including methods of lawmaking beyond bill sponsorship provides important insights about who the congressional workhorses are. In particular, we find that traditional measures systematically undercount the legislative successes of women and likely Black Members of Congress because they disproportionately legislate in less visible ways.

Legislative success and collaboration in the Texas State House

ABSTRACT Women and racial and ethnic minority legislators achieve varying levels of legislative success due to the discrimination they face in elections and the legislature. To overcome these disadvantages, some scholars suggest that legislators employ cooperative strategies to achieve higher success. In a diverse legislature, we ask whether legislators cooperate with each other via bill cosponsorship as a strategy to increase their legislative success. We examine success rates and cosponsorship strategies within the diverse Texas House of Representatives to answer these questions. We find that while white women and women of color have success rates similar to white men, racial and ethnic minority men have lower success rates compared to other legislators. White women, women of color, and men of color all exhibit diverse cosponsorship patterns; yet these tactics do not lead to higher legislative success rates for women and minorities. These conclusions in the Texas House offer a hypothesis-building case study of legislative success and multi-group collaboration in a diverse state legislature.

Causes and consequences of changing oxygen availability in lakes

ABSTRACT Changing oxygen availability in lakes and reservoirs is a fundamental limnological challenge of our time, with massive consequences for freshwater ecosystem functioning and water quality. Cross-lake surveys, paleolimnological studies, and long-term monitoring records indicate that many lakes are exhibiting declines in both surface- and bottom-water oxygen availability due to climate and land use change, although a few lakes are exhibiting increases in oxygen. By analyzing time series of oxygen monitoring data from ∼400 lakes, I found that some lakes may be experiencing a decoupling of surface and bottom oxygen dynamics; variability in surface oxygen concentrations is decreasing in some lakes while variability in bottom oxygen concentrations is increasing. Changes in both oxygen concentrations and variability have many implications for lake functioning because oxygen concentrations control many ecosystem processes. Consequently, lake ecosystem provisioning and cultural services (e.g., drinking water, fisheries, recreation) will likely be impaired by declining oxygen, whereas the effects of changing oxygen on regulatory and supporting ecosystem services (e.g., nitrate removal through denitrification, carbon burial, sediment fluxes of phosphorus) may be more equivocal. These challenges motivate a research agenda focused on expanding the geographical range, temporal duration, and spatial extent of lake oxygen monitoring, as well as new approaches for studying and managing lakes (whole-ecosystem experiments, near-term oxygen forecasts). Looking ahead, advances in sensor technology, monitoring networks, data sharing, and forecasting, as well as the demonstrated success of environmental legislation in decreasing hypoxia, provide important opportunities for guiding restoration and science on lake oxygen.

Disaggregating Racial and Ethnic Data: A Step Toward Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Disaggregating Racial and Ethnic Data: A Step Toward Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

How Do Politicians Bargain? Evidence from Ultimatum Games with Legislators in Five Countries

Politicians regularly bargain with colleagues and other actors. Bargaining dynamics are central to theories of legislative politics and representative democracy, bearing directly on the substance and success of legislation, policy, and on politicians’ careers. Yet, controlled evidence on how legislators bargain is scarce. Do they apply different strategies when engaging different actors? If so, what are they, and why? To study these questions, we field an ultimatum game bargaining experiment to 1,100 sitting politicians in Belgium, Canada, Germany, Switzerland, and the United States. We find that politicians exhibit a strong partisan bias when bargaining, a pattern that we document across all of our cases. The size of the partisan bias in bargaining is about double the size when politicians engage citizens than when they face colleagues. We discuss implications for existing models of bargaining and outline future research directions.

ДЕТЕРМИНАНТЫ ЗАКОНОДАТЕЛЬНОЙ ЭФФЕКТИВНОСТИ РОССИЙСКИХ ДЕПУТАТОВ: ЭМПИРИЧЕСКИЙ АНАЛИЗ

The article evaluates the legislative effectiveness of parliamentarians in Russia. The author seeks to find answers to the question: what factors determine the legislative effectiveness of deputies? The article presents the results of assessing the impact of membership in the parliamentary majority party, formal status in the internal parliamentary hierarchy, work experience in legislatures, as well as legal education on legislative success. The study is grounded on the data on the "effectiveness" of deputies of two regional parliaments – St. Petersburg and the Kirov region. The work is based on regression analysis. The results of the study show that membership in the majority party, a position of a chairman of the committee or a leader of the majority party, as well as the previous experience in the legislative sphere are factors influencing the legislative success of a parliamentarian. Also, legislative efficiency rises with an increase of a deputy's term in office. The author concludes that the institutional characteristics that make some deputies more effective legislators than others are crucial for the development of a more profound understanding of political representation and public policy-making.

제20대 국회 의원안의 입법성공 요인: 가결과 대안반영의 정치

이 연구의 목적은 제20대 국회에서 발의된 21,594건의 의원안을 대상으로 입법성공 요인을 분석하는 것이다. 이 연구는 입법성공을 가결된 의원안뿐만 아니라, 위원회대안에 반영된 후 폐기된 법안까지로 확장하였다. 제20대 국회에서 위원회대안에 반영된 의원안이 전체 의원안의 24%에 육박하고, 새롭게 제안된 위원회대안은 100% 가결되었다는 사실은 ‘대안반영폐기’를 입법성공의 범주에 포함시킬 수 있는 명분을 제시한다.BR 제20대 국회에서는 임기 내내 과반의석을 차지한 원내정당이 없었고, 개원 당시 교섭단체를 구성한 정당이 3개였다가 분당 및 합당을 통해 교섭단체가 4개였던 시기도 있었다. 또한 임기 개시 1년여 뒤의 대선을 통해 집권여당이 교체되었다. 이런 상황은 의원의 당적이 입법성공에 미치는 영향, 특히 여야 정당지위의 상대적 영향력을 검증하기에 좋은 입법환경이다.BR 분석 결과 집권여당 지위와 제1야당 지위는 의원안의 입법성공 여부에 유의미한 영향을 미친 것으로 나타났다. 더불어민주당 의원안이 가결될 확률은 여당일 때와 비교하여 야당일 때 2%p 낮았다. 더불어민주당 의원안이 대안반영될 확률 역시 여당일 때보다 야당일 때 8%p 낮은 것으로 나타났다. 한편 제3지대 정당으로 불렸던 국민의당과 새누리당에서 분당된 바른정당 소속 의원안은 집권당에 따라서 가결 가능성에 차이가 있었다. 즉, 박근혜 정부시기에는 새누리당 의원안과 가결 가능성에서 유의미한 차이가 없었지만, 문재인 정부 시기에는 더불어민주당 의원안보다 가결될 가능성이 낮은 것으로 나타났다. 마지막으로 교섭단체를 구성하지 못한 정당 소속 의원안은 두 대통령 집권기 모두 집권여당 의원안보다 입법에 성공할 가능성은 낮은 것으로 나타났다.BR 한편 의원안의 공동발의자 수, 법안발의 의원이 소관위원회 위원장인지 여부, 특별법 여부, 법안발의 시기 기준 잔여임기 여부 등은 의원안의 가결 여부와 대안반영 여부에 공통적으로 영향을 미친 것으로 나타났다. 이처럼 의원안의 가결 요인과 대안반영 요인이 대동소이하다는 점은 의원안이 입법성공에 이르는 메커니즘에 별다른 차이가 없음을 의미한다. 그리고 위원회대안을 통한 입법이 점차 지배적이 되어가고 있는 상황은 대안반영폐기되는 의원안의 중요성에 대한 학문적 관심을 기울일 필요성을 제기하고 있다.

A more precise way to assess the success of the president’s legislative agenda: the success of presidential priority bills in Chile, 1990–2018

ABSTRACT The legislative success of a president is normally measured with respect to president-initiated bills. However, when they control the legislative agenda, presidents can also prioritize legislator-initiated bills and take credit for their passage. We contend that presidential legislative success should be measured with respect to both types of bills. With data on the 10301 bills introduced in Chile (1990–2018), we analyze the determinants of success of the 2640 presidential priority bills (PPB) – president-initiated bills and legislator-initiated bills that received a presidential priority motion to speed up debate. Reforms that strengthened the legislature have induced the executive to prioritize more legislator-initiated bills. PPB introduced in the first year of the term are more likely to pass while those introduced after the 2005 reforms and in the last year of the term are less likely to pass. Presidential approval, majority support in congress and Finance or Constitution Committee referrals are not good predictors of the success of PPB. The determinants better explain the passage of president-initiated bills than the passage of legislator-initiated bills.

Review: The Congressional Black Caucus: Fifty Years of Fighting for Equality, by Sherice Janaye Nelson

Review: <i>The Congressional Black Caucus: Fifty Years of Fighting for Equality</i>, by Sherice Janaye Nelson

Forced Sterilization

Forced Sterilization

Review: Traveling Black: A Story of Race and Resistance, by Mia Bay

Review: <i>Traveling Black: A Story of Race and Resistance</i>, by Mia Bay

Policy network analysis the legislation process for medical privatization in Korea

ObjectivesThis study aims to analyze the structural changes of the policy network to examine the cause of the policy failure of medical privatization in South Korea and anticipate the direction of structural change for future legislative success. MethodsWe employed a two-mode network analysis to analyze the stakeholders and issues in the process of medical privatization. NetMiner 4.0 was used to analyze the policy network. Data for the analysis were obtained from the Korea Integrated Newspaper Database System (KINDS) (www.kinds.or.kr). ResultsThe Ministry of Health and Welfare shifted from a position of opposition to support of medical privatizationduring the policy deliberation period, and Blue House emerged as a core actor in the network center. This is because the competent law complies with the enforcement rules of the applicable medical law regarding the privatization of health and medical treatment; the rules change to align with the competent authorities under the applicable law. ConclusionsMedical privatization in South Korea failed to be enacted into legislation because it could not gain public support and insisted only on government-led political flow. Accordingly, an arbitrator is needed between the groups favoring and opposing medical privatization legislation. The Ministry of Health and Welfare needs a common issue that would interest both groups. A new approach is needed to succeed in medical privatization legislation, which can lead to the fourth industrial revolution rather than the unconditional opposition to medical privatization. Public Interest SummaryMedical privatization legislation has not been successful in South Korea. We investigate the major actors in this process using Social Network Analysis. Institutions that shift position on issues may be mediators for future confrontations.

Senate Committee Holds Hearing on Parity, Care Integration

Senate Committee Holds Hearing on Parity, Care Integration