Legislative Success Research Articles

Senate Committee Holds Hearing on Parity, Care Integration

Senate Committee Holds Hearing on Parity, Care Integration

‘Congruent We Govern’: Cost of Governance in Multiparty Presidentialism

AbstractThe received wisdom on executive–legislative relations in multiparty presidential systems is that the size of the president's majority in Congress is the key factor explaining governance patterns, particularly the president's legislative success. However, in many cases presidents enjoying a nominal majority have been unable to pass legislation and have faced institutional instability. The article departs from a conventional definition of divided government and focuses on the preference incongruence between the governing coalition and the floor of Congress. It argues that the ideological distance between the floor and the coalition is a key factor explaining the president's cost of governing (which includes factors such as the distribution of cabinet portfolios and budgetary transfers to coalition partners). The article provides an empirical test with data from Brazil that find that the greater the ideological incongruence, the higher the cost of governing for the president.

The Primary Path for Turning Legislative Effectiveness into Electoral Success

Effective lawmakers are the workhorses of the US Congress, yet we know little about the electoral payoffs of their efforts. Are effective lawmakers better at warding off challengers in the next election? Do they win at a greater rate? To answer these questions, we draw on original data on congressional primary elections from 1980 to 2016, allowing us to focus on elections that lack partisan cues and where voters tend to be highly knowledgeable about politics. We find that incumbents receive an electoral boost in congressional primaries from their legislative work in Congress. Ineffective lawmakers are more likely to face quality challengers, and they lose their primaries at a greater rate than do more effective lawmakers. These differences diminish in the complex informational environment of a primary with multiple challengers. These findings provide important insights into the conditions under which voters hold their elected representatives accountable for their legislative successes and failures.

How congressional leaders define loyalty: validating US House party voting scores with party leadership records

ABSTRACT Measures of party unity are commonplace in the study of legislative voting, particularly in assessments of party influence. Scholars have employed a range of measures in studying loyalty and reward in the U.S. House, but all are proxies for the scores that House party leaders construct for their own processes. These loyalty scores have never been examined in empirical scholarship. Drawing on archived leadership records, I construct leader loyalty scores for House Democrats in the 1970s and 1980s based on leadership-selected key votes in each session. I show that the content of the leader lists was very sensitive to political context as the leadership responded to short-term challenges, but in the aggregate, leader loyalty scores are closely related over time to other indicators. As predictors of party rewards—in the form of committee posts and legislative success—the leadership’s measure provides some clearer evidence of reward, particularly in comparison to conventional party unity scores.

Opposing abortion in a feminist paradise: Conservative rhetoric in Iceland

AbstractThis article addresses the conservative opposition to Iceland’s recently liberalised abortion laws. It argues that the opposition belongs to a long and rich history of conservatives willing to employ diverse measures to oppose progress. It further claims that the rhetoric employed has strong roots in the conservative tradition. This is demonstrated by the fact that the discourse in Iceland fits within Hirschman’s analytical framework, through which he analyses the main arguments of conservatives in the past. Icelandic conservatives argued that the proposed legislation would lead to the perverse effect that healthy foetuses would be aborted, that the legislation was futile, as the system was already well-functioning, and that it would jeopardise women by giving them the sole responsibility of deciding whether to terminate a pregnancy. The article sheds light on the underlying resistance to women’s bodily autonomy and right to self-determination. It also illustrates the importance of hierarchy and conservatism’s opposition to equality that is perceived to be taken too far. In light of global trends, where conservatives have tried to implement policies that are hostile towards women and women’s interests, it is important to explore national contexts where legislative success has been achieved despite global backlash.

Reasons for Insufficient Success of Light Pollution Prevention Legislation in Slovenia

In 2007, Slovenia was one of the first countries to adopt light pollution prevention legislation with the Decree on limiting values of light pollution [1]. As such, Slovenian experience is ideal for studying the effectiveness of the taken measures and of remaining factors, preventing fully resolving the problem.
 Undisputed progress has been made with the Decree in many respects. Different sources of light pollution are covered and the country is largely respecting the Decree requirements. Following the requirement to harmonize the lighting with the Decree by 2017, today more or less all street lighting meets the ULOR = 0 condition and other most problematic issues have been mostly resolved. Following the technology advances, LED lighting is largely introduced, thus making it easier to meet the Decree limitation of power consumption.
 Despite all the progress, the country is facing a wide spread of light pollution, as the road and street lighting are intensively spreading to new locations. The Decree sought to limit the total amount of public lighting with a limit of annual power consumption of 44,5 kWh/capita, but with technology shift to LED the effect of this limit has failed. Furthermore, the technical measures and quantitative limits are not sufficient to provide ecologically and spatially appropriate lighting. In the lack of comprehensive eco-spatial policies, based also on much stricter estimations of cost/benefit ratio, the lighting is almost completely subject to the technical decisions of the state road authorities, reckless civilizational pressure on the municipality level and international lighting standards, strongly influencing both previously listed factors.

A Cross-Cultural Examination of Parental Knowledge of Concussion in Three Countries

ABSTRACT The aim of the present study was to examine and compare knowledge regarding concussion among parents of youth soccer players, ages 5–17, from the United States, Israel, and Sicily. Results revealed parents from the United States were more knowledgeable than Israeli and Sicilian parents and were more likely to have a previous history of concussion in their children, themselves, and their social contacts. The success of concussion education, programming, and legislation in the US may account for the greater knowledge of US parents and is reason to advocate for similar resources for youth athletes internationally.

Authors’ Response

Authors’ Response

Trump and Congress

ABSTRACT In examining Donald Trump’s presidential leadership, this article focuses on determining his efficacy as a political leader evident through three critical turning points in his presidency. His presidency began with a key legislative defeat, followed by a rare policy victory and in 2019, he controversially shutdown the government in a failed attempt to gain congressional funding for the US-Mexico border wall. By comparing the GOP attempt to reform healthcare with the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, this article demonstrates how Republican legislative success relied upon a unified approach between Congress and the White House, with clear, long-established policy goals. Analysis of the longest government shutdown in US history provides insight into Trump’s leadership style, presidential power and relationship with Congress. In all three cases, Trump’s rhetoric failed to effectively support Republican policy efforts or convince Americans that their course of action was best. Indeed, Trump’s rhetoric and actions often proved more contradictory and damaging to Republican efforts and to the overall future of the party. This article concludes that Trump inexperience and character was ill-equipped to be an effective political leader, evident in his few legislative achievements and the toxic environment of hyper-partisanship he left behind.

Development of AGA’s Policy Agenda During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Development of AGA’s Policy Agenda During the COVID-19 Pandemic

What predicts legislative success of early care and education policies?: Applications of machine learning and Natural Language Processing in a cross-state early childhood policy analysis.

Following the pioneering efforts of a federal Head Start program, U.S. state policymakers have rapidly expanded access to Early Care and Education (ECE) programs with strong bipartisan support. Within the past decade the enrollment of 4 year-olds has roughly doubled in state-funded preschool. Despite these public investments, the content and priorities of early childhood legislation-enacted and failed-have rarely been examined. This study integrates perspectives from public policy, political science, developmental science, and machine learning in examining state ECE bills in identifying key factors associated with legislative success. Drawing from the Early Care and Education Bill Tracking Database, we employed Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), a statistical topic identification model, to examine 2,396 ECE bills across the 50 U.S. states during the 2015-2018. First, a six-topic solution demonstrated the strongest fit theoretically and empirically suggesting two meta policy priorities: 'ECE finance' and 'ECE services'. 'ECE finance' comprised three dimensions: (1) Revenues, (2) Expenditures, and (3) Fiscal Governance. 'ECE services' also included three dimensions: (1) PreK, (2) Child Care, and (3) Health and Human Services (HHS). Further, we found that bills covering a higher proportion of HHS, Fiscal Governance, or Expenditures were more likely to pass into law relative to bills focusing largely on PreK, Child Care, and Revenues. Additionally, legislative effectiveness of the bill's primary sponsor was a strong predictor of legislative success, and further moderated the relation between bill content and passage. Highly effective legislators who had previously passed five or more bills had an extremely high probability of introducing a legislation that successfully passed regardless of topic. Legislation with expenditures as policy priorities benefitted the most from having an effective legislator. We conclude with a discussion of the empirical findings within the broader context of early childhood policy literature and suggest implications for future research and policy.

Instant Credibility: The Conditional Role of Professional Background in Policymaking Success

For legislators without legislative experience, credibility can be vital to achieving legislative success, and expertise from one’s professional background is a highly plausible source of such credibility. For example, when legislating in policy areas directly related to one’s previous occupation, a legislator’s colleagues may perceive policy instruments as more informed by expertise rather than ideological preferences. In this paper, I focus on several questions related to the linkage between professional background and legislative success, and specifically, the ability to guide authored bills through the legislative process. First, does a match between a legislator’s professional background and the topic of legislation make that legislation more likely to advance in the legislative process? Second, if so, does the importance of professional background dissipate as length of legislative service increases? Third, does the relevance of professional background systematically differ across types of legislators and legislatures? I find strong evidence that having a relevant professional background does lead to legislative success for new members, but that this pattern persists later in the legislative career too. Moreover, I find that these patterns are especially strong for minority party legislators and in legislatures with higher levels of membership turnover.

PCNP: A new era in shaping health policy.

The Pennsylvania Coalition of Nurse Practitioners (PCNP) is the state organization that promotes and protects the practice of more than 15,000 certified registered nurse practitioners in Pennsylvania. PCNP, credited for many legislative successes related to nurse practitioner (NP) practice since the 1980s, continues to expand its advocacy endeavors and mission to advance professional NP practice. To further promote the practice of NPs, a novel platform was established. This novel platform, PCNP: A New Era in Shaping Health Policy, was created as a forum where formal comments can be issued on proposed state and federal legislation that affects NP practice, as well as engages NPs from across the state to participate in the commenting process. After one year of active engagement in this forum, a formal commenting structure was successfully established with heighted visibility for health policy issues with real member participation.

The Executive Branch's Longstanding Embrace of Legislative Succession to the Presidency

Since adoption of the 1947 presidential succession act, there has been academic debate over the constitutionality of inclusion of the Speaker and President pro tempore in the line of succession to the presidency. While the scholarly community has been divided on the issue, the executive branch has publicly embraced legislative succession with almost complete uniformity. These signs of approval include explicit or implicit public and private statements by 1) ten presidents (Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, George W. Bush, Trump); 2) three vice presidents (Nixon, Quayle, Cheney); 3) the Justice Department from eight administrations (Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, George H.W. Bush); 4) the Secret Service of five administrations (Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, George H.W. Bush); 5) the White House emergency coordinator or FEMA of three administrations (Nixon, Reagan, George W. Bush); 6) White House counsels from seven administrations (Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Clinton and George W. Bush); 7) vice presidential counsels from two administrations (Carter, Cheney); 8) senior White House aides of six administrations (Kennedy, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, George W. Bush); 9) secretaries of state from four administrations (Nixon, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Obama); and 10) the State Department’s very own website. This article discusses the executive branch’s longstanding support for legislative succession to the presidency. These repeated confirmations of the constitutionality of legislative succession would likely pose serious legal and political hurdles to any future legal challenge to the Speaker or President pro tempore becoming Acting President.

President and Congress in Paraguay: legislative success in foreign and domestic policy

ABSTRACT The president's ability to legislate is a central element in studies of presidential regimes. A debate persists about the existence of ‘two presidencies’, that is, whether presidential legislative proposals are more successful in Congress when the subject is foreign policy compared to domestic politics. The article makes an empirical contribution in confirming the thesis of the two presidents in a case whose legislative powers of the president are the lowest in the region: Paraguay. Statistical analysis also reveals the importance of political and economic variables in the propensity to approve matters in the Paraguayan legislature, such as presidential popularity, unemployment and the effective number of parties. While the National Congress constrains the legislative production of the Paraguayan president in domestic issues, the president's foreign policy receives high support from legislators. The different characteristics of foreign policy stimulate congressional delegation of the matter to the president.

Women Representing Women: The Case of South Korea

This study investigates the question of whether the increased descriptive representation of women in the Korean National Assembly (KNA) is making for a substantial difference in the women s actual legislative success. Employing the National Assembly Bill Information System data this study examines the extent to which women legislators introduced and passed gender-related bills in the KNA over one and a half decades between 2000 and 2016. Our results indicate that being a female and/or being elected on the PR tier increases the likelihood of the passage of gender-related bills. Equally important is that neither ruling/opposition party membership nor the conservative/ progressive party affiliation has a significant effect on the gender-related bills passage. We also found that being a senior in the KNA turns out to produce a statistically insignificant effect. While our findings, in general, corroborate past research on the relationship between women s descriptive and substantive representation (i.e. legislative sessions with the lowest percentage of women passed the lowest number of gender-related bills), our results are also different in that they suggest that partisan loyalty did not make any difference in the gender-related legislation.

DECISÕES PROGRESSISTAS E BACKLASH

Tendo em vista que o backlash consiste em um plexo de esforços político-jurídicos, envidados por setores que se opõem às decisões contrárias aos seus interesses, usualmente conservadores, o presente artigo se propõe a analisar a reação política e social às decisões da Corte Constitucional colombiana e do Supremo Tribunal Federal brasileiro, que juridicamente reconheceram a união homoafetiva. Nesse sentido, concluiu-se que, tanto no Brasil quanto na Colômbia, as forças conservadoras se opuseram ao pronunciamento das Cortes, obstaculizando o reconhecimento de novos direitos em prol dos indivíduos e dos grupos LGBTI, conquanto não tenham conseguido êxitos legislativos aptos a alterar os precedentes vinculantes.

Aborting Global Women's Rights: The Boundaries of Women's Representation in American Foreign Policy

AbstractAmerican foreign policy has expanded in recent years to address issues that affect women and girls worldwide, global women's rights, yet there has been minimal investigation into how these representative claims for women worldwide are formed and the substantive U.S. commitment. Is this a reflection of a growing American feminist foreign policy or symbolic rhetoric for domestic audiences? To better understand the representation of global women's rights in American foreign policy, I analyze the political context behind three widely supported American foreign policy bills focusing on women that were introduced during the 111th Congress (2009–10). Each of these bills failed to become statute. Drawing from qualitative comparative case study analysis, I show how antiabortion politics constrain the legislative success of any American foreign policy legislation that focuses on women, regardless of relevance. This suggests that foreign women's bodies are a terrain for U.S. legislators to advance abortion policy objectives with minimal electoral constraint. Although advancing women's rights furthers broader U.S. foreign policy objectives, such as preventing terrorism and growing market economies, domestic abortion politics shape the boundaries of how global women's rights are represented in American foreign policy.

Light and dark trait subtypes of human personality – A multi-study person-centered approach

Is human nature good or evil? Light or dark? Machiavelli described human nature as selfish and greedy. Abraham Lincoln appealed to the better angels of our nature. Drawing on primate research and human personality science we provide insight into this centuries-old debate. Latent profile analyses of self-reports from two general population samples (Total N = 36,788) uncovered distinct personality subtypes, a “dark” trait profile (Machiavellian, narcissistic, psychopathic traits), a “light” trait profile (Kantianism, humanism, faith in humanity), and a “middle” subtype threading between the other two. The light subtype evidenced affiliative interpersonal functioning and greater trust in others, as well as higher life satisfaction and positive self-image. The dark subtype reflected interpersonal dominance, competitiveness, and aggression. In both general population samples, the dark trait subtype was the least prevalent. However, in a third sample of U.S. Senators (N = 143), based on observational data, the dark subtype was most prevalent and associated with longer tenure in political office, though less legislative success. Results suggest that human nature reflects both light and dark features, serving affiliative (pro-social) and dominance (pro-self) functions, with subtype prevalence varying considerably based on profession.

Why Strict Cabinet Succession is Always Bad Policy: A Response to Jack Goldsmith and Ben Miller-Gootnick

In their Lawfare post, Jack Goldsmith and Ben Miller-Gootnick put forward the traditional argument that legislative officer succession, as permitted by the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, leads to undesirable and destabilizing changes in party control. Quoting a report of the Continuity in Government Commission, Goldsmith and Miller-Gootnick wrote: [A] “political zealot might seek to change the party in the executive branch with a single attack,” or a “freak accident might lead to a sudden change in party” that controlled the presidency. [The report] added that “if a Congressional leader not from the President’s party were to assume the presidency, it could lead to a destabilizing change of party for the federal government.” As a result of these factors, the commission recommended (among other things) removing congressional leaders from the statutory line of succession. This is the long-standing policy objection which is put forward against both the 1947 Act and its 1792 predecessor. My limited goal here is to illustrate why that policy objection is wrong; in fact, it is dangerously misguided. I offer this as a compromise and partial solution: keep legislative officer succession—but append it to the end of the line of succession, following cabinet succession. Furthermore, cabinet members should only succeed and be allowed to retain the presidency during the term of the President which appointed them. I suggest that would capture the best of both succession regimes: cabinet officer succession and legislative officer succession. I am not the first person to suggest a solution along these lines. In 2004, in testimony before a House of Representatives committee, Professor Akhil Amar, who is the nation’s most prominent academic opponent of legislative officer succession, stated: I do think in very, very highly unusual situations where you really try to have Cabinet succession, officer succession, and everyone’s gone, I think only a real constitutional zealot, maybe without good judgment, would say you can’t have congressional leaders in that circumstance because the Constitution really isn’t a suicide pact, and so I think I appreciate sort of the prudence involved there. I agree with Professor Amar. The only difference between Professor Amar’s position and my own is what he characterizes as “highly unusual situations” is, in my view, the world that we live in. That is the world which should animate our policy-makers. And that has been our world since Hiroshima, 9/11, and COVID-19.