Book Description
Politicians and pundits alike have complained that the divided governments of the last decades have led to legislative gridlock. Not so, argues Keith Krehbiel, who advances the provocative theory that divided government actually has little effect on legislative productivity. Gridlock is in fact the order of the day, occurring even when the same party controls the legislative and executive branches. Meticulously researched and anchored to real politics, Krehbiel argues that the pivotal vote on a piece of legislation is not the one that gives a bill a simple majority, but the vote that allows its supporters to override a possible presidential veto or to put a halt to a filibuster. This theory of pivots also explains why, when bills are passed, winning coalitions usually are bipartisan and supermajority sized. Offering an incisive account of when gridlock is overcome and showing that political parties are less important in legislative-executive politics than previously thought, Pivotal Politics remakes our understanding of American lawmaking.
Customer Reviews:
Brainy prof painlessly debunks gridlock assumptions.......1999-09-16
I had very low expectations, to be sure. All said and done, however, this is a v. fine book, considering that my brother-in-law wrote it.
But, really now. Even as a total non-scientist I actually did find the book (o-k, the parts I read) interesting and informative. And even though I of necessity skipped right past the math and grids and charts and doodles and stuff, the substance made sense because of "the author's" down-to-earth narrative style. (I suppose it may also have helped that he explained the whole theory, or as much as he thought his brother and I could grasp, over beers one night. Be that as it may.) I, under no threats or inducements, sincerely recommend this book to anyone interested in looking beyond the common assumption that Party X in the White House and Party Y controlling Congress ("divided government" I recall to be the super-duper scientific term) is likely to result in the dreaded Gridlock. Or the gridded Dreadlocks. Music Up: "It Ain't Necessarily So...."
Book Description
In this prize-winning book, a renowned political scientist debunks the commonly held myth that the American national government functions effectively only when one political party controls the presidency and Congress. For this new edition, David R. Mayhew has provided a new Preface, a new appendix, and a new concluding chapter that brings the historical narrative up to date.
“Important, accessible, and compelling, David Mayhew’s second edition of Divided We Govern takes the best book on the history of US lawmaking and—against all odds—makes it better.”—Keith Krehbiel, Stanford University
“In this welcome updating of his agenda-setting classic, David Mayhew cogently defends his original methodology and finds that divided government remains no less productive of important legislation than unified government, although it is now (thanks mainly to Clinton’s impeachment) strongly associated with prominent investigations of the executive branch. Written with Mayhew’s usual clarity and grace, this is a book to be enjoyed by beginning and veteran students of Congress alike.”—Gary Jacobson
From reviews of the first edition:
"First-rate. . . . Mayhew’s tabulations and analysis are, quite simply, unimpeachable."—Morris Fiorina, Washington Monthly
"Will stand for years as a classic."—L. Sandy Maisel, Political Science Quarterly
"Should be read by every student of American politics."—Gillian Peele, Times Higher Education Supplement
Amazon.com
For most of history, the law permitted men to "chastise" their wives. Common law explicitly recognized a man's right to beat his wife with a stick, as long as the stick was no thicker than his thumb (it is from this tradition that we derive the phrase "rule of thumb"). Men who beat their wives were, and are, infrequently punished, or if at all, only leniently. Women who are battered are often blamed for provoking the attack--even by the most trivial of acts or omissions--or for failing to leave, even though they may fear retribution, or other motivations may make flight less obvious a solution than it seems.
In the face of a history that held women to be legally dead upon marriage, subsumed into the identities of their husbands, feminist theorists and lawyers have tried to reconceptualize and relitigate domestic violence. In framing the personal as political, feminists have sought to draw back the curtain that shielded the private realm from the scrutiny and censure of the law. The theoretical and practical challenges, implications, and struggles of this feminist lawmaking--at all its levels--are the subject of Elizabeth Schneider's book Battered Women and Feminist Lawmaking.
The book is organized into four sections, covering the history of the battered women's movement, the theoretical dilemmas of feminist analyses of battering, feminist legal practices and strategies in domestic violence cases, and the possibilities for change through feminist lawmaking, including discussions of the Violence Against Women Act, and of legal education. The issues of domestic violence are fraught and complex, the ways to handle it no less so. Schneider is a law professor at Brooklyn Law School and a longtime legal activist on the issue, and her take is both sobering and enlightening. It is an erudite, well-written examination of law, domestic battery, and the implications for equality, and a highly recommended read for activists, legal actors, academics, and interested lay readers. --J. Riches
Book Description
As recently as the 1960s the harm of domestic violence was not legally recognized. This book examines how pathbreaking feminist activists and lawyers have brought the severity of domestic violence to public attention since then and led the U. S. Congress, the Supreme Court, and the United Nations to address the problem. Written by a leading expert on violence against women, the book chronicles and assesses this crucial contribution of the women's rights struggle.
Book Description
Parliamentary obstruction, popularly known as the "filibuster," has been a defining feature of the U.S. Senate throughout its history. In this book, Gregory J. Wawro and Eric Schickler explain how the Senate managed to satisfy its lawmaking role during the nineteenth and early twentieth century, when it lacked seemingly essential formal rules for governing debate.
What prevented the Senate from self-destructing during this time? The authors argue that in a system where filibusters played out as wars of attrition, the threat of rule changes prevented the institution from devolving into parliamentary chaos. They show that institutional patterns of behavior induced by inherited rules did not render Senate rules immune from fundamental changes.
The authors' theoretical arguments are supported through a combination of extensive quantitative and case-study analysis, which spans a broad swath of history. They consider how changes in the larger institutional and political context--such as the expansion of the country and the move to direct election of senators--led to changes in the Senate regarding debate rules. They further investigate the impact these changes had on the functioning of the Senate. The book concludes with a discussion relating battles over obstruction in the Senate's past to recent conflicts over judicial nominations.
Book Description
Open a textbook on American politics and you're likely to find the process by which a bill becomes a law described much as it was in texts of decades ago. But, lawmaking has changed dramatically in recent years, and the traditional how-a-bill-becomes-a-law diagram describes few of the major measures considered in the contemporary Congress.
Bills follow a number of routes through Congress today:
-- they may be considered by several committees -- or none
-- omnibus measures may be shaped by special task forces, or in formal executive-congressional summits
-- floor consideration in the House may be governed by rules tailored to facilitate or slow a bill's progress
-- bills are regularly subject to non-germane amendments or are filibustered on the Senate floor.
In a timely revision of her successful book, Unorthodox Lawmaking, noted political scientist Barbara Sinclair describes the contemporary legislative process as it really operates and treats this subject in a highly readable manner. Sinclair leads students step-by-step through the lawmaking process in each chamber, as she explores the range of special procedures and practices, the factors that have contributed to their emergence, and their consequences on both the lawmaking process and the legislation produced.
Sinclair provides five case studies to illustrate how the legislative process varies from bill to bill, and to show how procedure and politics are interrelated. Following a non-technical description of the current budget process in Chapter 5, case studies in Chapters 10 and 11 trace the budget process from 1993 to 1999, including the balanced budget deal between the President and Congress in 1997 and subsequent budget politics. Three other case studies -- focusing on managed care regulation (new in this edition), national service legislation, and the Omnibus Drug Bill -- offer concrete and interesting examples of the variety in the present-day lawmaking process.
Does the use of new procedures and practices enhance or inhibit the likelihood of a bill becoming law? What other effects does unorthodox lawmaking have on how Congress functions? The second edition of Unorthodox Lawmaking gives your students the tools to better assess the relative successes and limitations of the contemporary legislative process.
Customer Reviews:
A Few Holes.......2003-10-16
In her book, Unorthodox Lawmaking: New Legislative Processes in the U.S. Congress, Barbara Sinclair successfully argues that legislation no longer follows the common "textbook method." Representatives and senators alike have adapted new methods, sending each bill through a different custom-tailored process. Though she leaves a few questions unanswered, Sinclair uses multiple forms of research to paint a clear picture of how legislation is now passed.
Sinclair divides the book into three sections - first analyzing the path bills take, then exploring how and why these processes developed, and finally making an in-depth analysis of these changes through several case studies.
The House, she argues, has grown more efficient through this developmental process. The leadership has seized power through a variety of rules and other manipulations. By shipping bills to what committee it wants (or, in some cases, committees), the leadership can put bills in friendly hands. Post-committee changes make bills passable, and finally the leadership can use rules to craft debate exactly how it wants.
In the Senate, the opposite has happened. Senators have used new methods to gain individual power. Most importantly, Senators have often use filibusters, both covertly and overtly, to prevent the majority from getting its way. The need for a 60 person majority gives a minority senator incredible power.
After this analysis, Sinclair then turns to examine how these changes came about. She suggests that opportunity and necessity drove the changes. As parties became more polarized and constituents demanded more efficient legislation, the Senators looked for ways to outsmart and out manipulate the other side. Ultimately, Sinclair argues that these processes have made passing legislation more efficient. Significant legislation has passed more often when such measures have been applied.
Proving any thesis, including this one is a difficult task. Some books, including the Jacobs/Shapiro book and the Fenno book, lack a strong backbone because they rely on only one method of research that each have obvious shortcomings. Sinclair avoids this mistake, opting for a variety of research methods that paint a broad and tightly constructed picture.
The first method Sinclair turns to is statistical data. Multiple charts confirm Sinclair's argument that the legislative process is becoming more complex. Figure 5.1 notes a distinct and obvious trend towards the use of more special maneuvers. Later figures confirm these trends (at least to a degree) in the Senate.
As evidenced in Jacobs and Shapiro, statistical evidence does, however, have its limit. Sinclair successfully researches history and changing political dynamics to explain the statistics, not leaving them to stand on their own ground. Of course, this method has its drawbacks. The reader is forced to accept Sinclair's interpretation and conclusions. Nonetheless, there is no better method to interpret the data, and Sinclair seems to have done her homework, presenting a thoughtful and well researched chapter.
Finally, Sinclair uses another method to bring her point together. Standing alone, case studies do not pass muster; they are simply too narrow to make broad generalizations. When taken in the context of statistical data and interpretations, however, they effectively bring the numbers to life. Sinclair starts by examining the National Service Bill. She highlights a more or less traditional process. The reader does, however, see several uses of non-traditional methods, particularly in the Senate, where a filibuster threat and a non-germane amendment give the minority quite a voice. By the time the Omnibus Health Bill was passed, Sinclair describes a process that was completely different. The bill is sculpted and directed at every turn. The reader sees a clear difference from the first case study to the last.
Using these methods, Sinclair does paint a convincing picture. However, she leaves some notable holes. The first concerns the role of the President in the legislative process. In her initial analysis (chapters 1 through 5), she considers the president only briefly, mentioning his veto power and the occasional need for a summit. Surely, the president's role is not limited to a brief meeting. From reading the case studies, it becomes obvious the president is often influential, even a driving force in legislation. Why is the president's role essentially ignored in her descriptive analysis?
Sinclair's ultimate conclusion is that "unorthodox lawmaking" makes legislating more efficient, but she seems to recklessly add that legislation will now "reflect the will of the people." Through examination of this book, I have encountered scant evidence that would suggest this to be true. The new tools are used to overcome the power of the opposing party; how this reflects public opinion is not seriously addressed.
In fact, Sinclair offers little proof that new legislative processes have significantly increased responsiveness to the general public. By making this statement, Sinclair opens a whole new set of inquiry about the dynamics of public opinion and the influence of outside interests. Unfortunately, she can not substantiate any claims in this area. An interesting addendum to this book might include an analysis of how closely legislation's relation to public preference has changed as these processes developed. Another addendum might include an inquiry into how the public sees these processes. Does it further the view that the Congress is simply power driven and unresponsive?
Despite these minor shortcomings, Sinclair nonetheless proves her point. Congress today is a different body than it used to be several decades ago. Legislation no longer follows the textbook method on its way to becoming law. Instead, it takes many different paths and contours, contours that help promote its passage. Unorthodox Lawmaking is a piece of sound research that describes an evolving process.
The Ugly Reality of Lawmaking.......2002-07-24
There exists a profound difference between the legislative process observed on Capitol Hill and the legislative process described in most U.S. Gov't textbooks and Sinclair's work presents a fluid and well written testament to that fact!
In her preface, she explains that this work was written to help the most nascent student of Congress understand the legislative process, but I would say those without a working knowledge of Congress will not appreciate the nuances in this work.
Sinclair compares historical and even for their time, controversial legislation (Clean Air Act) with the more modern examples of legislation that proved out signficantly more problematic than their earlier counterparts. Moving back and forth between the House and the Senate, she begins to paint the picture of the divisiveness that is partisan politics today.
That Sinclair would write such an ambitious work, is a tribute to her understanding of this body. This book is sophisticated and insightful and should be on the shelves of EVERY student in political science, but particularly those who study Congress.
I would add this disclaimer however, that this book is not for the faint of heart. If one has already developed an abiding mistrust in Congress, this book may only serve to reinforce it. The simple fact is, if more people were exposed to the true nature of "doing the business of the people," they would appreciate the "ugliness of democracy" and embrace it for that! Three cheers to Barbara!
Not light reading.......2000-04-29
I had to read this book for a course on the Legislative Process. While it is definitely readable, and well-researched, it is expectedly dry. Sinclair describes methods that are becoming more common in getting major legislation passed, and shows that this unorthodoxy is not necessarily a bad thing. The first half of the book describes the changes that the system has undergone, while the second half illustrates how these methods affected several major bills. Examples include a national service bill, regulatory overhaul, an omnibus drug bill, and two budgets.
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Lawmaking And Legislatures in Pennsylvania 1757-1775: A Biographical Dictionary (Lawmaking & Legislators in Pennsylvania)
Manufacturer: Pennsylvania State University Press
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ASIN: 0966779452 |
Book Description
The Biographical Dictionary of Pennsylvania Legislators is proud to announce publication of Volume 3 of its multi-volume series, Lawmaking and Legislators in Pennsylvania. Volume 3, distributed by the Penn State University Press, covers the Assembly terms from 1757 through 1775, a period that witnessed the French and Indian War, the expansion of Pennsylvania, with the addition of Bedford, Northumberland, and Westmoreland counties, the Stamp Act crisis, the development of extra-legal committees, the creation of county militias, and the eventual overthrow of the colonial government. Among the legislators profiled in Volume 3 are Benjamin Franklin, William Allen, Joseph Galloway, Daniel Roberdeau, George Bryan, John Armstrong, William Thompson, Henry Keppele, Isaac Norris, Israel Pemberton, James Pemberton, George Taylor, George Ross, Emanuel Carpenter, John Morton, Nathaniel Pennock, Israel Jacobs, Robert McPherson, Edward Biddle, John Potts, Samuel Potts, Thomas Potts, Samuel Miles, Michael Hillegas, and Thomas Willing. Also included are a series of introductory essays focusing on such topics as the rules and procedures of the Assembly, the Pennsylvania Iron Industry, the legislators and civic improvement, the Quaker party, and the prelude to revolution. The volume also contains 16 charts, two maps, a complete sessions list for those years, and numerous appendices that highlight such topics as the religious affiliations and residences of the legislators, laws enacted in Pennsylvania, and committee assignments by speaker.
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- Best book available on initiative and referendum
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The Battle over Citizen Lawmaking: A Collection of Essays
Manufacturer: Carolina Academic Pr
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Dangerous Democracy?
ASIN: 0890899681 |
Book Description
There is little doubt that in recent years the initiative process has become one of the most important mechanisms for altering and influencing public policy at every level of government. In the last two years alone, utilizing the initiative process, citizens were heard on affirmative action, educational reform, term limits, tax reform, campaign finance reform, animal protection, drug policy reform, and the environment.
However, the initiative process has fallen prey to its own success. Lawmakers who have been most affected by this citizen's tool have struck back by imposing new regulations on the process — regulations that serve no purpose but to deprive the citizens of the only avenue available to them to reign in unresponsive government.
These regulations have generated many questions that have so far remained unanswered or have been discussed only in specialist journals. There are legal questions about signature gathering and limits on campaign spending, political questions about implementing the relevant statutes, and philosophical questions about equality and freedom of expression. The Battle Over Citizen Lawmaking discusses the evolution of the initiative and referendum process, the need for the process, how it has been utilized, the impetus for new regulations, the major regulations that have been imposed, the role the courts have played in regulating the initiative and referendum process, what role money plays, and how the process has been regulated in other countries. This book comprehensively addresses these issues from the viewpoint of leading scholars, opinion leaders, journalists, elected officials, activists, and attorneys.
Customer Reviews:
Best book available on initiative and referendum.......2002-10-20
The initiative and referendum process was used more during the 1990s than it had been for decades. The people have used the process to cut taxes, protect animals and the environment, enact public health care laws, impose term limits on their legislatures, and much more.
State legislatures have reacted by curtailing the process, in effect opposing this challenge to their power by the people they are supposed to represent. The Battle Over Citizen Lawmaking describes this struggle as well as teaching us a great deal about initiative and referendum in America.
Of all the books written about the initiative process in recent years, The Battle Over Citizen Lawmaking stands out as the best. The book, written by scholars, journalists, and activists and edited by the President of the Initiative and Referendum Institute, gives an account of the history of the initiative process and the reasons both for and against increased regulation. Unlike many other works on the subject, it is scupulously fair to all points of view.
Although it is intended as a textbook for political science classes - and is a very good one indeed - The Battle Over Citizen Lawmaking is also suitable for the informed general reader. If you plan to read only one book about the initiative process, read this one.
Book Description
"Perhaps the leading scholar of the postreform Congress, Barbara Sinclair has produced a superb combination of description and analysis that captures the Democratic-dominated House of the 1980s and early 1990s. Weaving together principal-agent theory, solid behavioral techniques, and bushels of insider observations, Sinclair's depiction of the U.S. House in the O'Neill-Wright-Foley era should become the standard portrait of this institution."--Burdett Loomis, Congress & The Presidency
Recently plagued by gridlock, huge deficits, and deep policy differences between the president and congressional majorities, Congress has often been the target of relentless and bitter criticism. In this context, Sinclair asks, how has the House not only performed its legislative functions but also managed to enhance its role in the American political system? In Legislators, Leaders, and Lawmakers, Sinclair traces the emergence of a House majority party leadership that is highly active and deeply involved in multiple aspects of the legislative process, and yet one that leads by means of a participatory and inclusive style.
"This book is a most remarkable undertaking. It represents a scholarly research effort that has stretched over nearly two decades. It has involved the getting and maintaining an unusual level of access to the workings of Democratic party leadership and yet an ability to remain sufficiently distant to develop the broader perspective. The end result is clearly a most important--if not the most important--book on party leadership and Congress."--American Political Science Review
"Applying a perceptive and disciplined mind to an impressive knowledge of the topic, the author provides a detailed and instructive account of the relations between majority leaders and members in the postreform House, as well as valuable evidence and insights on such matters as the blending of substance and politics in decision making, current patterns of relationships with lobbyists, and the emerging public role of the Speaker."--Political Science Quarterly
Customer Reviews:
Worked for me..........2007-02-20
The book was for a college-level political science course that fulfilled the course requirements.
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Lawmaking and Legislators in Pennsylvania: A Biographical Dictionary : 1682-1709
Craig W. Horle
Manufacturer: Univ of Pennsylvania Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0812230671 |
Customer Reviews:
I am greatly impressed!.......1998-02-24
This is a comprehensive biographical dictionary of early Pa. legislators. I'm descended from Thomas Lloyd, Dep. Gov. of Pa. in late 1600's. I learned information from this book that I've never seen elsewhere - and I've looked, believe me!
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