Congress Makes a Law

Bailey, Stephen K.

doi:10.7312/bail90724

Cited by 88 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The studies of member behavior are helpful for considering potential explanatory variables of winnowing, but the authors have left to others the development of a specific test of the legislative effects of such activities. 4 The few studies of lawmaking that do feature a bill (Bailey 1950;Berman 1966;Eidenberg and Morey 1969;Fenno 2003;Jones 1975;Light 1985Light , 1992Peabody et al 1972) or bills (DeGregorio 1997;Jones 1994) as the unit of analysis typically consider successful bills, looking backward into the process to see how they came to be successful. The case studies of one bill highlight the use of legislative strategy and the importance of being on the right committee.…”

Section: Previous Researchmentioning

confidence: 98%

Issues and Institutions: “Winnowing” in the U.S. Congress

Krutz

2005

American J Political Sci

112

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Winnowing" is the pre-floor process by which Congress determines the small percentage of bills that will receive committee attention. The vast majority of proposals languish in this vital agenda-setting stage, yet our understanding of winnowing is nascent. Why do some bills move forward while most fail? I examine that question here by developing and testing a theoretical framework of winnowing grounded in bounded rationality, which includes institutional and sponsor cues and also incorporates the unique issue milieu. A heteroskedastic probit model is utilized to analyze the winnowing fate of all bills introduced across five issue areas in the House and Senate from 1991 to 1998. The findings counter much received wisdom and suggest that the process is indeed cue based. The majority party helps structure this critical process in both chambers, though party effects appear stronger in the House. Contrary to recent work on the rise of Senate individualism, the seniority of the sponsor has significant effects in both the Senate and House, but again exhibits a stronger effect in the House. Surprisingly, presidential proposals are no more likely to survive than typical bills. The findings further suggest that the entrepreneurial efforts of bill sponsors breathe life into this process.

show abstract

Section: Previous Researchmentioning

confidence: 98%

Issues and Institutions: “Winnowing” in the U.S. Congress

Krutz

2005

American J Political Sci

112

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The failure of the Full Employment Bill of 1945 is often used as a case in point. Neither the study by Bailey (1950) nor the one by Williams, Johnson, and Barrett (2000) places blame for the bill's failure on Truman. Nevertheless, this article would be incomplete without addressing the possibility of presidential ineptness in managing legislation.…”

Section: Conclusion and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 92%

“…Previous writing on this bill (Bailey 1950;Stein 1990Stein , 1994 and the Katznelson et al appendix consider it fiscal legislation. The two other pieces of legislation selected were categorized as social welfare and labor.…”

Section: Study Methodsmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…A classic case study of the Employment Act, S. 380, and related legislation is that of Stephen K. Bailey; an updated review and legislative history is in press (Bailey 1950;Williams et al 2000). Both works show the second vote on S. 380 was essentially a vote on a conference committee report favoring House legislation (H.R.…”

Section: S 380 and The Employment Act Of 1946mentioning

confidence: 97%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Race, Social Welfare, and the Decline of Postwar Liberalism: A New or Old Key?

Williams

Johnson

2000

Public Administration Review

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Fifty‐one years ago, when liberalism and social welfare democracy were expanding in all advanced industrialized nations, V.O. Key, Jr., forecast the decline of postwar liberalism in the United States. Current discussion of the decline of liberalism has ignored Key or, when evidence is lacking, has incorrectly cited him. In contrast to Key's relatively direct, simple, and heavily documented reasoning, current explanations are multifactorial, complex, less well documented, and often ideologically loaded. Some explanations for the “postwar” decline identify causal factors more than six years after the war, yet they ignore events in 1945–47. At the fifty‐first anniversary of V.O. Key's Southern Politics in State and Nation, attention to Key's forecast and Occam's razor is called for. Key argued that racism in the South, exerted through congressional committees, would lead to a decline of liberalism in the nation. Using “legislative histories,” this article compares Key's single‐factor “racial” explanation with a two‐factor explanation—and by implication with multifactor ones—and finds Key's more compelling and parsimonious. Archival sources indicate that more than two years before the 1948 Democratic Convention, Charlie Ross, Truman's closest advisor, and Truman himself encouraged Key to assess the emerging postwar politics of the South. As Key anticipated, institutionalized racism sunk the Fair Deal and postwar social democracy, despite Truman's efforts. The effects of racism on postwar and current politics and public administration should be reexamined as a key to understanding American distinctiveness or exceptionalism.

show abstract

“…The importance of timing calls out for more longitudinal studies and fewer cross-sectional studies. In the West, the snapshot study, along the lines of Congress Makes a Law (Bailey, 1950), has been very common. Even straightforward implementation studies came much later (e.g., Hargrove, 1975).…”

Section: IIImentioning

confidence: 99%

Is there a third-world policy process?

Horowitz

1989

Policy Sci

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The introduction to this special issue asks what is distinctive about public policy making in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In field after field, some political scientists have argued for distinguishing Western polities from developing polities, whereas other have argued for inclusive treatment. The essay assesses these divergent perspectives as they relate to pubfic policy making. On the one hand, it is clear that the systemic frameworks of policy -the institutions, participants, resources, the weight of the state relative to the society, and the capacity of the state to work its will -all vary as between developing and Western countries. The same is true for the scope of policy activity, the configuration of issues, and the actual content of policy. On the other hand, the policy process -the constraints, the ripe moments that produce innovation, the tendency for policy to have unanticipated consequences, and so on -appears to display regularities that transcend the categories of Western or Third World state. The essay goes on to explain the divergences of policy in terms of disparate access to resources, levels of economic development, and social patterns. The convergence of process is explained in terms of the deeper exigencies of human problem solving in highly structured contexts.Comparative public policy is a young field, even younger than the systematic study of politics in the developing countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The hybrid product of these two fields -comparative public policy in developing countries -is younger still. Nevertheless, even before some basic conceptual issues have been sorted out, findings are beginning to accumulate rather quickly on the policy process and the policy configuration in a significant number of Asian, African, and Latin American countries.Yet there is one question that, with growing knowledge, has become more rather than less difficult to answer. It is, in some ways, the central question: What, if anything, is distinctive about public policy making in Asia, Africa, and Latin America? The answer has become more elusive, because many of the findings on how policy is made and carried out in developing countries bear considerable resemblance to the same findings for Western countries. Some differences can be detected, but it is not always clear that they are categorical rather than country-specific, and in any case the differences usually amount to matters of degree rather than kind. Already it is obvious that an effort to pinpoint the distinctiveness of public policy in the Third World quickly becomes a struggle over nuances.That does not render the effort insignificant, because small differences in policy process can produce large differences in policy product and outcome. Moreover, the fact that some similarities have manifested themselves, despite the widely different political, economic, and cultural circumstances that

show abstract

Congress Makes a Law

Cited by 88 publications

References 0 publications

Issues and Institutions: “Winnowing” in the U.S. Congress

Issues and Institutions: “Winnowing” in the U.S. Congress

Race, Social Welfare, and the Decline of Postwar Liberalism: A New or Old Key?

Is there a third-world policy process?

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About