Legislative Dynamics In Congress
This project addresses some important limitations of existing databases on legislative activity. In collaboration with E. Scott Adler (University of Colorado), we are assembling and analyzing a database that includes all congressional bills introduced since 1946. This database, which includes approximately 250,000 records, includes detailed information about the sponsor, progress, and policy content of each bill. Current databases on legislative activity focus on downstream activity such as floor roll call voting (Poole and Rosenthal, 1997), statutes or committee behavior (Baumgartner and Jones). Focusing on these stages prevents scholars from fully addressing one of the central questions of legislative research --how are agendas being defined? Committees consider only 15 percent of the bills that are introduced. Even fewer will be subject to floor votes. As a result, these databases do not truly capture individual legislative activity and interest. Our project makes it possible to study individual patterns of activity to be compared with collective activity. At this writing (Autumn 2001), the database is approximately 50 percent complete. John Wilkerson is the Principal Investigator at the University of Washington. T.Jens Feeley supervises the project, including the work of six Undergraduate Fellows. Click a link on the navigation bar to view research projects a part of this program.
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