Congresswomen, Legislative Entrepreneurship, and the Basis for Effective Legislating in the U.S. House, 1973–2008

Research indicates that congresswomen are more effective at moving bills through the lawmaking process than their male counterparts. To investigate why, we discuss what legislative entrepreneurship involves and explain why it can serve as the basis for problem-solving and effective lawmaking in the U.S. Congress. We also examine the entrepreneurial work that members of Congress did on behalf of bills that they sponsored from 1973 to 2008. Among other findings, we observe that congresswomen, especially those in the minority party, are more entrepreneurial than their male colleagues. This finding enhances our understanding of why female lawmakers are more effective lawmakers.

Minority Party Capacity in Congress

When, and under what circumstances, are congressional minority parties capable of influencing legislative outcomes? We argue that the capacity of the minority party to exert legislative influence is a function of three factors: constraints on the majority party, which create opportunities for the minority party; minority party cohesion on the issue at hand; and sufficient motivation for the minority to engage in legislating rather than electioneering. Drawing on data on every bill considered in the House of Representatives between 1985 and 2006 and case examples of notable lawmaking efforts during the same period, we show that our theory helps predict which bills are considered on the House floor, which bills become law, and the substance of policy-making outcomes. Our findings have important implications for theories of congressional party power and our understanding of minority party influence on Capitol Hill.

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.

Natural Language Processing for the Analysis of the Political Characterisation of Migration in the Croatian Political Discourse

This paper tackles the issue of analyst bias in performance of comparative political analyses on political discourse, by leveraging data and machine-learning over human prior knowledge. The case studied is characterization of the issue of migration in the Croatian political discourse, which was chosen arbitrarily. We developed a machine-learning system that identifies most prominent features in the Croatian political discourse, with regards to migration and were interested solo in comparative political analysis in political science. This system does not rely on human judgement on the part of the researchers, and can be thus considered to be “objective”, short of possible sampling or selection bias. It is replicable. If provided, the same dataset and algorithm used, same conclusions should be reached by any scientist. This result was achieved by creating a text corpus from news items and press releases extracted from the websites of Croatian political parties currently represented in the Parliament. Available and collected data consist of public announcements mainly from IDS (Istarski Demokratski Sabor / Istrian Democratic Assambly), SDSS (Samostalna Demokratska Srpska Stranka / Independed Democratic Serb Party) and HSLS (Hrvatska Socijalno Liberalna Stranka / Croatian Social Liberal Party). Data analyzed suggests three dominant phrases of the research process. All political parties had similar political stand towards pointed out issues. Three most significant phrases were determined. First phrase is related to words “Demography” and “Reduction” and finding suggest that most analyzed articles relates towards migration of Croatian citizens in connection to economic hardships of some kind. Phrase two is related to words “Border” and “Croatia-Serbia” which strongly indicates relation to migration and is related towards inter-Balkan migration, mostly connected with consequences of the Croatian War of Independence from 1990’s, and is of most interest to SDSS, a Serb minority party in Croatia. Phrase three is related towards Marrakesh Agreement (Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration), where most of analyzed data shows that parties have a constructive but ambivalent stance towards migration from the third countries. Research conducted on available data, shows that wide spread international migration is not in the focus of most Croatian political parties, while topics and interest for inter-Balkan and Croatian economic/political migration dominates Croatian political spectre

Nonpartisan advice for the U.S. Congress matters

As in all democratically constituted sta- tes, scientific policy advice to the legis- lature in the U. S. is faced with the challenges of this time: What can good advice look like given the rapidly developing new technologies and their far-reaching implications for society? Despite decades of collaboration between consultants and advisors, mutual trust must be won over and over again. Against this background, it is particularly interesting to take a closer look at current developments in the U. S.: Timothy M. Persons, GAO’s Chief Scientist, gives insights into the work of the U. S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), which advises the U. S. Congress. It becomes clear that balanced results of technology assessment and other GAO products arise when not only the majority but also the minority party is heard when prioritizing congressional inquiries. The research questions must be impartial and meet congressional requirements. The interview was conducted by Constanze Scherz (ITASKIT).

Romanian centre-right will struggle to form coalition

Significance They have enough seats along with the Hungarian minority party to form a government. But the former communist Social Democratic Party (PSD) and fringe politicians are the main beneficiaries of the general election held on December 6, which revealed deep dissatisfaction with the outgoing minority National Liberal Party (PNL) government, amid a far-right comeback and low turnout. Impacts The COVID-19 crisis has deepened the gulf between much of society and a poorly performing state. Whoever held office in 2020 was likely to have been punished by voters but elite figures' self-serving behaviour continues regardless. If PNL and USR-PLUS do not bury their mutual animosity, PSD or some populist may capture the presidency in 2022.

Mainstream Marginalization: Secret Political Organizing Through Social Media

Scholars have addressed how the socially marginalized, individuals with fringe viewpoints, or the politically marginalized in authoritarian regimes use social media to organize or connect in secret. Yet intensifying partisan polarization and prejudice in the United States has made it necessary to study how mainstream partisans in liberal democracies use social media to organize in secret. This study explores why mainstream partisans in the United States—average Republicans or Democrats—organize in secret online and analyzes the unique functions of social media for political organizing amid contextual marginalization. Through interviews with group leaders and a digital ethnography of a secret Facebook group in the United States, I find that mainstream partisans use social media to form secret political groups when they are the minority in their local community and that the online secret group serves several unique functions for members. First, the group operates as a community of solidarity for those reticent to disclose their political beliefs and as a community of contention to criticize and revitalize the minority Party in their region. The group also operates as a community of practice, allowing members to learn and rehearse communication among like-minded others. These findings hold implications for how scholars study communication in a digital and polarized era and how practitioners gauge public opinion.