Browsing by Subject "Congress"

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
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    The Broken Branch: A Look at the Contemporary Congress
    (2006-09-11) Jacobs, Lawrence R.
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    Confict, Consensus, and Opportunity: Congress and the Development of the American Welfare State
    (2017-12) Olson, Adam
    My dissertation examines how public policies that do not generate strong interest group or public support develop over time. Much of the recent policy feedback literature emphasizes the importance of developing support among interest groups or creating new constituencies to support a program. Programs that develop these exogenous supports are more resistant to retrenchment and may be easier to expand while programs that do not are harder to expand and more easily retrenched. My dissertation, which is two in-depth case studies of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the federal minimum wage, finds that exogenous support is not always central to ensuring a program's long term durability. In the case of the EITC, bipartisan support for the program among members of Congress was sufficient to make the program permanent and index it to inflation. This suggests that if the right conditions are met within Congress, exogenous support is less important. In the case of the federal minimum wage, I argue that while exogenous support for the wage eventually developed, it was not strong enough to overcome the inegalitarian program design in part, because that support was partisan in nature. This suggests that generating exogenous support is not always sufficient when thinking about how to expand a program.
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    The Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the Coalitional Representation of Latinxs in the U.S. House of Representatives
    (2019-08) Munoz, Avram
    Scholars have established that having descriptive, surrogate representation for minority racial groups in Congress translates to effective substantive representation of those groups through certain legislative behaviors. For Latinxs, though, the relationship between racial identity and political representation is more complex. Latinidad--or Latinx identity--encompasses people of many national origins, genders, and experiences who have a variety of political interests and preferences. How, then, is it possible for Latinx representatives to accurately and adequately represent this multitude of interests when there is seemingly no unfying experience with which to draw Latinxs together? In this dissertation, I argue that the answer comes in the form of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and its efforts to engage in what I call coalitional representation. Unlike theories of descriptive and surrogate representation, which focus on the efficacy of individual legislators and their relationships with racial minority groups, coalitional representation foregrounds the relationship between groups of legislators such as the CHC and their target constituency. Using a mixed methods approach, I explore the relationship between the Latinx community and the CHC as its coalitional representative in the House of Representatives. Using an interpretive approach that draws on the CHC's archival documents and elite interviews with CHC members and staffers, I trace the history of the CHC and how the group has adapted to the shifting political context as it attempts to represent the Latinx community. I also show that the CHC pushes an inclusive notion of Latinidad that takes into account the intersectionality of Latinx identity, resulting in CHC behaviors that are more inclusive and provide representation for a greater number of Latinxs. I then quantitatively assess the CHC's efficacy as a coalitional representative. While the group does not seem effective based on traditional measures of legislative effectiveness such as passing legislation, the CHC is still an effective coalitional representative by engaging in other behaviors that help boost the voices of the Latinx community throughout American political institutions. The effectiveness of the CHC at representing the Latinx community by boosting its voice in Congress as well as other political institutions is of enormous importance at a time that Latinxs are facing increasing discrimination in the U.S. Through its practice of coalitional representation the CHC pushes American political institutions toward being both more representative and democratic, especially as the group continues to grow both in size and political power in the House of Representatives.
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    Conversation with Erik Paulsen
    (2019-03-12) Paulsen, Erik; Jacobs, Lawrence R.
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    Decision making in the U.S. Senate.
    (2009-06) Treul, Sarah Ann
    Political parties, roll call votes, and agenda formation are some of the prominent areas of research focusing on the U.S. Congress. Much pervious work, however, focuses on the U.S. House. Scholarship is only beginning to turn its attention to the U.S. Senate. The three essays contained within demonstrate the important role that institutions and individuals play in determining the floor's agenda in the U.S. Senate.
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    It's Even Worse than It Looks: A Conversation with Tom Mann and Norm Ornstein
    (2012-06-25) Mann, Thomas; Ornstein, Norman