Legislative Effectiveness in the United States Congress: The Lawmakers

by Craig Volden, Alan E. Wiseman

This book explores why some members of Congress are more effective than others at navigating the legislative process and what this means for how Congress is organized and what policies it produces. Craig Volden and Alan E. Wiseman develop a new metric of individual legislator effectiveness (the Legislative Effectiveness Score) that will be of interest to scholars, voters, and politicians alike. They use these scores to study party influence in Congress, the successes or failures of women and African Americans in Congress, policy gridlock, and the specific strategies that lawmakers employ to advance their agendas.

Genres: Politics

260 pages, Paperback

First published September 30, 2014

Reviews

[Elmer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eye opening. The information provided in this book should be commonplace in civic education in the United States. Without being overtly political, it strikes me that if the rigorous evaluation of law making effectiveness that is presented in this book could be be applied by American citizens, the landscape of attention on particular politicians would change dramatically. There are many politicians who receive the spotlight of media attention when, in actuality, their impact on the American public through actual law making is negligible. Some food for thought.

[Meggs · Rating 4 out of 5]

A succinct if not dense exploration of how certain legislators achieve great policymaking success while others do not. Volden and Wiseman explore the role of political parties, race, gender, policy gridlock, and more. My favorite chapter was undoubtedly their qualitative analysis of lawmakers with high Legislative Effectiveness Scores.

I would recommend to anyone looking to learn more about the U.S. House of Representatives.

[Debby Douglas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I selected this book for an independent study because I like Volden's work on policy diffusion. Not what I was expecting, but it was a great read. It wasn't too complex and it was interesting and informative. It is fascinating how some legislators get things done and others do not.