TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Overwhelmed: An Introduction to the Congress’s Capacity Problem - Timothy M. Lapira, Lee Drutman, Kevin R. Kosar
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226702605.003.0001
[congressional capacity;Congress;congressional reform]
In this introduction, the volume editors introduce the framework of the book as a whole and thearguments of the leading scholars they've gather together for this project. They begin to make the case that Congress is overwhelmed, define "congressional capacity", lay the groundwork for why Congress as a whole is overwhelmed in its current state, and expound on the objective of this collection to understand the causes and consequences of the changes in legislative capacity as they have coincided with other macro-level forces in American politics. (pages 1 - 8)
This chapter is available at:
University of Chicago Press
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Part 1: The Foundations of Congressional Capacity
2. Capacity for What? Legislative Capacity Regimes in Congress and the Possibilities for Reform -Lee Drutman and Timothy M. LaPira
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226702605.003.0002
[congressional capacity;congressional staff;organizational structure;resource allocation;political time;political reform;Congress]
This chapter provides a new analytical framework to assess congressional capacity. The framework is based on two institutional tradeoffs: organizational structure (centralization vs. decentralization) and resource allocation (simplicity vs. complexity). The interaction of these factors generates four ideal-type congressional capacity regimes: parochial patronage, adversarial clientelism, pluralist adhocracy, and consensual coalition. Driven by the reelection motivation, members of Congress respond to pent up political pressures by reorganizing institutions through cyclical changes to one or both of the dimensions. The outcome is a rare moment of institutional reform that changes the congressional capacity regime. The chapter uses the framework to briefly analyze historical examples of each capacity regime. The authors suggest the current adversarial and clientialistic Congress is poised to reorganize these institutions, though it is unpredictable when or which reforms will be adopted. The chapter does not offer normative reform prescriptions, but instead offers reformers a road map for thinking through the costs and benefits of adopting some arrangements over others. (pages 11 - 33)
This chapter is available at:
University of Chicago Press
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
3. The Decline in Congressional Capacity - Molly E. Reynolds
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226702605.003.0003
[congressional staff;legislative branch appropriations;congressional support agencies;Congressional Budget Office;congressional capacity;Congress]
This chapter provides an overview of the decline of a set of correlates of congressional capacity, or observable features of the institution that should be associated with its ability to function: personnel, financial resources, and expertise and information. These correlates can and do take both partisan and non-partisan forms. Changes in these correlates have occurred concurrently with changes in the congressional workload that have also had consequences for the institution’s effectiveness. (pages 34 - 50)
This chapter is available at:
University of Chicago Press
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4. How Congress Fell Behind the Executive Branch - Philip A. Wallach
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226702605.003.0004
[Congress;executive branch;bureaucracy;federal spending;oversight;congressional staff;size of government;congressional capacity]
How did America’s executive branch come to dwarf the legislative branch? This chapter surveys more than two centuries of American history to show how executive empowerment has primarily been driven by decisions made by Congress itself. In the Constitution’s first century, the federal government grew steadily, but remained quite small and geographically decentralized by modern standards. In the first half of the twentieth century, Congress caused America’s central government to grow exponentially, especially in terms of manpower, while seeing to its own development considerably less. In post-war America, the federal government has developed increasingly complex ways of expanding its reach without expanding its manpower, overseen by a Congress that at first seemed determined to master the executive branch but that in recent decades has allowed itself to stagnate. In addition to offering a narrative account, the chapter tracks some crude metrics, such as the ratio between the number of employees in the two branches, to show what an immense task Congress now faces when trying to oversee the vast, shape-shifting network of specialized executive organs. (pages 51 - 72)
This chapter is available at:
University of Chicago Press
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Part 2: Knowledge and Expertise in Congress
5. The Congressional Capacity Survey: Who Staff Are, How They Got There, What They Do, and Where They May Go - Alexander C. Furnas, Lee Drutman, Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, Timothy M. Lapira, Kevin R. Kosar
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226702605.003.0005
[congressional staff;Congressional Capacity Survey;legislative capacity;ideology;partisanship;legislative operations;policy knowledge;procedural knowledge;political information processing;congressional capacity]
Congressional staff play many roles in supporting the work of the US Congress, from opening constituent mail to drafting laws to conducting oversight. They are an essential component of congressional capacity. This chapter provides a long overdue close look at congressional staff, paying particular attention to the role staffers play in the legislative operations of Congress. It provides topline results of the 2017 Congressional Capacity Survey, an online survey of staff regarding the legislative branch’s capacity. The survey sought to find out more about the backgrounds, career paths, policy views, technical knowledge, substantive expertise, and job experiences of congressional staffers, as well as the procedures and organizational structures that allow them to assist members of Congress to do their work in the most effective and democratically responsive ways. What follows in this chapter are descriptive results that reveal who congressional staff are, how they get started on Capitol Hill, what they do for Congress, and where they see their careers leading. (pages 75 - 93)
This chapter is available at:
University of Chicago Press
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
6. What Do Congressional Staff Actually Know? - Kristina C. Miler
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226702605.003.0006
[congressional staff;policy knowledge;procedural knowledge;expertise;specialization;gender gap;heuristics;congressional committees;congressional capacity;Congressional Capacity Survey]
This chapter examines what congressional staff know about substantive policies and procedure in order to better understand Congress’s policymaking capacity. It argues that poorly informed staff members are more likely to rely on shortcuts, or heuristics, when making decisions during the legislative process. As a result, some staff are more likely to take cues from party leaders, lobbyists, or the executive branch instead of relying on their own assessment of the situation. Drawing on new data from the Congressional Capacity Survey, this chapter evaluates a number of common preconceptions about Congress, including committee expertise, party polarization, and the gender gap. It reveals that staff members’ knowledge varies considerably and, on average, is lower than commonly assumed. Key sources of variation include staff specialization and retention, both of which contribute to higher levels of policy knowledge and should be promoted as part of reforms. The chapter also reveals discrepancies in procedural knowledge with more partisan staff, as well as male staff, demonstrating greater familiarity with chamber rules and procedures. To increase congressional capacity, staff knowledge needs to be improved and equalized, which will allow Congress to work with other actors from a position of strength, not deference. (pages 94 - 111)
This chapter is available at:
University of Chicago Press
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
7. How Committee Staffers Clear the Runway for Legislative Action in Congress - Casey Burgat, Charles Hunt
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226702605.003.0007
[congressional committees;congressional staff;legislative studies;legislative productivity;policy development;policy knowledge;seniority;congressional capacity;Congress]
Even in an era when much of the policymaking in Congress is governed by partisanship and party leadership, congressional committees continue to be engines for legislative activity. It is therefore crucial that we understand how to make committees as efficient and productive as possible. One facet of committee operation that has until now been overlooked in scholarship on congressional productivity is how staffers enable committees to fulfill their responsibilities as originators of thoughtful policy. In this study, we argue first that committee staffers are critical drivers of legislative productivity for the committees for which they work; and second, that certain staffers are better-positioned than others to make a legislative impact in committees. We use an original dataset of all House committees, detailed breakdowns of committee staff, and legislative output data from 2001-2017 to assess the extent to which increases in staff drive legislative productivity in committees, and which types of staffers are most consequential in this effort. Our findings suggest that policy staffers are crucial to the early legislative process of producing quality legislation out of committee, but that well-connected senior staffers are the driving force behind its successful passage out of the chamber. (pages 112 - 127)
This chapter is available at:
University of Chicago Press
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8. Legislative Branch Support Agencies: What They Are, What They Do, and Their Uneasy Position in Our System of Government - Kevin R. Kosar
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226702605.003.0008
[congressional capacity;Congressional Research Service;Government Accountability Office;Congressional Budget Office;Office of Technology Assessment;legislative branch;oversight;congressional staff;Congress]
Legislative branch support agencies have existed for more than a century, yet they remain remarkably little known to the public and are only occasionally studied by scholars. Here, the term “legislative branch support agencies” includes the Congressional Budget Office, Congressional Research Service, Government Accountability Office, and the defunct Office of Technology Assessment. Generally, their job is to assist legislators in the execution of their legislative duties. Unlike the officials they serve, legislative branch support agency employees are civil servants—unelected persons—and it is not their duty to engage in politics or make policies. These agencies’ manifold activities are both formal (e.g., scoring the approximate cost of legislation) and informal (e.g., responding to requests for research assistance from legislators and their staff). Congress established legislative branch support agencies precisely because it needed assistance in various aspects of its work. Legislative branch support agencies, therefore, have a key role in augmenting congressional capacity, and are of real aid to legislators and their staff. Yet, ironically, they occupy uneasy positions in the American system of government. In recent decades, Congress has cut the size of some of the legislative branch support agencies, and rebuked them for issuing research that offended political sensibilities. (pages 128 - 142)
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University of Chicago Press
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Part 3: The Politics of Capacity in the Legislative Process
9. Still Muddling Along? Assessing the Hybrid Congressional Appropriations Process - Peter Hanson
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226702605.003.0009
[congressional capacity;appropriations;omnibus;budget;congressional committee;hearings;Congress;Congressional Capacity Survey]
This chapter analyzes congressional budget capacity along two dimensions: the capacity of Congress to write appropriations bills, and the capacity of Congress to pass them. Congress currently follows a hybrid process in which appropriations bills are written utilizing a textbook process in which bills are developed by the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, and an unorthodox method to pass them in which individual appropriations bills are bundled together into an “omnibus” package. But, this hybrid system is not in equilibrium. Formal methods for writing legislation, such as holding hearings and reporting bills from committee, are in decline and being replaced by informal, closed door processes. Interviews suggest that these changes to process are not themselves undermining the capacity of Congress to write a budget, but are adaptations to the ongoing disruption of legislating by intense partisanship, polarization and electoral competition. Interviews suggest that these pressures, rather than changes to process, are leading to a loss of expertise and oversight capacity in the Appropriations Committee. (pages 145 - 161)
This chapter is available at:
University of Chicago Press
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10. Congress and the Capacity to Act: Overcoming Gridlock in the Senate’s Amendment Process - James Wallner
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226702605.003.0010
[congressional capacity;senate;polarization;partisanship;gridlock;legislative procedure;Congress]
Congress is broken. For many observers, the reason why is because its members are unable to reach agreement on legislation given the polarized political environment in which they deliberate. Most blame the Senate for this dysfunction. In theory, polarization makes it harder for senators to compromise by increasing the distance between Democrats and Republicans inside the institution. While compelling, such explanations do not account for what happens inside the Senate. This is because polarization is not the proximate cause of gridlock there. Rather, it is the unwillingness of its members to act that is responsible for the Senate’s present dysfunction. Senators appear uninterested in expending the effort required to legislate successfully in a contentious environment. This is evident in the fact that members do not use the resources currently at their disposal to participate in the legislative process. Improving Congress’s capacity for action is thus insufficient for curing its dysfunction as long as this underlying dynamic persists. Only after getting rank-and-file members to reassert themselves will reform effort to improve Congress’s capacity for action help its members perform their lawmaking duties more effectively. (pages 162 - 176)
This chapter is available at:
University of Chicago Press
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11. The Issue Dynamics of Congressional Capacity
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226702605.003.0011
[Congress;congressional capacity;congressional committees;hearings;information processing;policy agendas;purpose;stance]
Congress recently has been unable to solve problems both pressing and recurring on a range of issues. Observers are quick to point to increasing polarization as the culprit. Yet there is nothing about polarization itself that suggests the kinds of breakdowns in problem solving that we have seen, let alone government shutdowns. We draw attention instead to the committee system’s information processing capacity. Committees and their public hearings act as Congress’s capacity to draw attention to and learn about policy problems and proposed solutions. In analyzing data on how committees take in and translate policy information through hearings from 1971 to 2010, this chapter shows that hearings have involved fewer witnesses, have become more one-sided, and are less focused on developing solutions to public policy problems. It also shows that trends in these different indicators are not uniform across policy areas, and that the clusters of issues that have seen the most consistent changes to committee information processing do not fall along familiar partisan divides. The findings highlight the importance of congressional capacity for both policymaking and representation and the need to account for issue-level differences that respond to more targeted changes rather than wide-ranging overhauls of the institution’s operations. (pages 177 - 190)
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University of Chicago Press
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12. Congressional Capacity and Reauthorizations - E. Scott Adler, Stefani R. Langehennig, Ryan W. Bell
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226702605.003.0012
[authorizations;expiring legislation;gridlock;federal policymaking;legislative productivity;US Code;congressional capacity;Congress]
The capacity of Congress to govern is increasingly a concern. In this paper, we focus on one fundamental and sizable responsibility of lawmakers in Washington – renewing and updating the vast array of federal programs and agencies that are authorized for a limited time that must be renewed periodically. Using the United States Code, we collect all legislative expirations and track their renewal over time. We reveal that expiring authorizations are more prevalent in some issue areas than in others. We also find that across the entirety of federal policy, Congress has increasing difficulty keeping up with the growing number of expired programs and agencies. Finally, we find that partisan divisiveness and public mood for more government activism within an area of federal policy are significantly related to Congress’s ability to renew expiring legislation. These findings suggest that temporary authorizations reveal important information about Congress’s capacity in a way not examined by previous research. (pages 191 - 208)
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University of Chicago Press
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13. How Experienced Legislative Staff Contribute to Effective Lawmaking - Jesse M. Crosson, Geoffrey M. Lorenz, Craig Volden, Alan E. Wiseman
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226702605.003.0013
[congressional capacity;legislative effectiveness;committee chairs;staff experience;seniority;staff salaries;Congress;expertise]
Members of Congress seek to allocate their scarce staff resources carefully, given their multiple, sometimes competing, objectives. Using data on House members’ staff allocations from 1994 to 2013, we demonstrate that legislators advance more (and more significant) legislation when they retain a more experienced legislative staff. This benefit, however, accrues mostly to committee chairs, whose institutional privileges allow them to leverage experienced staff, and to the most junior legislators, whose inexperience can be best supplemented by experienced aides. Finally, we show that legislators do not generally benefit from large legislative staffs, but rather from having individual legislative staffers with high levels of experience. This finding suggests that a targeted strategy to retain the most experienced legislative staff in Congress may pay the greatest dividends in regards to lawmaking. (pages 209 - 224)
This chapter is available at:
University of Chicago Press
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14. Capacity in a Centralized Congress - James M. Curry, Frances E. Lee
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226702605.003.0014
[congressional capacity;regular order;legislative procedure;unorthodox lawmaking;bipartisanship;Congress]
The erosion of decentralized and committee-led legislative processes is often blamed for declines in Congress’s lawmaking capacity. Under this diagnosis, many scholars and observers argue that Congress should restore “regular order” processes. We argue that while decentralized approaches to lawmaking worked in earlier, less partisan eras to resolve legislative conflict, those approaches are not well suited to contemporary conditions. Drawing on data on congressional lawmaking and interviews with long-time members of Congress and congressional staff, we argue that Congress often employs centralized processes in an effort to maintain lawmaking capacity in a contentious political environment prone to gridlock. To make this case, we show that laws passed using centralized procedures are not more partisan than those enacted via regular order. Rather than tools to jam through partisan laws, centralized processes are often employed because they confer advantages—including efficiency, secrecy, and flexibility—that enable congressional negotiators to pass legislation under challenging circumstances. (pages 225 - 238)
This chapter is available at:
University of Chicago Press
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15. Congressional Capacity and Bipartisanship in Congress
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226702605.003.0015
[congressional capacity;bipartisanship;Congressional Capacity Survey;legislative productivity;institutional structures;committee staff;party leadership staff;public relations staff;govern;Congress]
This chapter explores the interplay between bipartisanship and congressional capacity through a focus on two questions. First, why is bipartisanship important for Congress to solve problems and govern? Second, how are the institutional structures underlying congressional capacity—the distribution of staff across personal, committee, and leadership offices, and whether staffers are focused on policy or public relations—tied to patterns of bipartisanship? The answers to these questions highlight how bipartisanship among members contributes to legislative productivity as well as to members’ legislative and electoral success. The results of a collaborative survey of congressional staff show how institutional structures, and not just personal characteristics of staff, affect the likelihood of working across the aisle. Staffers in personal offices are less likely to engage in bipartisanship than committee staffers, and staffers focused on public relations are less likely to engage in bipartisanship than staffers in policy-focused roles. Combined, the results highlight the importance of institutional structures and investment in resources for legislative interactions, bipartisanship, and productivity. (pages 239 - 252)
This chapter is available at:
University of Chicago Press
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Part 4: Capacity and the Politics of Reform
16. Lessons from the History of Reform - Ruth Bloch Rubin
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226702605.003.0016
[Congress;congressional capacity;legislative procedure;congressional committees;legislative organization;legislative rules;political reform]
On occasion, members of Congress attempt to alter how their legislative ecosystem functions by amending, eliminating, or imposing new procedures and structures. These formative episodes—and the lessons we can learn from them—animate this chapter. Revisiting battles to reform congressional procedures and the committee system in the 1940s, 1970s, and 1990s, this chapter argues that Congress’s inherited rules and routines are difficult to displace. To disrupt the status quo, lawmakers must find ways to mollify reform’s certain losers, clarify the benefits of their desired procedural changes, and lower the barriers to members’ collective and coordinated action. Even when they succeed, however, the changes they secure will not be equally durable and many will have unintended consequences. Reforms to legislative procedure and organization last longer when they satisfy multiple crosscutting interests or when they successfully dismantle conflicting features of existing institutional arrangements. Against this backdrop, the chapter concludes with the observation that formal rule changes are not the only way for lawmakers to improve the function and capacity of congressional institutions. Rather than “clean house,” legislators can build new ones. (pages 255 - 267)
This chapter is available at:
University of Chicago Press
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17. Dodging Dead Cats: What Would It Take to Get Congress to Expand Capacity? - Anthony Madonna, Ian Ostrander
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226702605.003.0017
[Congress;congressional capacity;congressional staff;political reform;congressional debates;running against Congress;politics of reform]
The US Congress has expanded its own institutional capacity rarely and reluctantly due to the fear that it would be interpreted by the public as an expansion of member perks and benefits. This hesitance to support Congress as an institution is especially pronounced in debates concerning the initial creation and later expansions of congressional staffing. Despite its reluctance, Congress has at times successfully added to its staffing support in institutional reforms such as the landmark Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946. However, staffing resources in Congress have stagnated in recent decades and the branch now often finds itself dependent on the expertise of special-interest lobbyists and executive branch personnel. This chapter explores the likely pathways and circumstances in which Congress might again expand its capacity through adding congressional staff support. First, it briefly highlights the congressional history of debates over staffing. Second, it examines the viability of “running against Congress” by running against congressional staff. We conclude the chapter with an examination of the practical politics of reform. (pages 268 - 276)
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Acknowledgments
Notes
References
List of Contributors
Index
