Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Role Of The Party Record In Elections For The House Of Representatives, 1970-2008, Matthew Thomas Gross

Doctoral Dissertations

Much scholarly attention has been devoted to the role of political parties in Congress. One of the major theories of party legislative organization is cartel theory. Cartel theory assumes that each legislative party possesses a party record or reputation, which influences the election prospects for all members of the party. It provides an electoral incentive to encourage cooperation among party members in a single chamber of Congress.

Congressional scholars have paid little attention to the party record. In the following chapters, I bring together the desultory scholarly research on the party record and examine the impact of the party record …

Parlamento Re-Activo. De Cómo Partidos Poderosos Habitan En Una Legislatura Con Potestades Recortadas, Daniel Chasquetti

Daniel Chasquetti

This article examines the institutional features of the Uruguayan Parliament and its particular relationship with a powerful Executive and an institutionalized party system. The thesis argues that the current Parliament’s prerogatives arise in the preferences of political parties, which at different junctures reformers chose to design a government system with a powerful Executive branch. This implied the definition of a reactive legislature and a functional habitat for the development of a stable political party cast. In order to demonstrate these statements, the author tooks several empirical tests to assess the consequences of this institutional design, the power exerted by the …

An Assessment Of United States Ethanol Policy, Mark Chapin Johnson

CGU Theses & Dissertations

From 1978 on there have been a series of legislative acts that have placed substantial protectionist burdens on the American taxpayer to provide incentives, credits and mandates for the production and use of ethanol under the rationale of reducing U.S. dependence on foreign sources of oil while purporting to economically benefit the American economy and strengthening American security. While there has been much discussion about the economic benefits of ethanol policy, there is growing literature suggesting that in addition to being neither economically nor environmentally beneficial, ethanol policy may not be achieving its intended goals. Connection between political contributions, policy …

The Politics Of Physical Education Reform, Ari Zyskind

CMC Senior Theses

The purpose of the paper is to determine why today's youth are so physically inactive by examining the role and efforts of physical education, and the state and federal governments responsibility in supporting these programs, in fighting today's obesity epidemic by creating generations of healthy and physically active children. Research led to the determination that states have failed to maintain and improve physical education resulting in a physically inactive youth. Therefore, the nation should look to federal legislation to support state-led physical education, which this paper found to be constitutional if the enactments followed the provisions established in South Dakota …

Candidates, Campaigns, And Political Tides: Electoral Success In Colorado's 4th District, Megan Gwynne Maccoll

CMC Senior Theses

The race between Republican Cory Gardner and Democratic incumbent Betsy Markey for Colorado's 4^th Congressional District was a partisan fight for political momentum. In the 2010 campaign cycle, Republicans looked to retake the historically Republican 4^th District as part of a national strategy to win back the U.S. House, while Democrats tried desperately to hold on to both. Cory Gardner was only one of fifty-four Republican challengers to defeat a Democratic incumbent in 2010, but the Gardner-Markey race is particularly interesting as a case study of voter motivation and the mediating forces, both regional and national, that influence …

Should She Run? The Decision For Female Congressíenal Candidates, Laura . J. Maloney

Honors Theses

This study, “Should She Run? The decision for female congressional candidates,” explores Why Women decide to or not to run for Congress. lt focuses on the influence of state political Culture with a case study on the emergence of female candidates in the primaries for U.S. House of Representative races New England districts from 2002-2010. After running a series of general linear models, the study Ends that certain aspects of a state’s political culture do impact female candidate emergence in New England. Looking forward, it suggests that the key to shrinking the gender gap in the U.S. Congress is to …

A Decision Theory Of Statutory Interpretation: Legislative History By The Rules, Victoria Nourse

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

We have a law of civil procedure, criminal procedure, and administrative procedure, but we have no law of legislative procedure. This failure has serious consequences in the field of statutory interpretation. Using simple rules garnered from Congress itself, this Article argues that those rules are capable of transforming the field of statutory interpretation. Addressing canonical cases in the field, from Holy Trinity to Bock Laundry, from Weber to Public Citizen, this article shows how cases studied by vast numbers of law students are made substantially more manageable, and in some cases quite simple, through knowledge of congressional procedure. …

A Gender Gap In Policy Representation In The U.S. Congress?, Brian Newman, Christina Wolbrecht, John Griffin

Brian Newman

In the first article to evaluate the equality of dyadic policy representation experienced by women, we assess the congruence between U.S. House members' roll-call votes and the policy preferences of their female and male constituents. Employing two measures of policy representation, we do not find a gender gap in dyadic policy representation. However, we uncover a sizeable gender gap favoring men in districts represented by Republicans, and a similarly sizeable gap favoring women in districts represented by Democrats. A Democratic majority further improves women's dyadic representation relative to men, but having a female representative (descriptive representation) does not.

The Rise Of The 60-Vote Senate, Gregory Koger

Gregory Koger

How did the Senate transform into a supermajority legislature? To answer this question, we must have a clear understanding of what filibustering was like before 1960, and why senators abandoned this system. I begin with some definitions and a quick historical survey, and then explain the emergence of the sixty-vote Senate.

Drafting Proper Short Bill Titles: Do States Have The Answer?, Brian Christopher Jones

Brian Christopher Jones

No abstract provided.