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Policy Substance and Performance in American Lawmaking, 1877–1994

Policy Substance and Performance in American Lawmaking, 1877–1994 This article reconsiders the importance of including policy issue content and legislative significance in our study of lawmaking. Specifically, it demonstrates theoretically why lawmaking might vary by policy substance and empirically shows how incorrect conclusions would be drawn if lawmaking is studied by pooling enactments instead of disaggregating laws by policy issue content. It accomplishes this by bringing new tools, including a policy classification system and a way to measure the significance of public laws, to help overcome an array of measurement‐related problems that have stymied our ability to better understand lawmaking. The policy coding schema introduced is applied, by careful individual human coding, to every public law enacted between 1877 and 1994 (n = 37,767). The policy issue and significance data are used to construct a number of new measures of legislative performance and are useful to test hypotheses within studies of Congress and American Political Development. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png American Journal of Political Science Wiley

Policy Substance and Performance in American Lawmaking, 1877–1994

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References (27)

Publisher
Wiley
Copyright
©2008, Midwest Political Science Association
ISSN
0092-5853
eISSN
1540-5907
DOI
10.1111/j.1540-5907.2008.00310.x
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

This article reconsiders the importance of including policy issue content and legislative significance in our study of lawmaking. Specifically, it demonstrates theoretically why lawmaking might vary by policy substance and empirically shows how incorrect conclusions would be drawn if lawmaking is studied by pooling enactments instead of disaggregating laws by policy issue content. It accomplishes this by bringing new tools, including a policy classification system and a way to measure the significance of public laws, to help overcome an array of measurement‐related problems that have stymied our ability to better understand lawmaking. The policy coding schema introduced is applied, by careful individual human coding, to every public law enacted between 1877 and 1994 (n = 37,767). The policy issue and significance data are used to construct a number of new measures of legislative performance and are useful to test hypotheses within studies of Congress and American Political Development.

Journal

American Journal of Political ScienceWiley

Published: Apr 1, 2008

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