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LEGISLATIVE voting, NORTH American Free Trade Agreement, and PUBLIC opinion

Are U.S. legislators responsive to public opinion on trade? Despite the prevalence of preference-based approaches to international trade, not much work has directly assessed the relationship between constituency opinion and positioning by members of Congress on trade bills. We assess dynamic responsiveness (whether shifting constituency opinion on trade yields corresponding changes among legislators) by exploiting an original dataset on the positions of members of Congress on the North American Free Trade Agreement at various points leading up to the November 1993 roll-call vote. We find no evidence of dynamic re-sponsiveness to shifting constituency opinion on even a highly salient piece of trade legislation. We provide qualitative evidence that interest group influence may instead be the predominant source of shifting legislator positioning on trade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

UNITED States federal budget, MILITARY budgets, OUTER space, CONTENT analysis, POLITICAL systems, and UNITED States presidential elections

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LAPLACIAN matrices, WORLD War II, and PARTISANSHIP

Signed networks and balance theory provide a natural setting for real-world scenarios that show polarization dynamics, positive/negative relationships and political partisanship. For example, they have been proven effective in studying the increasing polarization of the votes in the two chambers of the U.S. Congress from World War II on Andris, Lee, Hamilton, Martino, Gunning & Selden (2015, PLoS ONE , 10, 1–14) and Aref & Neal (2020, Sci. Rep. , 10, 1–10). To provide further insights into this particular case study, we propose the application of a pipeline to analyze and visualize a signed graphs configuration based on the exploitation of the corresponding Laplacian matrix spectral properties. The overall methodology is comparable with others based on the frustration index, but it has at least two main advantages: first, it requires a much lower computational cost and second, it allows for a quantitative and visual assessment of how arbitrarily small subgraphs (even single nodes) contribute to the overall balance (or unbalance) of the network. The proposed pipeline allows the exploration of polarization dynamics shown by the U.S. Congress from 1945 to 2020 at different resolution scales. In fact, we are able to spot and point out the influence of some (groups of) congressmen in the overall balance, as well as to observe and explore polarizations evolution of both chambers across the years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

LEGISLATIVE committees, UNITED States Capitol Insurrection, 2021, PLAZAS, INDICTMENTS, FEDERAL government, PROSECUTION, and LEGISLATIVE bodies

The aftershocks of the riot at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, continue to ripple through the American public square. The United States Department of Justice brought over 750 criminal charges against the assailants. The United States House of Representatives appointed a Select Committee to investigate the riot. And the public continues to discuss the meaning of January 6 as these criminal prosecutions continue and the House's investigation concludes. Although this is the first time in American history that a mob actually breached the Capitol, riots and insurrections attempting to overawe parliamentary bodies on their own grounds are well precedented in the Anglo-American legal tradition. The purpose of this article is to provide historical context for affrays like the Trump Riot of January 6 and provide a framework for how legislatures should respond. Parliamentary precedents on both sides of the Atlantic prove that anyone who riots at the legislature is in contempt of parliamentary privilege. The legislature can refer such contempt to the executive for criminal prosecution. In egregious cases, however, the legislature should not hesitate to vindicate itself by using its own contempt power. The legislature should appoint a joint select committee or independent commission to investigate and hold those politically responsible to account. There may be cases when an officer or an agent of the executive provokes or incites a riot at the Capitol. The legislature must prevail in its efforts to bring them in for a hearing and compel them to produce discovery. Of the three coordinate branches of the federal government the legislature is first among equals. Parliamentary privilege must therefore trump executive privilege during an investigation of an assault on the national assembly. Any member of the executive who contemptuously incites a mob at the seat of government is liable for discipline under the inherent power of Congress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

LEGISLATIVE voting, PARTISANSHIP, ELECTIONS, UNITED States presidential elections, and MODERN history

The election of a new Speaker of the House of Representatives for the 118th Congress in January 2023 stretched on for several days and 15 roll call votes—the longest contested Speaker election in modern congressional history. This article proves a two-part analysis of this unusual event. First, it reviews the procedural practice of the House for its organization at the beginning of each Congress. Second, it analyzes the operational and strategic conduct of the election, with an eye not only on the individual Members-elect and party factions operating within it, but also on the role of the non-partisan House officers managing the proceedings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

LOBBYING, FREE trade, TARIFF preferences, and COMMERCIAL treaties

How do interest groups decide which member of Congress to target when decisions are made collectively? Do lobbying strategies change as legislation advances? Answering these questions is challenging due to a lack of systematic observations of lobbying contacts. I answer these questions using a novel data set constructed from reports submitted by lobbyists on behalf of South Korea regarding its free trade agreement with the United States for 10 years. I show that a diverse set of politicians are contacted but the timing, intensity, and strategy of lobbying contacts vary by politicians' institutional positions as well as their predisposed preferences for free trade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

FEDERAL budget laws, AUTHORITY, PRESIDENTS of the United States, and POLITICAL development

The recent centennial of the 1921 Budget and Accounting Act presents an opportunity to reconsider the importance of the federal executive budget to American political development. Of particular interest is the apparent shift in political authority from Congress to the president that is sometimes attributed to the Act. The 1921 Act generally marks the rise of the modern presidency, where the president received a durable grant of authority. We examine the congressional hearings and debates regarding the budget process from 1919 to 1921 to assess Congress's expectations of the new budget system it was creating. We show that Congress expected to benefit from the executive budget process and did not view it as a threat to its budget authority. Congress recognized that the executive branch had influence in the budget process, but it preferred presidential influence to department heads' influence. The 1921 Act, at least initially, enhanced the budgeting capacities of both the president and Congress in mutually beneficial ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

VETERANS, WOMEN veterans, UNITED States presidential election, 2020, UNITED States Congressional elections, MILITARY service, and NATIONAL security

Veteran women are better represented in Congress than non-veteran women, but the reasons for this are unclear. Veteran women may be better represented because they run at higher rates and in more winnable races or because their military service leaves them uniquely qualified to overcome gender and partisan stereotypes. Voters often perceive women as lacking leadership ability and ill-suited to handling national security. However, female veterans have experience that may help them overcome gendered beliefs about their abilities. Using election data from the 2012–2020 U.S. congressional elections, we test whether veteran women gain greater voter support compared to non-veteran candidates and whether veteran women running as Democrats outperform male veteran Democrats. We find only limited evidence that military service wins more votes for candidates of either gender. Among Democrats, prior military service levels the playing field between male and female candidates, but veteran women only outperform veteran men in 2018. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

UNITED States. Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978, FAMILY & Medical Leave Act of 1993 (U.S.), SEX discrimination against women, and FAMILY-work relationship

In Bradwell v. State, an 1872 decision upholding an Illinois law prohibiting women from practicing law, the United States Supreme Court reasoned that the law was justified because women belonged in the "domestic sphere." While today's sex-based workplace exclusions are not as explicit as they once were, women still face barriers to remaining in the workforce and advancing in the workplace despite the existence of major federal legislation in the areas of pregnancy discrimination and family leave policy. Congress passed the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) in 1978 to stop pregnancy discrimination, but the PDA has not come close to eliminating pregnancy discrimination. Similarly, despite Congress's passing of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) in 1993, ineffective family leave policy continues to hinder women's ability to balance work and their disproportionate family caregiving obligations. After tracing the development of sex-based workplace exclusions from the 1870s through the 1970s, this Note argues that the PDA and FMLA prohibited explicit sexbased workplace exclusions while preserving other forms of sexbased workplace exclusions. This Note then analyzes proposed work-family legislation and argues that policies aimed at eliminating sex-based workplace exclusions must account for the specific experiences of women while promoting anti-stereotyping principles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

POLITICAL science, ACTIVISM, PRESIDENTIAL administrations, HISTORICAL analysis, CONTENT analysis, and CHINA-United States relations

The Sino-U.S. relations tumbled during the Trump Administration. The talk of decoupling permeated the decision-making circle in Washington D.C. Many factors have contributed to the free fall. The roles Congress has played are undoubtedly one of them. Based on the new institutionalist approach, this study provides three analyses of recent China-related legislative activities. First, the historical analysis of legislative data illustrates a surge in congressional activism on China-related legislative activities. Second, the content analysis reveals some of the triggers in the deterioration of bilateral relations in recent years. Third, the political analysis of the critical congressional players and the structures and procedures Congress created provides some insight into the domestic and political logic of the congressional crusade against China. Finally, the paper ends with assessing the impact of the surge in Congressional activism on the new Biden Administration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

CONGRESSIONAL hearings (U.S.), DELIBERATION, SOCIAL groups, WOMEN legislators, and PARTICIPATION

The rising number of women in Congress changes deliberation. Using committee hearing transcripts from 1995 to 2017, we analyze how the gender composition of committees affects group dynamics in committee hearings. While we find limited evidence that increasing proportions of women affects women's participation, we find that discussion norms within committees change significantly in the presence of more women. Namely, interruptions decrease when there are more women on the committee; with higher proportions of women, men are less likely to interrupt others. Furthermore, committee members are more likely to engage and stay on the same topics in the presence of more women, suggesting a shift in norms toward more in-depth exchange. Overall, our results show that increasing the proportion of women changes discussion dynamics within Congress by shifting norms away from interruptions and one-sided talk in committees, thereby shifting group norms that govern decision-making during an important policy-making stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

PRESIDENTS of the United States, AGGRESSION (International law), NUCLEAR weapons, WAR powers, EXCLUSIVE & concurrent legislative powers, and WAR of 1812

This article argues that Congress can exercise its constitutional war powers to enact a law restricting the President from using nuclear weapons first. The article contends that using a nuclear weapon is qualitatively different from conventional warfare and that the first use of nuclear weapons marks a decision to enter into war. Therefore, nuclear first use is not a battlefield decision within the President's commander in chief power but rather a choice to enter the United States into a new type of conflict that could pose a direct, immediate, and existential threat to the U.S. homeland. Regulating that decision falls under Congress's exclusive war powers. Congress can limit its authorizations of war and prohibit military actions beyond its authorization. Therefore, Congress could stipulate that its war authorizations extend only to conventional hostilities unless Congress expressly authorizes the first use of nuclear weapons. Using its authority to limit authorizations of for the use of military force, Congress can enact a no-first-use law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

CORRUPT practices in elections, FENCES, UNITED States presidential election, 2020, and UNITED States Capitol Insurrection, 2021

POLITICAL parties, PARTISANSHIP, CITIZENS, IDEOLOGICAL conflict, COLLECTIVE representation, FORTUNE, and IDEOLOGY

While scholars posit an electoral link between congressional approval and majority party electoral fortunes, it is unclear whether citizens are grounding their assessments of approval on policy or valence grounds, such as retrospective economic evaluations. Whereas it is commonly understood that there is an ideological component to constituents' job approval of their individual members of Congress, in addition to a strong partisan effect, the ideological basis of institutional approval has not been established. Using cross-sectional and panel survey data, which allow for scaling citizens and the congressional parties in the same ideological space, I demonstrate that, distinct from the partisan basis of congressional approval, citizens' ideological distance from the majority party has a separate and distinct effect. These results suggest that the link between congressional approval and majority party fortunes is rooted in the collective ideological representation provided by the legislative majority in an increasingly responsible U.S. Congress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

LEGISLATIVE bodies, UNITED States legislators, LEGISLATIVE committees, LEADERSHIP, and LOBBYISTS

The article provides a blueprint for making the U.S. Congress great again and re-empowering the legislature. Topics discussed are disappearance of legislative victories of the Congress starting in the late 1970s with the shrinking of the size and effectiveness of the Congressional Representative and crumbling committees, as well as the rise of powerful leadership staff and lobbyists, and atrophy of the Congress driven by the Republican Revolution of 1994 and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

POPULISM, DEMOCRACY, UNITED States presidential election, 2020, PRIMARIES, and HEGEMONY

Populist chief executives tend to weaken democracies by undermining the rule of law and horizontal accountability. For insight into the resilience of American democracy against such threats, this article takes a close look at how the Republican Party in Congress responded to President Donald J.Trump's attack on the legitimacy of American elections following his loss in the 2020 elections. It examines post‐2020 congressional Republicans' decisions about party positioning, legislative party leadership and membership, and Trump's status as party leader. In each set of decisions, congressional Republicans pursued their own interests rather than echoing Trump's claims or taking direction from him. Congressional Republicans, however, largely declined to criticize Trump directly in light of their voters' continued support for him, support that was evident in the 2022 Republican primaries. The overall conclusion is that the self‐interest of separately elected members of Congress offers a significant, albeit imperfect defense against a populist chief executive's bid for hegemony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

UNITED States Arbitration Act, SEXUAL harassment, SEXUAL assault, ARBITRATION & award, and LEGAL judgments

The article discusses developments regarding the U.S. Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) in 2022, including related Supreme Court rulings and the law's amendment by Congress in connection with claims asserting sexual harassment or sexual assault in 2022. The Supreme Court's rulings are said to reflect a decreased reliance on pro-arbitration policies embodied in the FAA. The amendment allows sexual assault or harassment claims to be brought in court despite having a predispute arbitration agreement.

QUANTITATIVE research, CHINA-United States relations, LEGISLATION, ACTIVISM, and GOVERNMENTALITY

Through a quantitative analysis of Taiwan–related legislation between 1979 and 2020, the article finds that the degree of Taiwan–related legislation is significantly correlated with the degree of tension in U.S.—China relations. While a deteriorating cross–Taiwan Strait relationship is clearly associated with the increasing legislative activities for the sake of Taiwan, an improving relationship from the state of fair to good cannot guarantee a decrease of such activities. A unified government and the extent of the Taiwan lobby are both helpful in passing pro–Taiwan acts but statistically insignificant. A content analysis of pro–Taiwan bills approved by the Trump administration suggests a creeping movement to "normalize" U.S–Taiwan relations with congressional activism and the less-restrained White House as a co–engine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

UNITED States legislators, REPRESENTATIVE government, DEMOCRACY, RESPECT, POLITICAL parties, and MEDIATION

Canonical theories of democratic representation envision legislators cultivating familiarity to enhance esteem among their constituents. Some scholars, however, argue that familiarity breeds contempt, which if true would undermine incentives for effective representation. Survey respondents who are unfamiliar with their legislator tend not to provide substantive answers to attitude questions, and so we are missing key evidence necessary to adjudicate this important debate. We solve this problem with a randomized field experiment that gave some constituents an opportunity to gain familiarity with their Member of Congress through an online Deliberative Town Hall. Relative to controls, respondents who interacted with their member reported higher esteem as a result of enhanced familiarity, a mediation effect supporting canonical theories of representation. This effect is statistically significant among constituents who are the same political party as the member but not among those of the opposite party, although in neither case did familiarity breed contempt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]