Is the US Congress dysfunctional? The American public thinks so: In the summer of 2014,
just 7% approved strongly of Congress. Still, legislative scholars disagree about the severity …

Congress regularly passes significant laws. Some of these laws continue in their initial form,
with the original bargain struck by the enacting coalition untouched by any future laws; …

Legislative gridlock is often viewed as a uniquely democratic phenomenon. The institutional
checks and balances that produce gridlock are absent from authoritarian systems, leading …

The public, journalists, and legislators themselves have often lamented a decline in
congressional lawmaking in recent years, often blaming party politics for the lack of …

Recent work finds evidence that partisan calculations, not ideological preferences, drive
congressional decisions on foreign policy. While legislators support the wars launched by …

Omnibus legislation is the legislative practice of packaging together numerous unrelated
measures in one long bill, which is often passed via an expedited process. In many …

This article presents the findings of an extensive multi‐method empirical study that explored
the relationship between temporary legislation, better regulation, and experimentalist …

Despite the compelling theoretical prediction that divided government decreases legislative
performance, the empirical literature has struggled to identify a causal effect. We suspect …

Does partisan competition explain why some legislatures are more efficient at processing
legislation than others? This article argues that legislative parties' strategic incentives and …

Despite a robust history of studies examining legislative outputs, little is known about how
divided government affects the policymaking process. This article examines these dynamics …