Sarah A Binder
Biographic Data
| ID | 1115367 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sarah A Binder |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sarah A |
| FAMILY NAME | Binder |
| SIGNATURE | BINDER S A |
| AFFILIATIONS | George Washington University Brookings Institution |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 616 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1995 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
Challenges Ahead for Legislative Studies
Thinking Institutionally
This article studies how to think institutionally. It examines what this particular line of thinking means, and sketches the coherence and significance of mental life inside any and all such institutions. The second half of the article is focused on determining why thinking institutionally is important
The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions
The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions provides a comprehensive survey of where we are in the study of political institutions, covering both the traditional concerns of political science with constitutions, federalism and bureaucracy and more recent interest in theory and the constructed nature of institutions. The study of political institutions is among the founding pillars of political science. With the rise of the ‘new institutionalism…
Taking the Measure of Congress: Reply to Chiou and Rothenberg
Chiou and Rothenberg raise important questions about how to measure key concepts in the study of legislative stalemate in the U.S. Congress. In challenging my choice of measures to capture bicameral differences, Chiou and Rothenberg argue that my findings are the artifact of measurement error. In this reply, I review the hurdles involved in measuring policy views over time and across institutions and suggest that the preferred measure of Chiou an…
Who Consents? Competing Pivots in Federal Judicial Selection
The salience of judicial appointments in contemporary American politics has precipitated a surge of scholarly interest in the dynamics of advice and consent in the U.S. Senate. In this article, we compare alternative pivotal politics models of the judicial nominations process, each capturing a different set of potential veto players in the Senate. We use these spatial models to guide empirical analysis of rejection patterns in confirmation contes…
Where Do Institutions Come From? Exploring the Origins of the Senate Blue Slip
Perhaps the most striking feature of the Senate's practice of advice and consent today is the deference accorded home state senators in reviewing presidential appointments to the federal bench. Although the Constitution calls for the advice and consent of the Senate body, informal norms of the Senate provide home state senators with a potential veto of nominations to fill federal judgeships within their states. One norm—senatorial courtesy—histor…
Supermajority Constraints as Majority Choice
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Going Nuclear, Senate Style
Conflict within and beyond the United States Senate has refocused scholarly and public attention on "advice and consent," the constitutional provision that governs the Senate's role in confirming presidential appointments. Despite intense and salient partisan and ideological disputes about the rules of the game that govern the Senate confirmation process for judicial appointees, reformers have had little success in limiting the ability of a minor…
Parties and Institutional Choice Revisited
Scholars of institutional change in Congress offer competing theoretical accounts of the accrual of procedural rights by House majority parties. One camp posits that the interests and capacities of political parties drive procedural change that affects agenda control. An alternative perspective offers a nonpartisan, median‐voter account. I explore these two accounts, survey challenges involved in testing them, and determine the fit of the account…
The Invention of the United States Senate
The Limits of Senatorial Courtesy
Because of senatorial courtesy, scholars typically assume that presidents defer to home state senators from their party when selecting judges for the federal courts. We challenge this view, arguing that presidents face structural incentives that encourage them to consult broadly with senators across the partisan and ideological spectrums in choosing nominees. Using new data on the fate of judicial vacancies on the federal district courts between …
Senatorial Delay in Confirming Federal Judges, 1947-1998
presidential appointees to the lower federal bench. Here, we focus on the duration of the confirmation process for presidential appointees to the United States Circuit Courts of Appeal between 1947 and 1998 and explain the variation over time in the length of the confirmation process. With newly collected data on the fate of all appellate nominees during that period, we show how ideological incentives and institutional opportunities combine to af…
Tracking the Filibuster, 1917 to 1996
Scholars and observers of the U.S. Senate have noted an appreciable rise in the use of the filibuster over the course of the 20th century. Although numerous explanations have been offered, alternative accounts have never been pitted against each other in a multivariate fashion. In this article, we survey and test these multiple accounts, using data on filibusters launched between 1917 and 1996. Our findings suggest that the incentive to filibuste…
Uncovering the Hidden Effect of Party
Some recent scholarship affords political parties little role in explaining patterns of legislative outcomes. Policy preferences, rather than partisanship, are said to provide the superior account of legislative behavior. In this paper, we challenge one recent such account of legislative outcomes. We show that the likelihood of finding a party effect depends on where we look for it and with what measures we use to test for it. Party effects, we f…
The Dynamics of Legislative Gridlock, 1947-96
David Mayhew'sDivided We Govern(1991) sparked an industry of scholars who alternately challenge or confirm the work on theoretical and empirical grounds. Still, we lack a definitive account of the proportions and causes of legislative gridlock. I revisit the effects of elections and institutions on policy outcomes to propose an alternative theory of gridlock: The distribution of policy preferences within the parties, between the two chambers, and…
Political Goals and Procedural Choice in the Senate
Recent scholarship on the U.S. Senate attributes the protection of extended debate to senators' principled commitment to quality deliberation and free speech. The persistence of rules protecting nearly unlimited debate is said to reflect senators' collective interests in maintaining an institution that protects free speech and minority rights. Such an explanation, we argue, understates the influence of political objectives in shaping senators' pr…
Minority Rights, Majority Rule: Partisanship and the Development of Congress
Minority Rights, Majority Rule seeks to explain a phenomenon evident to most observers of the US Congress. In the House of Representatives, majority parties rule and minorities are seldom able to influence national policy making. In the Senate, minorities quite often call the shots, empowered by the filibuster to frustrate the majority. Why did the two chambers develop such distinctive legislative styles? Conventional wisdom suggests that differe…
Senators on the Campaign Trail: The Politics of Representation, by Richard F. Fenno, Jr
Journal Article Senators on the Campaign Trail: The Politics of Representation, by Richard F. Fenno, Jr. Get access Senators on the Campaign Trail: The Politics of Representation by Richard F. FennoNorman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1996. 448 pp. $22.95. Sarah A. Binder Sarah A. Binder The Brookings Institution Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Political Science Quarterly, Volume 112, Issue 1, Spring 1997…
The Partisan Basis of Procedural Choice: Allocating Parliamentary Rights in the House, 1789-1990
Conventional accounts of the institutional development of Congress suggest that expansion of the size and workload of the House led members to distribute parliamentary rights narrowly: Majority party leaders accrued strong procedural powers while minority parties lost many of their parliamentary rights. I offer an alternative, partisan basis of procedural choice. Using an original data set of changes in House rules, I present a statistical model …
Partisanship and Procedural Choice: Institutional Change in the Early Congress, 1789-1823
Conventional accounts of institutional change in the early House of Representatives suggest that increases in the size and workload of the chamber led members to adopt rules restricting the procedural rights of its members. In this article, I argue that this conventional explanation understates the influence of partisanship in dictating early procedural choice. Specifically, I use the House's adoption of the previous question rule in 1811 to test…
The Dynamics of Legislative Gridlock, 1947-96
David Mayhew'sDivided We Govern(1991) sparked an industry of scholars who alternately challenge or confirm the work on theoretical and empirical grounds. Still, we lack a definitive account of the proportions and causes of legislative gridlock. I revisit the effects of elections and institutions on policy outcomes to propose an alternative theory of gridlock: The distribution of policy preferences within the parties, between the two chambers, and…
Senatorial Delay in Confirming Federal Judges, 1947-1998
presidential appointees to the lower federal bench. Here, we focus on the duration of the confirmation process for presidential appointees to the United States Circuit Courts of Appeal between 1947 and 1998 and explain the variation over time in the length of the confirmation process. With newly collected data on the fate of all appellate nominees during that period, we show how ideological incentives and institutional opportunities combine to af…
The Partisan Basis of Procedural Choice: Allocating Parliamentary Rights in the House, 1789-1990
Conventional accounts of the institutional development of Congress suggest that expansion of the size and workload of the House led members to distribute parliamentary rights narrowly: Majority party leaders accrued strong procedural powers while minority parties lost many of their parliamentary rights. I offer an alternative, partisan basis of procedural choice. Using an original data set of changes in House rules, I present a statistical model …
Uncovering the Hidden Effect of Party
Some recent scholarship affords political parties little role in explaining patterns of legislative outcomes. Policy preferences, rather than partisanship, are said to provide the superior account of legislative behavior. In this paper, we challenge one recent such account of legislative outcomes. We show that the likelihood of finding a party effect depends on where we look for it and with what measures we use to test for it. Party effects, we f…
Who Consents? Competing Pivots in Federal Judicial Selection
The salience of judicial appointments in contemporary American politics has precipitated a surge of scholarly interest in the dynamics of advice and consent in the U.S. Senate. In this article, we compare alternative pivotal politics models of the judicial nominations process, each capturing a different set of potential veto players in the Senate. We use these spatial models to guide empirical analysis of rejection patterns in confirmation contes…
Going Nuclear, Senate Style
Conflict within and beyond the United States Senate has refocused scholarly and public attention on "advice and consent," the constitutional provision that governs the Senate's role in confirming presidential appointments. Despite intense and salient partisan and ideological disputes about the rules of the game that govern the Senate confirmation process for judicial appointees, reformers have had little success in limiting the ability of a minor…
Parties and Institutional Choice Revisited
Scholars of institutional change in Congress offer competing theoretical accounts of the accrual of procedural rights by House majority parties. One camp posits that the interests and capacities of political parties drive procedural change that affects agenda control. An alternative perspective offers a nonpartisan, median‐voter account. I explore these two accounts, survey challenges involved in testing them, and determine the fit of the account…
The Limits of Senatorial Courtesy
Because of senatorial courtesy, scholars typically assume that presidents defer to home state senators from their party when selecting judges for the federal courts. We challenge this view, arguing that presidents face structural incentives that encourage them to consult broadly with senators across the partisan and ideological spectrums in choosing nominees. Using new data on the fate of judicial vacancies on the federal district courts between …
Tracking the Filibuster, 1917 to 1996
Scholars and observers of the U.S. Senate have noted an appreciable rise in the use of the filibuster over the course of the 20th century. Although numerous explanations have been offered, alternative accounts have never been pitted against each other in a multivariate fashion. In this article, we survey and test these multiple accounts, using data on filibusters launched between 1917 and 1996. Our findings suggest that the incentive to filibuste…
Thinking Institutionally
This article studies how to think institutionally. It examines what this particular line of thinking means, and sketches the coherence and significance of mental life inside any and all such institutions. The second half of the article is focused on determining why thinking institutionally is important
Partisanship and Procedural Choice: Institutional Change in the Early Congress, 1789-1823
Conventional accounts of institutional change in the early House of Representatives suggest that increases in the size and workload of the chamber led members to adopt rules restricting the procedural rights of its members. In this article, I argue that this conventional explanation understates the influence of partisanship in dictating early procedural choice. Specifically, I use the House's adoption of the previous question rule in 1811 to test…
Where Do Institutions Come From? Exploring the Origins of the Senate Blue Slip
Perhaps the most striking feature of the Senate's practice of advice and consent today is the deference accorded home state senators in reviewing presidential appointments to the federal bench. Although the Constitution calls for the advice and consent of the Senate body, informal norms of the Senate provide home state senators with a potential veto of nominations to fill federal judgeships within their states. One norm—senatorial courtesy—histor…
Political Goals and Procedural Choice in the Senate
Recent scholarship on the U.S. Senate attributes the protection of extended debate to senators' principled commitment to quality deliberation and free speech. The persistence of rules protecting nearly unlimited debate is said to reflect senators' collective interests in maintaining an institution that protects free speech and minority rights. Such an explanation, we argue, understates the influence of political objectives in shaping senators' pr…
Taking the Measure of Congress: Reply to Chiou and Rothenberg
Chiou and Rothenberg raise important questions about how to measure key concepts in the study of legislative stalemate in the U.S. Congress. In challenging my choice of measures to capture bicameral differences, Chiou and Rothenberg argue that my findings are the artifact of measurement error. In this reply, I review the hurdles involved in measuring policy views over time and across institutions and suggest that the preferred measure of Chiou an…
Senators on the Campaign Trail: The Politics of Representation, by Richard F. Fenno, Jr
Journal Article Senators on the Campaign Trail: The Politics of Representation, by Richard F. Fenno, Jr. Get access Senators on the Campaign Trail: The Politics of Representation by Richard F. FennoNorman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1996. 448 pp. $22.95. Sarah A. Binder Sarah A. Binder The Brookings Institution Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Political Science Quarterly, Volume 112, Issue 1, Spring 1997…
Challenges Ahead for Legislative Studies
Partisanship and Procedural Choice: Institutional Change in the Early Congress, 1789-1823
Conventional accounts of institutional change in the early House of Representatives suggest that increases in the size and workload of the chamber led members to adopt rules restricting the procedural rights of its members. In this article, I argue that this conventional explanation understates the influence of partisanship in dictating early procedural choice. Specifically, I use the House's adoption of the previous question rule in 1811 to test…
The Partisan Basis of Procedural Choice: Allocating Parliamentary Rights in the House, 1789-1990
Conventional accounts of the institutional development of Congress suggest that expansion of the size and workload of the House led members to distribute parliamentary rights narrowly: Majority party leaders accrued strong procedural powers while minority parties lost many of their parliamentary rights. I offer an alternative, partisan basis of procedural choice. Using an original data set of changes in House rules, I present a statistical model …
Minority Rights, Majority Rule: Partisanship and the Development of Congress
Minority Rights, Majority Rule seeks to explain a phenomenon evident to most observers of the US Congress. In the House of Representatives, majority parties rule and minorities are seldom able to influence national policy making. In the Senate, minorities quite often call the shots, empowered by the filibuster to frustrate the majority. Why did the two chambers develop such distinctive legislative styles? Conventional wisdom suggests that differe…
Senators on the Campaign Trail: The Politics of Representation, by Richard F. Fenno, Jr
Journal Article Senators on the Campaign Trail: The Politics of Representation, by Richard F. Fenno, Jr. Get access Senators on the Campaign Trail: The Politics of Representation by Richard F. FennoNorman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1996. 448 pp. $22.95. Sarah A. Binder Sarah A. Binder The Brookings Institution Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Political Science Quarterly, Volume 112, Issue 1, Spring 1997…
Political Goals and Procedural Choice in the Senate
Recent scholarship on the U.S. Senate attributes the protection of extended debate to senators' principled commitment to quality deliberation and free speech. The persistence of rules protecting nearly unlimited debate is said to reflect senators' collective interests in maintaining an institution that protects free speech and minority rights. Such an explanation, we argue, understates the influence of political objectives in shaping senators' pr…
Uncovering the Hidden Effect of Party
Some recent scholarship affords political parties little role in explaining patterns of legislative outcomes. Policy preferences, rather than partisanship, are said to provide the superior account of legislative behavior. In this paper, we challenge one recent such account of legislative outcomes. We show that the likelihood of finding a party effect depends on where we look for it and with what measures we use to test for it. Party effects, we f…
The Dynamics of Legislative Gridlock, 1947-96
David Mayhew'sDivided We Govern(1991) sparked an industry of scholars who alternately challenge or confirm the work on theoretical and empirical grounds. Still, we lack a definitive account of the proportions and causes of legislative gridlock. I revisit the effects of elections and institutions on policy outcomes to propose an alternative theory of gridlock: The distribution of policy preferences within the parties, between the two chambers, and…
Senatorial Delay in Confirming Federal Judges, 1947-1998
presidential appointees to the lower federal bench. Here, we focus on the duration of the confirmation process for presidential appointees to the United States Circuit Courts of Appeal between 1947 and 1998 and explain the variation over time in the length of the confirmation process. With newly collected data on the fate of all appellate nominees during that period, we show how ideological incentives and institutional opportunities combine to af…
Tracking the Filibuster, 1917 to 1996
Scholars and observers of the U.S. Senate have noted an appreciable rise in the use of the filibuster over the course of the 20th century. Although numerous explanations have been offered, alternative accounts have never been pitted against each other in a multivariate fashion. In this article, we survey and test these multiple accounts, using data on filibusters launched between 1917 and 1996. Our findings suggest that the incentive to filibuste…
The Limits of Senatorial Courtesy
Because of senatorial courtesy, scholars typically assume that presidents defer to home state senators from their party when selecting judges for the federal courts. We challenge this view, arguing that presidents face structural incentives that encourage them to consult broadly with senators across the partisan and ideological spectrums in choosing nominees. Using new data on the fate of judicial vacancies on the federal district courts between …
The Invention of the United States Senate
Parties and Institutional Choice Revisited
Scholars of institutional change in Congress offer competing theoretical accounts of the accrual of procedural rights by House majority parties. One camp posits that the interests and capacities of political parties drive procedural change that affects agenda control. An alternative perspective offers a nonpartisan, median‐voter account. I explore these two accounts, survey challenges involved in testing them, and determine the fit of the account…
Where Do Institutions Come From? Exploring the Origins of the Senate Blue Slip
Perhaps the most striking feature of the Senate's practice of advice and consent today is the deference accorded home state senators in reviewing presidential appointments to the federal bench. Although the Constitution calls for the advice and consent of the Senate body, informal norms of the Senate provide home state senators with a potential veto of nominations to fill federal judgeships within their states. One norm—senatorial courtesy—histor…
Supermajority Constraints as Majority Choice
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Going Nuclear, Senate Style
Conflict within and beyond the United States Senate has refocused scholarly and public attention on "advice and consent," the constitutional provision that governs the Senate's role in confirming presidential appointments. Despite intense and salient partisan and ideological disputes about the rules of the game that govern the Senate confirmation process for judicial appointees, reformers have had little success in limiting the ability of a minor…
The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions
The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions provides a comprehensive survey of where we are in the study of political institutions, covering both the traditional concerns of political science with constitutions, federalism and bureaucracy and more recent interest in theory and the constructed nature of institutions. The study of political institutions is among the founding pillars of political science. With the rise of the ‘new institutionalism…
Taking the Measure of Congress: Reply to Chiou and Rothenberg
Chiou and Rothenberg raise important questions about how to measure key concepts in the study of legislative stalemate in the U.S. Congress. In challenging my choice of measures to capture bicameral differences, Chiou and Rothenberg argue that my findings are the artifact of measurement error. In this reply, I review the hurdles involved in measuring policy views over time and across institutions and suggest that the preferred measure of Chiou an…
Who Consents? Competing Pivots in Federal Judicial Selection
The salience of judicial appointments in contemporary American politics has precipitated a surge of scholarly interest in the dynamics of advice and consent in the U.S. Senate. In this article, we compare alternative pivotal politics models of the judicial nominations process, each capturing a different set of potential veto players in the Senate. We use these spatial models to guide empirical analysis of rejection patterns in confirmation contes…
Thinking Institutionally
This article studies how to think institutionally. It examines what this particular line of thinking means, and sketches the coherence and significance of mental life inside any and all such institutions. The second half of the article is focused on determining why thinking institutionally is important
Challenges Ahead for Legislative Studies
Political science (18 works) · Law (16 works) · Politics (16 works) · Law (15 works) · Public Administration (12 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (11 works) · Public Administration (10 works) · Economics (9 works) · Judicial and Constitutional Studies (9 works) · American Constitutional Law and Politics (8 works)