Parties, Preferences, and Congressional Organization
Explaining Repeals in Congress from 1877 to 2012
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6340437 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jordan M Ragusa (College of Charleston), Jordan Ragusa (0000-0002-8600-4306, College of Charleston), Nathaniel A Birkhead (0000-0001-6834-2478, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, USA) |
| Year | 2015 |
| Volume | 68 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 745-759 |
| Publication date | 2015-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Political Research Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1065-9129 • E-ISSN: 1938-274X |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/1065912915604052 |
| OpenAlex | W1410582092 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 11 |
| References cited | 30 |
When does Congress repeal laws enacted by prior generations? Although the substantial body of work on policy creation provides tentative explanations, we believe repeals represent an alternative way of examining the effects of congressional organization on legislative behavior. In this paper, we develop hypotheses based on both the conditional nature of party power and the location of pivot points, and test these hypotheses with a new data set of repeals from 1877 to 2012. We find that the largest effects on Congress’s capacity to repeal legislation are variation in the majority’s positive agenda control and shifts in the gridlock interval. We also find that when the majority claims control of both chambers after a long stretch in the minority, there is an increased likelihood of repeal beyond what is predicted by conditional party government alone. Because the partisan factors in our model have the largest substantive effects, and because repeals do not occur automatically in productive Congresses, we characterize repeals as long-term contests between two great “teams” over the location of the status quo
Control (management · Divided government · Economics · Government (linguistics · Gridlock · Law and economics · Legislation · Legislature · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Public economics · Repeal · Status quo · Work (physics · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Fiscal Policies and Political Economy · Law · Public Administration · Social Policy and Reform Studies
Organized elite power and clean energy
Dynamics of Partisan Competition for Legislative Majorities in the U.S. House & Senate, 1959–2020
Partisanship, Slavery, and the Demise of the National Road
Policy Disruption Through Regulatory Delay in the Trump Administration
Does Substandard Performance Encourage Innovation Adoption
Can impact assessments tame legislative drift? Event history analysis of modifications of laws across Europe
Between Two Fires
To Revoke or Not Revoke? The Political Determinants of Executive Order Longevity
Legislative Gridlock and Policymaking Through the Appropriations Process
Learning from laboratory mistakes
Crossing Over
Congress and the Politics of Problem Solving
Parties and Leaders in the Postreform House
Setting the Agenda
Why Parties?
Legislative Leviathan
Sample Selection Bias as a Specification Error
Polarized America
Pivotal Politics
Setting the Agenda in the U.S. Senate
Agenda Control, Majority Party Power, and the House Committee on Rules, 1937–52
Discharge petitions and the conditional nature of agenda control in the U.S. House of Representatives
Why Information? Choosing Committee Informativeness in U.S. State Legislatures
War for the Floor
The New Politics of the Welfare State
The President’s Role in the Partisan Congressional Arena
The Politics of Agency Termination
Political Learning from Rare Events
Divided Government and the Legislative Productivity of Congress, 1945-94
Nonproportional Hazards and Event History Analysis in International Relations
After Enactment
Measuring Legislative Accomplishment, 1877–1994
Change, Continuity, and the Evolution of the Law
Are Federal Programs Immortal
The Lifecycle of Public Policy
Change We Can Believe In? Using Political Science to Predict Policy Change in the Obama Presidency
The Dynamics of Legislative Gridlock, 1947-96
The Transition to Republican Rule in the House
| Unique citing works | 11 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,22 |
| Citation span | 2017 - 2025 (9) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 11 |