22: Legislative Studies

Patrick Sellers, Davidson College, pasellers@davidson.edu

The 2009 APSA theme of "Politics in Motion" is highly relevant to legislative studies. The topics of change, complexity, and practical impact have long occupied scholars in this field, and I hope to craft panels which add to our understanding of these topics within legislatures. For example, what can we learn from the second change in partisan control of the U.S. Congress within 12 years? How is our understanding of the legislative process improved by considering influences outside the legislature, such as the executive branch, interest groups, or the media? How do our theoretical and empirical insights shape who gets what, when, where, or why? The legislative studies division is also looking for papers that address the array of topics that arise naturally in the study of legislative politics: parties, coalition formation, committees, rule changes, budgets, leadership, chamber floor strategy, elections, and patterns of legislative behavior in a historical context. Papers can examine these topics in contexts ranging from the U.S. Congress to U.S. state legislatures to those in other countries. Although panel, roundtable, and individual paper proposals are welcome, individual paper proposals are typically easier to accommodate. Also encouraged are papers with a clearly posed question and with multi-method analysis, integrating statistical analysis, carefully-chosen case studies, formal models with empirical applications, or other analytical approaches.