Volume 26, Number
1, January 2003
Research and Teaching
- Dirksen Congressional Center Research
Awards
- NCSL
News
- Visiting
Scholars Program
Dirksen
Center
The
Recipients this year include PhD candidates and faculty from
the
A complete list of this year’s Congressional Research Award
recipients is posted at http://www.dirksencenter.org/grantcongresearchaward.htm.
The Dirksen Congressional Center is a nonpartisan, not-for-profit
organization in
Representative Democracy in America
The National Conference of State Legislatures,
the Center for Civic Education, and The Center on Congress at
The goals of the project are to:
* Encourage Americans to understand better their representative democracy and play a
responsible role in their government;
* Strengthen classroom teaching about representative democracy;
* Develop mass media programs to inform the public about representative institutions;
* Provide legislators and staff with resource materials to help improve public understanding of
their institutions;
* Support research on public views about Congress and state legislatures.
Working over a five-year period the alliance
expects to produce:
* A video series for teachers and their students in high schools and colleges
—supported by printed materials;
* A series of web-based, e-learning
modules designed to bring the work of legislatures
alive for young citizens;
* Classroom materials that approach representative democracy from the point of view of
elementary, middle and high school students that are designed to support
America’s Legislators Back to School Week;
* Television documentaries about representative democracy that describe how it works and the
relationship between the people and their elected officials;
* Television interview programs on C-SPAN
that feature members of Congress and state legislators
discussing representative democracy with an audience of high school students;
* A series of brief television, radio,
and Internet messages defining the roles of lawmakers and
citizens in our representative democracy;
* A resource kit
containing a variety of materials for lawmakers to help them explain
representative democracy to the public;
* Academic research with practical application for improving public participation and
support for representative democracy and its institutions.
For further information contact Karl Kurtz (karl.kurtz@ncsl.org) at NCSL.
Policy Agendas Project
Please take a look at a new website from the
http://policyagendasproject.polisci.washington.edu/PAIndex.html
The Policy
Agendas Project, originally conceived by Frank Baumgartner and Bryan Jones,
traces changes in attention to policy topics at the national level since 1946.
The new website is designed to make the data more accessible to instructors,
students, or anyone interested in studying patterns in policymaking over the
past 50 years.
In particular,
Level II allows you to do instant queries of the data at the major topic or
subtopic level, or by specific keywords. The chart that is automatically generated
can be edited to suit your purposes. In addition, you can "drill down"
into the accompanying table to compare, for example, how the content of foreign
aid hearings in 1957 differed from those of 1993.
The plug-in
for Chart FX will download automatically if you are using
Internet Explorer,
unless your computer is configured to prevent such automatic downloads. If
you are using Mozilla or Netscape, you should be able to generate charts but
you will not be able to edit them. This will be fixed in the near future.
This is the
'beta' version and feedback is welcome at
Report and Recommendations on Initiative
and Referendum
Over the last six months a task force of the
National Conference of State Legislatures has reviewed the growing use of
initiatives and referendums around the country and examined their effect on
representative democracy at the state level. The Initiative and Referendum Task
Force found that opportunities for abuse of the process outweigh its advantages
and does not recommend that states adopt the initiative process if they
currently do not have one.
The task force also developed recommendations
that would enable initiative states to make their processes more
representative. For states that are intent upon adopting an initiative process,
the task force offers a set of guidelines to enhance the process and to avoid
many of the pitfalls currently experienced by the initiative states. The task
force urges such states to consider giving preference to a process that
encourages citizen participation without enacting specific constitutional or
statutory language–specifically, the advisory initiative or the general policy
initiative.
The 34 recommendations contained in this
report acknowledge that the initiative process has outgrown the existing laws
that govern it. After listening to expert testimony from a wide variety of
witnesses and compiling data from all 50 states, the task force concluded that
the initiative has evolved from its early days as a grassroots tool to enhance
representative democracy into a tool that too often is exploited by special
interests. The initiative lacks critical elements of the legislative process
and can have both intended and unintended effects on the ability of the
representative democratic process to comprehensively develop policies and
priorities.
As a result, the task force suggests that
initiative states reform drafting, certification, signature-gathering
and financial disclosure statutes; adhere to single subject rules; and improve
practices regarding voter education. It also recommends that initiatives be
allowed only on general election ballots.
It is the task force’s intent that the
discussion and adoption of the reforms in this report lead to a more thoughtful
lawmaking process, improve interaction between initiative proponents and
legislatures, and ultimately produce better public policy and reinforce
representative democracy.
The full report is available online at www.ncsl.org/programs/legman/irtaskfc/IandR_report.pdf
Visiting Scholars Program
The Carl Albert Congressional Research and
The Center's holdings include the papers of
many former members of Congress, such as Robert S. Kerr, Fred Harris, and
Speaker Carl Albert of
Topics that can be studied include the Great
Depression, flood control, soil conservation, and tribal affairs. At least one
collection provides insight on women in American politics. Most materials date
from the 1920s to the 1970s, although there is one nineteenth century
collection.
The Center's archives are described on their
website at http://www.ou.edu/special/albertctr/archives/ and in the publication titled A
Guide to the Carl Albert Center Congressional Archives by Judy Day et.al. (Norman, Okla.: The Carl Albert
Center, 1995), available at many
The Visiting Scholars Program is open to any
applicant. Emphasis is given to those pursuing postdoctoral research in
history, political science, and other fields. Graduate students involved in
research for publication, thesis, or dissertation are encouraged to apply. Interested
undergraduates and lay researchers are also invited to apply. The Center
evaluates each research proposal based upon its merits, and funding for a
variety of topics is expected.
No standardized form is needed for
application. Instead, a series of documents should be sent to the Center,
including:
(1) a
description of the research proposal in fewer than 1000 words;
(2) a personal vita;
(3) an explanation of
how the Center's resources will assist the researcher;
(4) a budget
proposal; and
(5) a letter of
reference from an established scholar in the discipline attesting to the
significance of the research.
Applications are accepted at any time.
For more information, please contact
Archivist,
Telephone: (405) 325-5401.
FAX: (405) 325-6419.
Email: kosmerick@ou.edu