|
|
|
Legislative Studies
Section Newsletter
is published at the Membership in LSS includes
a subscription to Legislative Studies Quarterly.
|
||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|||||||||||||
|
|
|
|||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||
|
From
the Chair As my term as chair of LSS winds
down, I’d like to provide a brief update on the state of our section. On the bright side, we have a robust
set of LSS panels for the upcoming APSA meetings in Seattle. At last year’s APSA conference
in Washington, we sponsored/co-sponsored a total of 14 panels. This year, we are set to go with 22
panels organized by Erik Engstrom (UC Davis) and
Michelle Taylor-Robinson (Texas A&M). I am pleased that we’ve
increased our panel allocation, and am hopeful that we’ll be able to
sustain this higher level of activity and engagement for the section. Equally important, I’m pleased
that we’ve institutionalized the use of co-program chairs. I am optimistic that this move will
bolster our inclusion of top-notch papers on comparative legislative
politics, and will increase our section’s appeal to comparative
scholars. As a section, we still face a
diminished membership (in numbers that is). I have been working with Sean Twombly
at APSA to reach out to APSA members who have let their LSS memberships
lapse, as well as to APSA members with interests in Congress who have never
joined LSS. I hope to have a
sense from APSA by Seattle on whether or not these efforts have been
effective. I do think that the
move to incorporate a subscription to LSQ with an LSS membership is having
lingering effects on our membership numbers. Given the proliferation of e-journal
access at universities and colleges, I suspect that the material incentive of
a subscription to LSQ may not be sufficient to expand the LSS membership. I want to take this opportunity to
thank the many people who have graciously and enthusiastically chaired and
served on the five LSS award committees, as well as on the LSS council with
me. Tracy Sulkin
(the outgoing Secretary-Treasury) has done a superb job keeping the LSS in
the black. I am also grateful to
Thad Kousser and Lanny
Martin, and Erik Engstrom and Michelle
Taylor-Robinson, who have served as the 2010 and 2011 co-program chairs. I appreciate as well the work of my
nominations committee (Jan Box-Steffensmeier, Bruce
Oppenheimer, and Wendy Schiller) over the past two years. Hardy thanks are also due to Mickie Wiegand at LSQ and Mike
Streeter at Wiley for helping to keep the LSS-LSQ-Wiley connections strong
(with special thanks to Wiley for funding the LSS-LSQ reception at
APSA). Finally, I appreciate Ron Peters,
LaDonna Sullivan, and the Carl Albert Center at the University of Oklahoma
for the excellent
job they do with the LSS newsletter and web site, and to Val Heitschusen for her fine work
as editor of Extension of Remarks.
Garry Young will soon join the LSS newsletter as the editor of
Extensions. It has been a
pleasure to work with everyone. Finally, I would like to invite those
who plan to attend the APSA meeting in Seattle to the annual LSS meeting on
Friday, September 2 at 6:15 p.m. in Room 610 of the Washington State
Convention Center for the presentation of awards, the election of new section
officers, and a discussion of any new or pending business. A reception will follow at 7:30 p.m.
in Room 616. I hope to see you
there, as well as at many of the outstanding panels and roundtables put
together by Erik and Michelle. |
|
|