The business meeting of the Legislative Studies Section was held in Washington, D.C. on Friday, September 2, 2005 during the annual convention of the American Political Science Association.

LSS Chair Diana Evans of Trinity College gaveled the meeting to order at 6:00 p.m.  The LSS membership adopted the minutes from the 2004 meeting, previously published in the LSS newsletter.

LSS Secretary-Treasurer Frances Lee of the University of Maryland announced that the membership of the section stands at 575.  Accordingly, the section is “in the black” and in good financial shape.

Evans thanked those who had served the section during her tenure as chair, including the Carl Albert Center; Editor of the LSS Newsletter Ron Peters; Newsletter Co-Editors Gary Copeland and Cindy Simon Rosenthal; Newletter Managing Editor LaDonna Sullivan; Editor of Extension of Remarks Sean Kelly; LSQ Co-Editors Gerald Lowenberg, C. Lawrence Evans, and Peverill Squire, and LSQ Managing Editor Michelle Wiegand; and all those who had served as council members and on the many prize committees.

Legislative Division Program Chair Eric Schickler of Harvard University announced that he had received 250 proposals for the APSA meeting and an allocation of only 23 panels, forcing him to reject many strong proposals.  He encouraged the submission of proposals for individual papers rather than panels, because it is easier for program chairs to accommodate individual paper proposals on the program. 

The session then turned to the presentation of awards.  Samuel Kernell of University of California-San Diego conferred the CQ Press Award, for best paper presented in the legislative studies division at the 2004 meeting of the APSA, on behalf of the committee that also included Lynda Powell of the University of Rochester and Sean Theriault of the University of Texas.  The prize went to Tracy Sulkin of the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign for her paper, “Legislative Responsiveness to Campaign Challenges.”  In this paper, Sulkin lays out a new argument linking congressional campaigns to subsequent behavior in Congress.  She argues that winners of these contests “uptake” the important themes from their opponents’ campaigns and show a disproportionately large amount of legislative activity on them.  Her data analysis impressively includes an examination of 6,500 newspaper articles and the legislative activities for 51 senators over a 6-year period following their election.  The paper is important not only for linking elections to subsequent legislative behavior, but also for developing a new and compelling theory of legislative activity and using an impressive and novel data set to test the theory. 

Sarah Binder of George Washington University presented the Richard F. Fenno, Jr. Prize, for best book on legislative politics, on behalf of the committee that also included Scott Adler of the University of Colorado and Gary Cox of the University of California-San Diego.  Binder announced that Greasing the Wheels: Using Pork Barrel Projects to Build Majority Coalitions in Congress (Cambridge University Press 2004) by Diana Evans had been selected for the prize from a number of outstanding books on Congress published in the last year.  Binder noted that Diana Evans had recused herself from appointing the members of the prize committee this year because her book was eligible for the prize.  Greasing the Wheels captures the hallmarks and essence of Dick Fenno’s work:  theoretically creative, empirically strong, and extremely well-written.  Evans’ book suggests that the strategic distribution of pork allows legislative leaders to overcome Congress’s enduring dilemma of collective action:  Pork is used to grease the skids for general interest legislation.  The book explores how pork is used, the circumstances under which legislators find it worthwhile to sell their votes and leaders find it worthwhile to buy them, and it explores the effectiveness of the strategy.  In sum, the book offers a new and creative perspective on coalition building in a system of geographically based representation. 

Christian Grose of Vanderbilt University conferred the Carl Albert Dissertation Award, for the best dissertation on a legislative topic, on behalf of a committee that also included Noelle Norton of the University of San Diego and John R. Wright of The Ohio State University.  This year’s award went jointly to Robert Van Houweling (Harvard Ph.D.) and to Gail McElroy (University of Rochester Ph.D.).

The Carl Albert Dissertation Award committee felt that Van Houweling’s dissertation, entitled “Legislators’ Personal Policy Preferences and Partisan Legislative Organization,” was a novel and interesting critique of much extant literature.  His dissertation argues that party polarization in Congress has increased because legislators’ personal preferences have become more extreme.  In a critique of most of the existing literature on parties, he argues that parties and party leaders are “enablers” more than “disciplinarians” in that they provide “cover” for legislators by using committees, rules, and other internal processes to keep moderate policy proposals off the agenda that their constituents may prefer but that the legislators personally do not.

The Carl Albert committee also recognized the valuable contributions of Gail McElroy’s dissertation, entitled “In Pursuit of Party Discipline:  Committees and Cohesion in the European Parliament.”  McElroy examines the rise of parties in the European Parliament (EP) and the use of parties to control the agenda to test competing theories that have generally only been tested with the U.S. Congress or U.S. state legislatures.  Members of the EP have little electoral incentives related to party, as the parties do not control the election rules and members are not for the most part elected from single member districts.  Even without this electoral connection, parties are able to enforce discipline, and party cohesion has occurred relative quickly in this emerging legislature.  Thus, McElroy critiques many existing theories of party control that posit an electoral aspect to party leaders’ abilities to enforce discipline.

Charles Stewart of MIT presented the Jewell-Loewenberg Award, for the best article published in Legislative Studies Quarterly in 2004, on behalf of a committee that also included Michele Swers of Georgetown University and Garrison Nelson of the University of Vermont.  The award went to Sarah Binder and Forrest Maltzman of the George Washington University for “The Limits of Senatorial Courtesy” (24: 5-22).  Stewart praised the article for teaching legislative scholars something new about the institutional interactions between the president and the Senate in the choice of district court judges.  Whereas most studies of these dynamics focus on confirmation politics, this article focuses on the nomination process.  Through their statistical analysis, not only do Binder and Maltzman confirm the presence of senatorial courtesy in the choice of nominees, but they put this more obvious influence in the context of other factors they discover to be important, including ideological differences with home-state senators and chairmen of the Judiciary Committee.

Joseph Cooper of the Johns Hopkins University presented the Alan Rosenthal Prize for the best book or article in legislative studies written by a junior scholar that has potential value to legislative practitioners on behalf of a committee that also included Cherie Maestas of Florida State University and Daniel J. Palazzolo of the University of Richmond.  The award went to Thad Kousser of the University of California-San Diego for his book Term Limits and the Dismantling of State Legislative Professionalism (Cambridge University Press 2005).  Kousser’s book analyzes the impact of institutional design in the form of term limits on the power of legislative party leaders and governors, on policy innovation, and on the character of legislative organization and procedure.  The book combines both qualitative and quantitative approaches, including interviews of staff, public officials, and lobbyists and analysis of data from 50 states with an in-depth focus on six states.  Kousser reports that term limits have increased the power of party leaders vis-à-vis rank and file members, increased the power of governors, decreased capacity for policy innovation and decreased the number of outliers on committees.  In all, this is an impressive study rich in significance and implications for all students of legislatures.

The chair then thanked all the members of the prize committees this year.  Evans then recognized Wendy Schiller of Brown University as legislative division chair for the 2006 APSA meeting.

LSS Chair Evans then reported on progress in linking LSS dues with a subscription to LSQ.  Based on the experience of other sections that have adopted a linkage with a journal subscription, the officers were optimistic that LSS membership would not be adversely affected by the dues increase to cover the journal subscription.  As insurance, however, the section and LSQ negotiated a risk sharing agreement whereby financial losses resulting from membership declines will be shared equitably.  Although membership is down slightly from this time last year, the decline is not substantial enough to trigger the cost sharing arrangement.  There were also a few glitches with the transition with some members not receiving the journal, but those are being worked out individually.  Affected individuals are encouraged to contact the LSS Treasurer.

The meeting then turned to the election of new officers.  LSS officers Diana Evans and Frances Lee had completed their terms of office, as had Council Members Janet Box-Steffensmeier of the Ohio State University, Gary Cox of the University of California-San Diego, and C. Lawrence Evans of the College of William and Mary. 

The committee to nominate new section officers was chaired by Lawrence C. Dodd of the University of Florida and its members included Jon Bond of Texas A&M and Linda Fowler of the University of Rochester.  The committee proposed the following nominees for two-year terms:  for LSS Chair, Steven Smith of Washington University-St. Louis; for Secretary-Treasurer, John Wilkerson of the University of Washington-Seattle; for Council Members, Eric Schickler of Harvard University (who will serve for one year as the immediate past program chair), Charles Stewart of MIT, and Kim Kahn of Arizona State University.  The slate of nominees was unanimously approved by the LSS membership.

LSS Chair Evans then turned to needed revisions in the bylaws.  The current bylaws specify that the Legislative Division Program chair for the APSA meeting should be elected at the Annual Meeting.  However, APSA needs to know who will be serving in this position by April 1st, far in advance of the meeting.  Evans proposed that the section institutionalize current practice of having the LSS Chair select the Program Chair in consultation with the Nominations Committee.  This change was adopted without dissent by the LSS membership.

The meeting was then opened to announcements from the members.  Bill Mishler of the University of Arizona announced that Gerald Loewenberg would be stepping down as comparative politics editor of the LSQ.  He requested that members offer nominations to help the committee select a replacement.

LSS Chair Evans gaveled the meeting to a close at 7:00 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,
Frances E. Lee
Secretary/Treasurer