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The business meeting of the
Legislative Studies Section was held in
LSS Chair Steve Smith heard a
motion to approve the 2005 Business meeting minutes. The minutes were
approved.
Steve Smith
then commended Wendy Schiller for her work in assembling an excellent set of
Legislative Politics panels for the 2006 APSA meetings. He noted that Linda
Fowler has agreed to organize the panels for the 2007 APSA meetings and that
the section is looking for a program chair for the 2008 meetings. Nominations
should be sent to Sarah Binder (binder@gwu.edu).
LSS
Secretary/Treasurer John Wilkerson gave the treasurer’s report. He
noted that membership dropped in 2005 but that it was recovering and above
what is needed to cover the section’s annual expenses.
Steve
Smith then commended Professor Gerhard Loewenberg for his many years of service as the managing editor of the journal, Legislative
Studies Quarterly.
Professor
E. Scott Adler presented The Carl
Albert Dissertation Award. Topics may be national or subnational in focus – on Congress, parliaments,
state legislatures, or other representative bodies.
This year's winner of the Carl Albert Prize for Best
Dissertation in
Legislative Studies goes to Kathryn L. Pearson, Assistant Professor at the
Honorable Mention for this award goes to Seth Masket,
Assistant Professor at the University of Denver, for his dissertation,
"A Party by Other Means: The Rise of Informal Party Organizations in California,"
completed at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Award Committee – Gail McElroy, Scott Adler and
Robert Van Houweling.
Professor
Stephen Franzitch 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, sponsored by the National
Conference of State Legislatures and State Legislative Leaders Foundation.
Tracy Sulkin’s Issue
Politics in Congress expands the concept of agenda building to include
candidates' reactions to issue-based criticisms in campaigns. Her concept of
"issue uptake" will undoubtedly join concepts such as
"unorthodox lawmaking" and "homestyle"
in the lexicon of legislative understanding. Consistent with the Rosenthal
prize, her contribution is of use to both practitioners and academics.
Despite a wide range of excellent nominations, Professor Sulkins book rose to the top with amazing consensus for a selection committee made up
of legislative scholars.
Award
Committee – Stephen Frantzich, Gary Moncrief and David Canon.
Professor
Forrest Malzmann presented the Jewell-Loewenberg Award for the best article in Legislative Studies Quarterly in 2005,
sponsored by the Dirksen Congressional Center.
The winner was “Influence Without
Confidence: Upper Chambers and Government Formation,” by James N. Druckman, Northwestern University; Lanny W. Martin, Rice University; and Michael F. Thies,
University of California, Los Angeles. The authors hypothesize that the nature of a
coalition formed in a lower legislative chamber is based in part upon the
calculations that leaders in the lower body make about which party controls
the upper chamber. Why? Because they understand the importance of
bicameralism to the fulfillment of their policy objectives. It is an argument that both nicely builds upon an impressive research body dedicated to
coalition formation. It is also an
argument that reaffirms claims that unicameral models are
underspecified. It is an important
theoretical contribution that is empirically tested by examining which of
fifteen thousand potential governments came to together in 129 coalition
formation opportunities. It is a nice
piece that makes an important theoretical argument that is validated and generalizable.
Award
Committee – Forrest Maltzman, Scott
Mainwaring, and Kathryn Pearson.
Professor
Tracy Sulkin presented the the Congressional Quarterly Press
Award for the best paper on legislative studies presented at the 2005
APSA Annual Meeting:
In
their paper, "Declining Fortunes:
Institutional Change and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
1947-2002," Linda Fowler and
Brian Law seek to identify explanations for the precipitous decline in the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee's external and internal prestige over the
past six decades. They find that this erosion in the status of the committee
is a result of a combination of a variety of factors, including presidential
actions, jurisdictional changes, partisan conflicts, and military events. We
were impressed by many aspects of the paper, but particularly the breadth of
its arguments and analyses, which tie together the literatures on formal and
informal institutional change, party polarization, and interbranch dynamics. Moreover, the conclusion that legislators may have less control
over Congressional institutions and arrangements than scholars typically
assume is a provocative and important one and will undoubtedly spur further
investigation.
Award
Committee – Tracy Sulkin, Nolan McCarty and
Bruce Oppenheimer.
Professor
Diana Evans presented the Richard F. Fenno Book Prize for the best book in legislative
studies published in 2005, sponsored by the Legislative Studies Section:
This year's Richard F. Fenno Prize is awarded to Tracy Sulkin for her book Issue Politics in Congress, published
by Cambridge University Press. In this fresh and original study, Sulkin argues that in congressional campaigns,
challengers focus on incumbents' weaknesses. In turn, incumbents move strategically
to neutralize those issues and shore up their support with the
electorate. To do so, they take up
those issues in Congress, a phenomenon she calls "issue
uptake." Sulkin shows that losers matter. However, Issue Politics in Congress is a winner.
Award Committee – Diana Evans, Andrew Taylor and
William Bianco.
Steve
Smith suggested (tongue in cheek) that the section be re-named in honor of
Tracy Sulkin.
The LSS
Business meeting adjourned.
Respectfully
submitted,
John
Wilkerson
Secretary/Treasurer
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