The Limits of Party
Congress and Lawmaking in a Polarized Era
by James M. Curry and Frances E. Lee
University of Chicago Press, 2020
Cloth: 978-0-226-71621-3 | Paper: 978-0-226-71635-0 | Electronic: 978-0-226-71649-7
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226716497.001.0001
ABOUT THIS BOOKAUTHOR BIOGRAPHYREVIEWSTABLE OF CONTENTS
ABOUT THIS BOOK
To many observers, Congress has become a deeply partisan institution where ideologically-distinct political parties do little more than engage in legislative trench warfare. A zero-sum, winner-take-all approach to congressional politics has replaced the bipartisan comity of past eras. If the parties cannot get everything they want in national policymaking, then they prefer gridlock and stalemate to compromise. Or, at least, that is the conventional wisdom.
In The Limits of Party, James M. Curry and Frances E. Lee challenge this conventional wisdom. By constructing legislative histories of congressional majority parties’ attempts to enact their policy agendas in every congress since the 1980s and by drawing on interviews with Washington insiders, the authors analyze the successes and failures of congressional parties to enact their legislative agendas.
Their conclusions will surprise many congressional observers: Even in our time of intense party polarization, bipartisanship remains the key to legislative success on Capitol Hill. Congressional majority parties today are neither more nor less successful at enacting their partisan agendas. They are not more likely to ram though partisan laws or become mired in stalemate. Rather, the parties continue to build bipartisan coalitions for their legislative priorities and typically compromise on their original visions for legislation in order to achieve legislative success.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
James M. Curry is associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Utah. He is the author of Legislating in the Dark. Frances E. Lee is professor of politics and public affairs at Princeton University. Her previous books include Insecure Majorities: Congress and the Perpetual Campaign and Beyond Ideology: Politics, Principles and Partisanship in the U.S. Senate.
REVIEWS
“The Limits of Party a powerful and authoritative work that should invest our understandings and our classrooms. The book is rich in data and argument. The authors ask: How much has congressional lawmaking changed during recent decades? The answer: Not as much as we might think! There is an awful lot of continuity in our cumbersome separation-of-powers system.”
— David Mayhew, Yale University
“In this provocative and cogently-argued book, Curry and Lee demonstrate convincingly the very real limits of congressional majority party power. While contemporary congressional politics may be marked by highly partisan and centralized processes, the factors that govern lawmaking and legislative outcomes have remain largely unchanged over the past half-century. The authors show that laws are generally enacted with broad bipartisan support, and majority parties still face struggles to coordinate internally, even though they face fewer ideological divides than in the past. This important book adds nuance to the literature on party influence and serves as a meaningful corrective to arguments that polarization has changed everything about Congress. It will be deservedly widely read and discussed.”
— Tracy Sulkin, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
"I highly recommend this book not only to congressional scholars, but to those who work in and around the Congress. It offers a refreshingly new and counterintuitive perspective on what is really going on under that dome on the Hill, and why."
— Congress & The Presidency
TABLE OF CONTENTS
One. Majority Party Capacity in a Polarized Era - James M. Curry, Frances E. Lee
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226716497.003.0001
[responsible parties model;majority party capacity;polarized political eras]
This chapter establishes the framework of our book, in which we examine whether today’s stronger, more cohesive parties in Congress are indeed more capable as policymakers. Are today’s parties better able to deliver on their campaign promises? Does the centralization of power in Congress permit majority parties to steamroll the opposition and enact their programmatic agendas? In short, we want to know whether the more ideologically cohesive, institutionally empowered parties of the 21st century Congress are better able to steer the ship of state in American politics. (pages 1 - 18)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Two. The Persistence of Bipartisan Lawmaking - James M. Curry, Frances E. Lee
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226716497.003.0002
[bipartisanship;parties;Congress;party agendas;lawmaking capacity]
This chapter offers a top line answer to two questions about the majority party’s lawmaking capacity in the contemporary Congress: (1) Do majority parties in today’s party-polarized Congress pass laws on a partisan basis more often than in the past? (2) Are today’s stronger congressional parties more effective at enacting their agenda priorities? The answer to both questions is, no. Data on all laws enacted from 1973-2018 show that contemporary congresses do not enact a larger share of laws on party-line votes. Data on congressional majority party agenda priorities from 1985-2018 similarly show that more recent majorities are no more effective in accomplishing their legislative goals than the majority parties of the 1980s. Interviews with Washington insiders shed light on the persistence of bipartisanship in contemporary lawmaking, testifying to the extreme difficulties of one party lawmaking in the U.S. political system. (pages 19 - 52)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Three. Why Do Majority Parties Fail? - James M. Curry, Frances E. Lee
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226716497.003.0003
[party cohesion;legislative failure;party incapacity;stalemate;lawmaking]
This chapter asks two questions: (1) Where and how do majority parties fall short in their legislative ambitions? (2) Have patterns in majority party failure shifted over time? Drawing on data on majority party legislative priorities from 1985-2018, the chapter distinguishes between legislative failures caused by opposition party obstruction and those caused by insufficient intraparty agreement. Surprisingly, there is little evidence that veto points controlled by the opposing party have become a greater problem for congressional majority parties. Today’s majority parties regularly fail when they cannot overcome the opposing party’s use of veto points such as the Senate filibuster or a president of the opposing party. However, today’s majority parties also continue to struggle with intraparty coalition-building. Contemporary congressional majority parties put up impressive statistics in terms of overall roll-call voting cohesion, but they often fall short of internal consensus when it really counts for policymaking. (pages 53 - 84)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Four. How Do Majority Parties Succeed? - James M. Curry, Frances E. Lee
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226716497.003.0004
[lawmaking;legislative success;party;Congress;bipartisanship]
This chapter investigates how congressional majority parties achieve their lawmaking successes. Drawing on data on congressional majority party legislative agenda priorities from 1985-2018, this chapter identifies pathways by which majority parties achieve legislative successes. Today’s majority parties are not achieving lawmaking victories by steamrolling the opposing party. In fact, if anything, the data suggest majority parties may be becoming slightly less efficacious at getting most of what they want on their agenda items. Rather, even in the contemporary, partisan Congress majority parties succeed mostly by (1) cultivating bipartisanship early in the legislative process or (2) making concessions to the other party and backing off key goals in order to gain bipartisan support later in the process. (pages 85 - 122)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Five. Bipartisanship and the Decline of Regular Order - James M. Curry, Frances E. Lee
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226716497.003.0005
[regular order;unorthodox lawmaking;parties;Congress;legislative process]
This chapter assesses the oft-made argument that congressional majority parties bypass traditional legislative processes (the "regular order") as a strategy for, and means of, enacting their partisan agendas. To do so, the chapter first assesses the relationship between violations of “regular order” (the use of unorthodox processes) and the levels of partisan disagreement on the passage of 621 important laws passed by Congress from 1987-2016. Second, interviews with Washington insiders seek insight to legislative leaders’ motivations for employing unorthodox processes. Altogether, little evidence is found that the use of unorthodox legislative processes is a leading indicator of partisan lawmaking. Congressional leaders turn to unorthodox processes not to pass partisan programs, but to resolve impasses in enacting bipartisan legislation. The flexibility and secrecy permitted by these more streamlined, centralized processes can be necessary to legislate successfully in the contemporary political environment, even with highly bipartisan legislation. Rather than tools of party power used to enact partisan laws, unorthodox processes are largely just different means to achieving legislative ends. (pages 123 - 150)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Six. Credit Claiming and Blaming: How Members React to Legislation in Public - James M. Curry, Frances E. Lee
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226716497.003.0006
[media;Congress;lawmaking;partisanship;parties]
While Congress has not become more partisan in its lawmaking efforts, and while majority parties have not become more effective at enacting their agendas,Americans still perceive contemporary lawmaking as deeply and increasingly partisan. This chapter seeks to understand one possibility why this is the case: that lawmakers' public statements in reaction to successful legislative action create a different impression than that found by looking at roll-call breakdowns and the substance of legislative accomplishments. However, looking at lawmakers' public comments in New York Times and Washington Post articles about legislative successes, this chapter again finds little change over time. Lawmakers today are negative and partisan in their reactions to legislative successes, but no more so than they were in the 1970s.Any perceptions that legislative outcomes are more partisan than in the past must rely on sources other than members quoted in media coverage (pages 151 - 176)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Seven. Constancy and Continuities - James M. Curry, Frances E. Lee
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226716497.003.0007
[responsible party government;congressional capacity;bipartisanship;party;party influence;Constitution]
This chapter discusses some broad implication of this book, which finds a remarkabledegree of constancy and continuity in the limits on congressional majority party influence over public policy. These findings have implications for reformers' hopes for responsible party government in the United States, for scholarly understandings of party power and influence, the changes to legislative processes, and the capacity of Congress as a lawmaking institution. (pages 177 - 192)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
