Funding: National Science Foundation
Summary: Conventional wisdom holds that the party system within the House and Senate is one of Congress's most important institutional structures. Nevertheless, the nature of party influence is not understood very well. Recent efforts to characterize partisan influences in congressional policy-making posit both direct and indirect forms of influence. Such characterizations have largely been static in nature and tested exclusively in the House of Representatives. Eric Lawrence (GW), Forrest Maltzman (GW), and Steven Smith (Washington University) propose to collect data that will be used to characterize the nature of party influence in post-Reconstruction Congresses.