Prior Experience and State Legislative Effectiveness Tuesday, June 24, 2025How do the prior experiences of lawmakers shape their performance in office? Representatives who have held prior elected office or professional backgrounds in relevant fields—specifically law, government, or politics—seem to have an advantage in winning elections. It is unclear whether those experiences help them become more effective legislators. In this published paper in Legislative Studies Quarterly based on a Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL) working paper, Associate Professor Eric Hansen at Loyola University Chicago and Professor Sarah Treul (and CEL Faculty Affiliate) at the University of North Carolina at…

Monday, June 23, 2025Members of Congress enter their roles with various policies they hope to implement, but passing legislation is difficult. Lawmakers spend their tenure navigating complex procedures and institutional barriers created by the legislative process and the separation of powers. In this published paper in Legislative Studies Quarterly, Assistant Professor Erinn Lauterbach (Villanova University and Center for Effective Lawmaking Faculty Affiliate) and Associate Professor Melinda Ritchie (The Ohio State University) investigate how members of the House of Representatives leverage their comparative advantages to shape and pass legislation. To achieve this, the authors merged…

Photo credit: Guinn Center Habits of Effective Lawmaking: CEL Highlights Bipartisanship at Nevada’s Gallagher Dialogues This February, Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL) Co-Directors Craig Volden and Alan Wiseman were honored to be keynote speakers at the 3rd Annual Gallagher Dialogues, convened by the Kenny Guinn Center for Policy Priorities in Reno, Nevada. First convened in 2023, the Gallagher Dialogues pay tribute to the legacy of Tom Gallagher, the late founder of the Guinn Center, who was deeply committed to advancing democracy, bipartisanship, and the free exchange of ideas.Now the Guinn…

Measuring Partisanship and Representation in Online Congressional Communication The rise of online communication and social media has created new ways for elected officials to communicate with their constituents, but also enabled the diffusion of polarizing partisan rhetoric. How have members of Congress responded to these opportunities? This is the subject of a Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL) working paper from Associate Professor (and CEL Faculty Affiliate) Michael Kistner, Ph.D. candidates Robert Alvarez, Lucas Lothamer, and Maya Fitch (all of the University of Houston), as well as post-doctoral researcher Michael Heseltine…

Getting what you pay for: Resource allocations and legislative success Thursday, May 28, 2025Members of Congress run for office with a variety of goals they hope to achieve if elected. How members go about achieving these goals is constrained by numerous institutional factors. Yet there exist two areas in which members are afforded broad discretion: the allocation of their time and budget. In this published paper in Legislative Studies Quarterly, Emily Cottle Ommundsen, Assistant Professor at the University of Mississippi (and Center for Effective Lawmaking Faculty Affiliate), assess the personal…

Pivots or Partisans? Proposal-Making Strategy and Status Quo Selection in Congress Thursday, May 15Lawmakers vary considerably in how effectively they advance their priorities through Congress. However, the actual proposal-writing strategies undergirding these differences have remained largely unexplored, due to measurement and methodological difficulties. These obstacles have included prohibitively small sample sizes, costly data requirements, and strong theoretical assumptions. In this published paper in Quarterly Journal of Political Science and based on a Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL) working paper, Associate Professor Jesse Crosson of Purdue University (and CEL Faculty Affiliate),…

Gendered Perceptions of Legislative Influence Tuesday, May 13, 2025In this published paper in Perspectives on Politics and based on a Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL) working paper, Faculty Affiliate Jaclyn Kaslovsky (Washington University in St. Louis), Tabitha Koch (Rice University), and Michael P. Olson (also of Washington University) examine whether legislative and electoral accomplishments translate into perceived influence differently for women and men. Women legislators often report that they must work harder than men to achieve the same outcomes and recognition. Yet, little previous scholarship has quantitatively examined whether legislative insiders…

CEL presentation to the LEGIS Congressional Fellows 2025 On Friday, April 25, 2025, the Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL) gave our annual presentation to the LEGIS Congressional Fellowship program at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. The LEGIS program is composed of a bipartisan group of professionals from government agencies selected by offices in both chambers of Congress to learn about the lawmaking process and serve as subject-matter policy experts for legislators. Co-director Craig Volden, Professor at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of…

Understanding the Policy Priorities of Republican Women in the US House of Representatives Wednesday, March 19, 2025In this published paper in Politics & Gender, Professor Michele Swers of Georgetown University and Associate Professor (and CEL Faculty Affiliate) Danielle Thomsen of the University of California, Irvine take a deep dive into the sponsorship and cosponsorship activity of Republicans in the US House of Representatives from 1993–2014 to examine how ideology and gender influence the policy priorities of Republican legislators on issues associated with women, as well as on the party-owned issue of tax policy. They expect that Republican women…

Advancing Our Understanding of State Legislative Effectiveness Thursday, February 27th, 2025On Friday, February 21st, the Center for Effective Lawmaking hosted the Effective Lawmaking in American State Legislatures conference at Vanderbilt University, bringing together faculty and doctoral students from across the country to explore the complexities of policymaking at the state level. With attendees presenting and discussing their latest findings, the event served as an important platform for advancing our understanding of what drives legislative success in state governments.Reflecting on the broader mission of the Center for Effective Lawmaking, Co-Director Alan Wiseman, also a…