Five Lessons for Lawmakers from Trump I Center for Effective Lawmaking Co-Directors Craig Volden and Alan Wiseman have published a commentary for the Niskanen Center that examines what lawmakers can expect with the new Trump administration and unified Republican control of government based on the lessons learned from the previous Trump term. This includes:both Republican and Democratic ideas will become law;members of each party can take the lead on their priority issues;the prioritization of lawmaking by Thune and Johnson offers new opportunities;congressional lawmaking is increasingly behind-the-scenes and via omnibus legislation;…

Interpersonal Relationships, Bipartisanship, and January 6th Collaboration among colleagues is a cornerstone of effective lawmaking in Congress. Building and maintaining strong interpersonal relationships between legislators is especially important for fostering bipartisan cooperation. However, in the aftermath of the events at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, many Democratic lawmakers expressed reluctance to work with Republican colleagues who opposed certifying the 2020 presidential election results, claiming these actions had irreparably damaged their working relationships. Have these damaged relationships impacted overall legislative effectiveness in Congress?In this forthcoming published paper in the American Political…

Center for Effective Lawmaking 2024 Annual Report The Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL) is celebrating an extremely successful year with the release of its annual report. Founded in 2017 as a joint venture between the University of Virginia’s Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy and Vanderbilt University, the Center’s trusted methodology and analyses have been cited in hundreds of news articles across the U.S., and widely used by lawmakers and their staffs.The CEL’s top highlight from 2024 is the expansion of its mission to state-level lawmaking. The Center…

CEL at POLE Project Conference Last week, Vanderbilt University Professor and Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL) co-director Alan Wiseman was a presenter and panelist at the conference of the Patterns of Legislative Effectiveness (POLE) Project, which took place on October 28 and 29, 2024 at ISCTE – University Institute of Lisbon in Lisbon, Portugal.POLE is a comparative study of legislators’ activities and performances in parliamentary systems. This research project sets as its main goal to unravel the complexities surrounding the behavior of MPs in parliamentary systems, shedding light on how…

Legislative Effectiveness, Electoral Anticipation, and Garnering Campaign Advantage in the US Senate In this Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL) working paper, Assistant Professor (and CEL Affiliate) Carlos Algara of Claremont Graduate University examines if US Senators anticipate an electoral cost for legislative ineffectiveness. Specifically, he determines whether or not they garner electoral payoffs if they act on this electoral incentive by increasing effectiveness prior to re-election. Through analyzing data on Senate primaries since 1980, he concludes that senators do conveniently become more effective before re-election when they are in-cycle and…

Meet our new Advisory Board Member: Danielle Thomsen The Center for Effective Lawmaking is excited to welcome Danielle Thomsen to our Board of Advisors.Thomsen is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Irvine and a CEL Faculty Affiliate. Her research focuses on American politics, the U.S. Congress, and gender and politics. Her first book, Opting Out of Congress: Partisan Polarization and the Decline of Moderate Candidates, shows that ideological moderates are less likely to run for and remain in Congress than those at the extremes, further exacerbating…

Meet our new Advisory Board Member: Daniel Stid The Center for Effective Lawmaking is excited to welcome Daniel Stid to our Board of Advisors.Mr. Stid is the Executive Director of Lyceum Labs. He previously served as the founding director of the Hewlett Foundation’s U.S. Democracy Program. From 2013-22, he led $180 million in grantmaking to shore up U.S. democracy in a time of polarization. Earlier in his career, he was a partner at The Bridgespan Group, where he advised nonprofit, foundation, and government leaders; a management consultant with The Boston…

Meet our new Advisory Board Member: Brody Mullins The Center for Effective Lawmaking is excited to welcome Brody Mullins to our Board of Advisors.Mr. Mullins is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter and author of The Wolves of K Street: The Secret History of How Big Money Took over Big Government, which details how corporate influence has grown in Washington since the 1970s. In nearly two decades as an investigative reporter for The Wall Street Journal, he wrote ground-breaking stories about the intersection of business and politics, exposing scandals that prompted new laws…

Outcome-Consequential Campaigning In this Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL) working paper, Co-Directors Craig Volden (University of Virginia) and Alan Wiseman (Vanderbilt University) and Ph.D. Candidate Mackenzie Dobson (University of Virginia) examine whether congressional campaigns offer insights into likely policy outcomes championed by the candidates, including those resulting from collective policymaking. To address this inquiry, the co-authors utilized new scholarship to highlight the enhanced lawmaking effectiveness of bipartisan legislators. They found that, since the year 2000, more than a third of congressional freshmen used bipartisan language on the campaign trail. These bipartisan campaigners…

Enabling Compromise In this Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL) working paper, Assistant Professor (and CEL Faculty Affiliate) Christian Fong and Ph.D. Student Nicolas Hernandez Florez of the University of Michigan examine how lawmakers are able to compromise on legislation despite the fear of backlash from their party’s primary voters. Contrary to common perception, two aspects of congressional politics – partisan agenda control and messaging bills – can help facilitate compromise instead of preventing it. Congressional leadership will put forward messaging bills known as cover bills – bills they know will…