The Macropolitics of Congress

Extract

The Macropolitics of Congress. Edited by E. Scott Adler and John S. Lapinski. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. 288p. $47.50 cloth, $21.95 paper.

In this edited volume, 18 scholars provide new insight into congressional policymaking and the role of Congress in the separation-of-powers system. Taken together, the 11 chapters advance theories of congressional policymaking, analyze links between representation and policymaking, employ impressive new data sets, use a historical as well as contemporary lens to evaluate policymaking and institutional shifts, and, perhaps most significantly, demonstrate that there are many innovative ways to study policy outputs as a dependent variable.