Congress and Its Members

Front Cover
Congress and Its Members is the gold standard for the Congress course. Over 13 editions, the book has offered comprehensive coverage of the U.S. Congress and the legislative process by looking at the tension between Congress as a lawmaking institution and as a collection of re-election-minded politicians. The fourteenth edition accounts for the 2012 elections and includes discussion of the agenda of the new Congress, White House–Capitol Hill relations, party and committee leadership changes, judicial appointments, and partisan polarization, as well as covering changes to budgeting, campaign finance, lobbying, public attitudes about Congress, reapportionment, rules, and procedures. Always balancing great scholarship with currency, the book features lively case material along with relevant data, charts, exhibits, maps, and photos.

About the author (2013)

Roger H. Davidson is professor emeritus of government and politics at the University of Maryland, and has served as visiting professor of political science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. During the 2001–2002 academic year, he served as the John Marshall Chair in political science at the University of Debrecen, Hungary. His books include Remaking Congress: Change and Stability in the 1990’s, co-edited with James A. Thurber (1995), and Understanding the Presidency, Seventh Edition, co-edited with James P. Pfiffner (2012). Davidson is co-editor with Donald C. Bacon and Morton Keller of The Encyclopedia of the United States Congress (1995).

Walter J. Oleszek is a senior specialist in the legislative process at the Congressional Research Service. He has served as either a full-time professional staff aide or consultant to every major House and Senate congressional reorganization effort beginning with passage of the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970. In 1993 he served as Policy Director of the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress. A longtime adjunct faculty member at American University, Oleszek is a frequent lecturer to various academic, governmental, and business groups. He is the author or co-author of several books, including Congressional Procedures and the Policy Process, 9th ed. (2014), and Congress under Fire: Reform Politics and the Republican Majority, with C. Lawrence Evans (1997).

Frances E. Lee is professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland. She is author of Beyond Ideology: Politics, Principles and Partisanship in the U.S. Senate (2009) and coauthor of Sizing Up The Senate: The Unequal Consequences of Equal Representation (1999). Her work has received national recognition, including the Richard F. Fenno, Jr. Prize for the best book in legislative politics in 2010, and the D. B. Hardeman Prize for the best book on a congressional topic in both 1999 and 2011. Her articles have appeared in American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, Legislative Studies Quarterly, American Journal of Political Science, among others.

Eric Schickler is Jeffrey & Ashley McDermott Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Disjointed Pluralism: Institutional Innovation and the Development of the U.S. Congress (2001), which won the Richard F. Fenno Jr. Prize for the best book on legislative politics in 2002. He is the co-author, with Donald Green and Bradley Palmquist, of Partisan Hearts and Minds (2002) and, with Gregory Wawro, of Filibuster: Obstruction and Lawmaking in the U.S. Senate (2006), which won the Fenno Prize in 2007. His articles have appeared in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Legislative Studies Quarterly, and Studies in American Political Development, among others.

Bibliographic information