Congress is playing by new rules--a changing distribution of power in Congress, a more complex interplay of rules and procedures and policy, and a new role for floor politics in the legislative process. In Call to Order, Smith outlines how a fairly stable period of reform in the 1950s and the early 1960s erupted into a turbulent period of reform in the 1970s. New issues spawned a variety of organized interest groups, and these, coupled with growing constituency pressures, increased the dem...

With its rock-bottom approval ratings, acrimonious partisan battles, and apparent inability to do its legislative business, the U.S. Senate might easily be deemed unworthy of attention, if not downright irrelevant. This book tells us that would be a mistake. Because the Senate has become the place where the policy-making process most frequently stalls, any effective resolution to our polarized politics demands a clear understanding of how the formerly august legislative body once worked an...

The tenth edition of this respected textbook provides a fresh perspective and a crisp introduction to congressional politics. Informed by the authors’ Capitol Hill experience and scholarship, the new edition reflects changes in Congress resulting from the 2018 elections and such developments as (a) a new majority party in the House; (b) new campaign spending numbers and election outcomes, rules, committees, leaders, and budget developments; and (c) recent political science literature that ...

The ninth edition of this respected textbook provides a fresh perspective and a crisp introduction to congressional politics. Informed by the authors' Capitol Hill experience and scholarship, the new edition reflects changes resulting from the November 2014 elections and such developments as (a) a new majority party in the Senate, (b) new campaign spending numbers and election outcomes, rules, committees, leaders, and budget developments, and (c) recent political science literature that pr...

The Senate majority and minority leaders stand at the pinnacle of American national government – as important to Congress as the speaker of the House. However, the invention of Senate floor leadership has, until now, been entirely unknown. Providing a sweeping account of the emergence of party organization and leadership in the US Senate, Steering the Senate is the first-ever study to examine the development of the Senate's main governing institutions. It argues that three forces – party c...

Although the U.S. Constitution requires that the House of Representatives and the Senate pass legislation in identical form before it can be sent to the president for final approval, the process of resolving differences between the chambers has received surprisingly little scholarly attention. Hong Min Park, Steven S. Smith, and Ryan J. Vander Wielen document the dramatic changes in intercameral resolution that have occurred over recent decades, and examine the various considerations made ...

Events in Russia since the late 1980s have created a rare opportunity to watch the birth of democratic institutions close at hand. Here Steven Smith and Thomas Remington provide the first intensive, theoretically grounded examination of the early development of the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian Federation's parliament created by the 1993 constitution. They offer an integrated account of the choices made by the newly elected members of the Duma in establishing basic operating a...

The ""postreform"" House of Representatives of the 1980's is strikingly different from the House of the 1970s. A most important change is the increasingly creative use of special rules, which structure floor debate on major legislation. The new trade of special rule craftsmanship now plays a pivotal role in managing the uncertainties of decisionmaking in the House. During the 1970s new issues and new members disrupted old ways of doing business, while organizational and procedural reforms ...

Is American democracy being derailed by the United States Senate filibuster? Is the filibuster an important right that improves the political process or an increasingly partisan tool that delays legislation and thwarts the will of the majority? Are century-old procedures in the Senate hampering the institution from fulfilling its role on the eve of the 21st century?The filibuster has achieved almost mythic proportions in the history of American politics, but it has escaped a careful...

The American Congress Reader provides a supplement to the popular and updated American Congress undergraduate textbook. By the same authors who drew upon Capitol Hill experience and nationally recognized scholarship to present a crisp introduction and analysis of Congress's inner mechanics, the Reader compiles the best relevant scholarship on party and committee systems, leadership, voting, and floor activity to broaden and illuminate the key features of the text.

The Gospel Coalition Book Awards Winner – Theological StudiesModern theology claimed that it ignited a renaissance in trinitarian theology. Really, it has been a renaissance in social trinitarianism. Classical commitments like divine simplicity have been jettisoned, the three persons have been redefined as three centers of consciousness and will, and modern agendas in politics, gender, and ecclesiology determine the terms of the discussion. Contemp...

My father's best friend is everything I’m not supposed to want. But now he is going to be my baby's daddy....Ash is a walking red flag. He is domineering and always in a bad mood. Tragically widowed, yet still in love with his long-dead wife, a single dad to three mini versions of himself, and much too old for me.But I’ve wanted him since I was 16. Seeing him again more than a decade later, all those old feelings just rush back in. Every time when I look up into hi...