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In an interview with California Congressman Ted Lieu, he discusses what individuals can do to reduce the risks of nuclear weapons and climate change. Lieu emphasizes the importance of contacting members of Congress and expressing concerns through meetings, emails, or social media. He also suggests writing letters to the editor and supporting organizations that advocate for change. While public pressure can be effective, Lieu acknowledges that it depends on the issue and the intensity of the pressure. He encourages individuals to continue pushing for change and educating members of Congress on the importance of these issues. [Extracted from the article]

Research on lawmaking generally examines why lawmakers enact certain policy ideas. However, most ideas in the United States Congress never become law. Eventually, members stop introducing them altogether. This process, where policies are proposed, not acted on, and no longer advocated for is, by far, the most common legislative outcome. The literature pays it little attention. Yet, how ideas die is important in understanding why some measures stop being realistic alternatives, the importance of policy entrepreneurship, and how policy windows affect the supply of ideas. This paper analyzes why congressional ideas die. I argue and find that the proposals designed to be enacted, especially by legislators with more issue expertise and agenda-setting powers, are less likely to persist across terms. I also show that ideas disappear more often when their sponsors leave Congress, but do not find a similar pattern for when policy windows close and lawmaking conditions worsen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine policymakers' nuanced strategies of digital agenda setting during times of lawmaker uncertainty versus anticipated policy communication. Whereas existing agenda‐setting studies tend to focus on how policymakers allocate attention to preferred policies, we explain how policymakers react to an issue in a digital media climate where the expectation is engagement. We explore the dynamics of digital agenda setting with U.S. senators' Twitter activity in response to the unexpected document leak overturning Roe v. Wade and the anticipated, subsequent Supreme Court decision. Policymakers across the political spectrum quickly reacted to both events, capturing shared policy attention, yet did so with variable response times and differing frames for the issue. We argue that when the agenda rapidly contracts and issues become salient on Twitter, the uncertainty, time, and tenor of lawmakers' response tell us about their policy‐making priorities. Punctuated attention cycles churn fast in a digital climate, but even amid these quick, attention‐grabbing news cycles, the nuance of those moments and policy uncertainty suggest that rhetorical agendas differ when galvanizing events are anticipated. How policymakers convey their agenda when the media environment incentivizes lawmakers to respond regardless of issue prioritization is fundamental to understanding policy attention by lawmakers operating a digital media environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several theories of policy change posit that the politics of defining and prioritizing problems differs from the politics of devising and selecting solutions. The former involves simplifying through heuristics like indicators and ideology while the latter incorporates policy analysis and expertise to a greater degree. By employing two large datasets of U.S. congressional hearings to analyze policymakers' behavior of sending political messages, which we call "grandstanding," we offer two findings. First, consistent with our hypotheses, grandstanding is more prevalent when committees are focused on new and emerging problems than when committees examine proposed alternatives or the implementation of existing policies. Second, the cognitive dynamics of problem solving and the incentives to grandstand vary depending on policy issues considered in hearings. Our analysis helps put dissatisfaction with contemporary U.S. policymaking in context: a rise in "messaging politics" derives at least in part from an increased focus on contesting the problem space in agenda‐setting venues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Arthroskopie is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

AbstractIn this article, we utilize resources mainly provided by the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate along with other primary and secondary sources to discuss a unit plan for students to research voting rights issues in modern American society. First, a brief historical overview of voting rights issues in the United States is given. Next, our focus shifts to give a short literature review on the importance of teaching public issues as well as the significance of class discussions with topics some may deem controversial. Finally, the steps and resources of our unit plan are discussed. The unit plan is framed for the middle school social studies classroom and draws on relevant indicators from the C3 Framework by the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to understand public reactions to statements about racial discrimination made by elected officials of color on Twitter. We argue that statements about race made by elected officials of color will be overlooked in most political contexts. However, during events when race is made a salient issue, the public will look to elected officials of the afflicted group for guidance and, through this, the public will be more likely to interact with these leaders on Twitter. In this way, periods of crises create a window of opportunity when statements against racism made by elected officials of color receive greater public attention. To assess this hypothesis, we use the case study of Asian American members of Congress and their discussion of anti-Asian racism on Twitter. We examine the pattern of Twitter interactions to their posts in 2021. We find that Asian American members of Congress receive more social media attention (likes and retweets) relative to other members of Congress when condemning anti-Asian violence, but only in the immediate wake of the March 2021 mass shooting of Asian Americans in Atlanta, Georgia. This study offers important new insight into when elected officials of color can draw public attention to the communities that they descriptively represent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both democracy and empire are central to American political development. Yet, the role of Congress—that organ of democratic politics—in the expansion of US empire is not well understood. This article explains how and why Congress institutionalized representation from Washington, DC and the US territories in the mid-twentieth century. We uncover the history of a puzzling position: the Congressional delegate, who is permitted to debate, but not vote. Drawing on extensive original archival research and quantitative analysis of legislative voting behavior, this article explicates how racial attitudes structured conflict over the delegate position. We highlight the centrality of racial ideas to the institutionalization of American empire in the mid-twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The existing theories of interaction between Congress and the Department of Defense (DOD) focus on elite-level principle-actor problems. However, the Department, as one of the most popular institutions in the United States, also has significant public appeal and maintains an active public affairs arm. This article builds on theories of bureaucratic reputation to argue that the DOD uses its public communications to advocate for its own budget. I leverage computerized text analysis to examine over 40,000 public facing documents published by the DOD since 2005. I find evidence that the DOD changed both the timing and the content of its public-facing communications to strategically argue for its budget. This is true during large budgetary shifts (like the U.S. budget sequester) and during the period of the year that the budget is under debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on corporate political activity (CPA) generally views nonmarket actions aimed at influencing political actors (e.g., lobbying or campaign contributions) as related but separate activities from market actions. This study demonstrates how firms' core market actions (e.g., market entry or geographic expansion) can function as CPA. We theorize two mechanisms through which firms leverage market actions as CPA: "pork" (i.e., ones that primarily benefit a politician's constituents) and "perk" (i.e., ones that directly benefit the politician). We document these mechanisms through an empirical analysis of data from the U.S. airline industry in 1990–2019. Specifically, we find that airlines increase the supply of flights from the airports in the home district of the chair of the Transportation Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives (pork). We also find that the airlines increase the supply of nonstop flights to Washington, DC. from the Chair's district (perk). We use counterfactual estimation methods and exogenous turnovers in committee leadership to provide causal evidence. Moreover, the observed increase in flight supplies is negatively associated with formal policy changes in Congress, and with text mining techniques, we find that this effect is stronger for bills related to aviation safety and security. We contribute to the literature on CPA by demonstrating a blurred boundary between market and nonmarket actions, which helps explain firms' competitive actions that cannot be explained by market considerations alone. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2022.17026. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of the standing committee system is arguably the most important organizational innovation in the history of the US Congress. Previous scholarship has considered theoretical explanations for the organization of congressional committees and studied the consequences of committee membership for individual legislators. We evaluate how committee membership affects individual legislators' responsiveness to constituency preferences. Using data on issue-specific voting behavior for members of the U.S. House from 1969 to 2011, we show that committee membership reduces legislative responsiveness to constituency preferences on the issue area associated with the committee's policy domain. These results are robust across model specifications, policy areas, and subsets of observations. Our findings provide new evidence about how committee membership affects legislative voting behavior and illustrate how institutional arrangements affect political representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the issues surrounding the First International Eugenics Congress, held in London in July 1912. After outlining the origins of eugenics, it examines the way in which this gathering can be described, testing the concepts of 'epistemic community' and 'transnational field' from a threefold perspective: firstly, a history of the ideas expressed at the congress and its organisation on different scales; secondly, a social analysis of the congress participants; and thirdly, a reflection on the effects of the eugenics congress in the short, medium and long term. The thesis defended is that the concept of the 'epistemic community', suggested by various historians, does not apply well to the London congress, which was intellectually and socially fragmented, whereas the 'transnational field' seems to be a more fruitful approach.

How does Congress identify issues of sufficient concern to warrant consideration? Since the late nineteenth century, bill sponsorship by individual members has been the primary mechanism for winnowing the uncountable set of ideas for change to a finite agenda. Previous scholarship emphasizes electoral considerations and members' policy goals as motivating factors; however, the scant evidence for significant electoral returns to bill sponsorship raises questions about whether constituency concerns influence legislators' attention. We present a theory of bill sponsorship as constituency-minded policy-seeking activity and test its predictions using an original data set of bills introduced in the House of Representatives between 1881 and 1931. Using event count models and Monte Carlo simulations, we find that constituency concerns directly affect legislators' attention and indirectly influence bill sponsorship through committee assignments. These findings from a period when bill sponsorship was expansive and resource intensive illuminate how electoral factors and resource-based concerns shape legislative performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We know very little about the women who testify before congressional committees. Here we present data on the women who appeared as witnesses out of the 36,950 persons who gave testimony before 7,750 subcommittees and committees. We consider the roles of political party, party control, gender of chiefs of staff, location of hearings, and chamber rules among other factors to explain the underrepresentation of women witnesses. We find that women are dramatically underrepresented. Ultimately, the presence of Democratic women staff directors and women committee chairs, as well as initiatives to track witness diversity, increase the likelihood of women testifying. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The Korean Society of Medical Education (KSME) was founded in 1983 and celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2023. This study examines the evolution of topics discussed at KSME conferences from 1971 through 2023, highlighting shifts in the focus of medical education. Methods We analyzed 90 KSME conferences over 5 decades (1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s), categorizing the topics into three eras based on emerging themes and continuity. Results Consequently, 37 topics covered at the conference were categorized. Ten topics continuously appeared from the 1970s to the 2010s, including future directions of medical education, teaching methods, faculty development, and curriculum. The topics from the 1970s to the 1990s included 14 areas, such as medical education evaluation, non-undergraduate curriculum, community-related, and research. Thirteen new topics emerged after the 2000s, such as social accountability, student support, professionalism, and quality improvements. The most common topics under innovations in medical education, a case of curriculum innovation at universities that began after 2000, were clinical clerkship, curriculum development, and medical humanities. Conclusion KSME’s selection of conference topics has been strategically aligned with societal needs and the evolving landscape of medical education. Future topics should continue to address relevant societal and educational challenges.

Purpose: The Korean Society of Medical Education (KSME) was founded in 1983 and celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2023. This study examines the evolution of topics discussed at KSME conferences from 1971 through 2023, highlighting shifts in the focus of medical education. Methods: We analyzed 90 KSME conferences over 5 decades (1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s), categorizing the topics into three eras based on emerging themes and continuity. Results: Consequently, 37 topics covered at the conference were categorized. Ten topics continuously appeared from the 1970s to the 2010s, including future directions of medical education, teaching methods, faculty development, and curriculum. The topics from the 1970s to the 1990s included 14 areas, such as medical education evaluation, non-undergraduate curriculum, communityrelated, and research. Thirteen new topics emerged after the 2000s, such as social accountability, student support, professionalism, and quality improvements. The most common topics under innovations in medical education, a case of curriculum innovation at universities that began after 2000, were clinical clerkship, curriculum development, and medical humanities. Conclusion: KSME’s selection of conference topics has been strategically aligned with societal needs and the evolving landscape of medical education. Future topics should continue to address relevant societal and educational challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the international community attempts to unite to combat climate change, American party politics could hardly be more divided on this issue. This paper offers an additional explanation for how US congressional politics on environmental policy has polarized: the ongoing education realignment in American party politics. As the Democratic Party increasingly relies on college-educated voters and the opposite is true for the Republican Party, this can affect the parties' positions on environmental policy based on public opinion research which finds a positive relationship between education and pro-environment attitudes. Using League of Conservation Voters legislative scorecards from 1983 to 2020, this paper finds the education realignment contributed to the removal of pro-environment Republicans and anti-environment Democrats in Congress in recent decades; and this primarily occurred through elite replacement rather than conversion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Congress's constitutional responsibility to oversee and investigate the executive branch of government demands that instances of waste, fraud, and abuse in the administrative state be checked via both legislation and nonlegislative committee hearings. In this article, I establish an oversight agenda for Congress using the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office's (GAO) biennial identification of the most vulnerable federal agencies and programs. I then assess whether and how government-wide partisanship affects Congress's ability to address this slate of issues. I find that, when government is divided, Congress is more legislatively productive on high-risk issues, and the House of Representatives is more likely to prioritize investigative hearings on high-risk issues. My results suggest a silver lining to the reality of partisan agenda control: preexisting administrative problems identified by well-positioned and well-informed observers at GAO may get more attention when there is a partisan incentive for the legislature to investigate an opposition-controlled government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The executive veto is one of the most important instruments of presidential power within the legislative arena. Because of constitutional requirements, every regular veto and many pocket vetoes are accompanied by a short letter to Congress from the president describing—often in detail—the reasoning behind the decision to veto. As such, these messages form a unique window into interbranch and partisan conflict over time. While analyses have been conducted on the broad patterns of veto use, questions remain concerning presidential motivations for vetoing as well as how these motivations have evolved over time along with changing political institutions. Using a data set of approximately 2000 unique veto messages from the first in 1792 to the last of President Trump's vetoes in 2021, we examine the content of veto messages to uncover the number and kind of arguments used by presidents when addressing Congress over vetoed legislation. Our analysis uncovers significant variation, with the evolution of arguments within veto messages mirroring broader political trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revija Šport is the property of Sport: Revija Za Teoreticna in Praticna Vprasanja Sporta and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study analyzes the link between egalitarian ideals and the rise in party polarization in Congress. To demonstrate how philosophical differences over conceptions of fairness, equality, and justice help explain the recent growth in partisanship over the past few decades, I argue one overlooked explanatory factor which assists in capturing this ideological rift is noncontributory welfare spending. Recovering annual ideal point estimates between 1947 and 2018 that are comparable with annual federal spending, I use multivariate time series models and find convincing evidence which suggests welfare outlays have a strong short- and long-run effect on polarization. Moreover, analysis of the roll call record also shows when ideal point estimates are recovered by specific policy area, lawmakers exhibit higher levels of ideological separation on welfare compared to, among others, policies such as defense and transportation. Robustness checks confirm these findings also hold even when controlling for income inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research demonstrates that negative messages spread more online, both at the elite and mass levels. We know comparatively less about the role that policy content plays, and whether that might be responsible for the effect of negativity. We examine over 1.4 million congressional tweets to test the effect of message tone and topic on the number of retweets that messages receive. We find that elite messages are retweeted more when they contain political attacks. However, even while controlling for tone, we find that messages are shared more when they discuss some “culture war” issues or when they discuss Donald Trump. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article consists of an analysis of the opening lectures delivered by two female educators at the First International Feminist Congress held in Buenos Aires in 1910. The first speech, of liberal character, was given by Argentine Ernestina López, and the second, with anarcho-socialist elements, by Chilean María Espíndola de Muñoz. With a gender-focused approach to the research of the history of education, a critical analysis of said speeches has been conducted from a Laclausian perspective, identifying topics in which the relevance of women's education on their emancipation prevails. Within this epochal mood, the emerging social movement sheds light internationally on criticism of the patriarchal model from a perspective of rights in which meanings of education in women's construction as social, political, and cultural beings are configured. Neither position is exclusionary of other expressions circulating the debates at the event. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On behalf of the Strength and Conditioning Society (SCS) and the Hellenic Society of Biochemistry and Exercise Physiology (EEVFA), we are pleased to present the abstracts of the SCS 6th Annual Meeting and EEVFA—11th International Congress of Biochemistry and Physiology of Exercise. The event was held at the Hellenic Olympic Committee headquarters in Athens, Greece, on 19–22 October 2023, and comprised several invited sessions from international and national speakers on a variety of topics related to biochemistry and exercise physiology, strength and conditioning practices and their application to health, injury prevention and sports performance. These included strength training in high-performance sports, sport science and training–competition load management in elite environments, biochemistry and exercise physiology and prescription, nutrition and biomechanics, among others. The conference also included different practical workshops conducted by renowned academics and practitioners on eccentric training, change of direction ability and strength and power training in professional team-sports, and ergospirometry and exercise prescription in specific populations. Finally, the event disseminated up-to-date strength and conditioning research by providing practitioners and researchers with the opportunity to present their most recent findings. In this regard, all abstracts of the communications presented at the SCS 6th Annual Meeting—EEVFA—11th International Congress of Biochemistry and Physiology of Exercise can be found in this Conference Report. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista SAAP is the property of Sociedad Argentina de Analisis Politico and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The use of autonomy to initiate force, which states may begin to view as necessary to protect against hypersonic attacks and other forms of 'hyperwar,' may effectively constitute a delegation of war-initiation decision making to a machine. Yet legal questions about whether and when the leader of a country may delegate their decision making to others – and normative questions about whether he should do so – can be complicated. Any state that intends to introduce significant autonomy into such systems should assess whether and how the use of autonomy in war-initiation comports with its domestic laws and norms that govern the delegation of the use of force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are women congressional candidates on Facebook disproportionately punished for using negative emotions? Scholars suggest the success of negative language used by campaigns is patterned by gender, but it is less clear whether women politicians are able to grow support on a digital platform where negativity spurs engagement. In this research note, we consider the relationship between candidate gender, negative appeals, and user engagement on Facebook. We argue that women candidates are not shying away from negative voter appeals on Facebook, posting more on average with anger, disgust, and sadness than male candidates, and those posts are likely to get increased engagement, but that interaction is conditional. Women candidates, while reinforcing connections by getting more likes and comments than their male counterparts, are not advantaged or disadvantaged in the number of times these types of posts are shared – even when the posts contain more negatively valenced language. Our research suggests that there are some limits to the benefits of using negative emotive language for congressional candidates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New dynamics govern today's Middle East politics. At a time when Beijing has become a major player and the US perceives China as the sole credible threat to its global primacy, many Middle Eastern states play a triangulation game, offsetting Washington's pressure with deepening ties with China. In response, the US now sees the region through the prism of managing its rivalry with Beijing. The Biden administration's strategy is to identify key allies and integrate them into small networks to help protect American interests against Chinese influence. However, with such a strategy the US is setting itself up for frequent setbacks. Since those coalitions, based on the Abraham Accords, bypass the Palestinian issue, America's Arab allies often find themselves faced with escalation in the occupied territories, thus derailing the work of such networks. Besides, many of America's Middle East allies have no intention of getting embroiled in the US–Chinese tension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The aim of this study is to investigate whether the changing associate professorship criteria makes a difference in the scientific presentations in terms of author number, presentation type and scientific research type in The Turkish National Congress of (ORL-HNS). Material and Methods: The Turkish National Congress of ORL-HNS held in the 3 years before and after the change of criteria for associate professorship were included in the study. For evaluation, past congress proceedings books on the website of the Turkish Ear-Nose-Throat Head and Neck Surgery Association were used. Results: When oral presentations were evaluated according to the number of authors per study, the number of study by a single author was 50 (8.7%) in the period after the change in criteria and 10 (2.0%) in the period before. When oral presentations were evaluated according to the type of study, the number of retrospective studies increased significantly after the varying criteria compared to before When the poster presentations were evaluated according to the number of authors per study, there was no statistically significant difference in the number of studies by a single author between the 3 years before and after the change of the criteria (p=0.338). Conclusion: The findings of our study do not show that the studies after the changes in the criteria are scientifically less valuable or there are ethical problems in the studies. However, it clearly shows that new criteria cause some changes in the behavior of researchers in scientific activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine if candidate gender influences the issues opponents use in advertising attacks against them in U.S. Senate campaigns. We find evidence that candidates consider partisan issue ownership and issue salience when choosing the topics on which to engage opponents. However, the gender identity of the opponent does not have measurable effects on the selection of issues mentioned in contrast and attack advertising. While highlighting the dominance of partisanship as a key concern in the formulation of attacks against opponents, this study also illustrates the very different issue landscapes faced by women running as Republicans and Democrats, where Democratic women are most likely to face attacks on the issues where both party and gender stereotypes place them at a disadvantage while Republican women are most likely to be attacked where partisan issue ownership puts them at a disadvantage but their gender identity gives them a reputational edge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Epic Games, Inc. v. Apple Inc., the United States District Court for the Northern District of California held that Apple did not operate a monopoly in its App Store marketplace, offered through its famously known mobile device, the "iPhone." Both parties appealed aspects of the district court's decision to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which affirmed the decision in full, except for the award of attorney fees. While this App Store dilemma continues to unfold, several companies, U.S. states, and even the U.S. Congress have sided in favor of Epic, trying to provide support in its fight for a fairer App Store. This Note examines where the district court erred, and where it correctly applied the law. It also analyzes Epic's future chances, as there is a lot of work to be done before victory can be claimed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Española de Cardiología (18855857) is the property of Elsevier B.V. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article presents a report on the holding of the ROSSTUDSPORT Congress, held on December 6–8, 2023 at ITMO University in St. Petersburg.

Republic of Korea (ROK) lobbying in the United States during the 1970s, which blew up into the Koreagate scandal, is a widely known but understudied episode in US-ROK relations. Utilizing declassified documents from the ROK Ministry of Foreign Affairs, this article argues President Park Chung Hee was pressured by Congressional condemnation of his human rights abuses and he sought to tame criticism through lobbying. To this end, ROK diplomats actively lobbied Congress in an attempt to guide the narrative of human rights hearings, temper legislation to cut military aid and force withdrawal of US troops from Korea, and silence critics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do members of Congress build public support for legislation? Many argue it is through the framing of the legislative process or carefully curated explanations that appeal to their constituents' preferences. Some suggest the key to members of Congress building public support for legislation is appealing to bipartisanship—signaling to the public that legislation was crafted through compromise and is liked by members on both sides of the aisle. Given the hyper-partisan era that presently exists, however, these bipartisan appeals are unlikely to occur in a vacuum. The minority party has incentives to engage in counter framing to undermine support for legislation. We demonstrate that the benefits awarded to members by engaging in bipartisan appeals are overstated. By engaging in counter messaging, members in the minority party can undermine the legislative accomplishments of their opponents, as well as approval for the legislature. Minority-party members, however, must be careful in how they counter message: partisan, rather than non-partisan, messages actually increase support for the legislature's majority party while decreasing support for the minority party. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the conditional effects of legislator gender, party, and key district-level characteristics on patterns of roll-call votes. I propose and test a theory of legislative freedom conceptualized as a member of Congress's ability to defect from their party in roll-call votes. I argue that women members of Congress (MCs) will be more able to exercise legislative freedom in women-friendly districts. I expect both Democratic and Republican women MCs representing women-friendly districts will be more likely than those representing districts that are less women-friendly to defect from party and that the women-friendly district effect will be stronger for Republican women MCs. To test these hypotheses, I use roll-call voting data, women-friendly district data (Palmer and Simon 2006), and original data collected on members of the U.S. House beginning with the 103rd Congress. In this paper, I further explore the proposed theory of legislative freedom to examine recent high-profile cases of women MCs defecting from the Republican party and the conditions in which they exercise this freedom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does joining a party faction in Congress enhance or undermine a member's lawmaking effectiveness? Prior research suggests that factions can help members electorally in signaling their distinct ideological positions to potential political supporters. By contrast, we examine the nine largest ideological caucuses over the past quarter century to test three hypotheses about the conditional lawmaking benefits of faction membership: (1) that benefits from faction membership are limited to those in the minority party; (2) that members of ideologically centrist factions gain the greatest benefits; and (3) that sizable factions exploit their pivotal positions to help their members achieve legislative victories. We find support for only the first of these three conjectures, consistent with the argument that factions offer valuable resources to those in the minority party and that majority-party leaders counter the proposals arising from their own party's factions. The fact that faction membership offers no significant lawmaking benefit to majority-party legislators challenges conventional wisdom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From an outsider’s perspective, federal legislative and funding action can happen infrequently and/or suddenly. Understandably, one may think that these decisions are made quickly and last minute. While at times this can be true, many components of bills that eventually become law are formed over the years by advocates who consistently build relationships, share data and evidence, leverage local voices and perspectives, and remain attentive to the federal legislative and funding processes. As a firm that draws on the decades of experience of former staffers on Capitol Hill and various presidential administrations to develop and implement high-performing advocacy strategies for its clients, Penn Hill Group is able to leverage this insider knowledge and expertise to support COABE in advancing its goals at the federal level. This article provides a number of best practices intended to be a guide for advocating on behalf of COABE’s interests. A select list of legislative and funding victories that COABE has accomplished over the past several years is also provided. Written from the perspective of advocacy at the federal level, these best practices, coupled with the desire to improve the lives of adult learners, will help advocates drive change at all levels of government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the strategic use of contract and in‐house lobbyists by interest groups in response to shifting policy agendas. The role that lobbyists play in the policy process changes based on the policy agenda. Most of the time, subsystems manage small changes to public policy, rewarding actors with long‐term relationships. Organizations with a deep interest in the issue area maintain permanent lobbying presences, earning some degree of privilege over policymaking. However, when the broader macropolitical agenda lurches toward the issue, new participants become involved. New participants often lack the lobbying expertise of the in‐house lobbyists of established actors. Contract lobbyists play a critical role in providing spare capacity on‐demand, allowing participants not normally involved in subsystems to lobby. They also allow the best‐resourced actors, who may employ a long‐term lobbying presence, to further expand it when necessary. We test this theory using a new dataset of the lobbying content of 1,370,396 bill mentions in U.S. lobbying disclosure reports by 11,842 organizations from 2006 to 2016. We compare their policy agenda to that of the U.S. Congress. We find strong evidence that organizations hire contract lobbyists to respond to brief moments of agenda setting while permanent in‐house lobbyists have a more stable agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Actualités Pharmaceutiques is the property of Elsevier B.V. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study analyzes the Peruvian party system between 2001 and 2016 and its effects on the functioning of the Congress of the Republic through different indicators of legislative activity, such as normative production, revision of decrees, and control of the executive and partisan conformation of the legislature and its governing bodies, among others. As a result, different stages in executive-legislative relations are evidenced, with a marked distancing and final isolation of the ruling party, which tends to increase instability and difficulty in deploying its government agenda. Congress had a high degree of instability, volatility, and growing difficulties in articulating majorities that would allow it to carry out its functions as a legislative power. The low institutionalization of the party system and the precarious structuring of these organizations explain, at least partially, the limiting effects on the functioning of the executive and legislative branches and their progressive distancing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theories of electoral accountability emphasize voters' ability to evaluate individual officeholders, which incentivises officials to demonstrate their quality. Before the Australian ballot was introduced in the US at the turn of the twentieth century, however, most ballot designs constrained voters' ability to distinguish individual candidates. Previous scholarship argues that ballot reform led to the rise of candidate-centred politics and the decline in party influence in the twentieth century. We reassess the evidence for this claim and implement the most comprehensive analysis to date on the secret ballot's effects on outcomes related to distributive politics, legislator effort, and party influence. Using an improved research design, we find scant evidence that ballot reform directly affected legislator behaviour, much less that it transformed political representation. While the Australian ballot may have been a necessary condition for the eventual rise of candidate-centred politics, ballot reform did not by itself reshape American politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What patterns of behavior can we observe among the leading figures of US congressional intelligence committees' Russia inquiries? We argue that current typologies to study the roles of legislators in intelligence oversight do not fully capture the impact of partisanship on overseers' behavior. Revisiting Loch Johnson's typology of 'role definitions' to account for the behaviour of these legislators, we define four types of congressional investigators to understand how partisanship affected legislators' behavior during the congressional investigations on Russian interference. We conclude by showing how our role definitions could be used to study congressional intelligence oversight on other high-profile issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]