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This book examines how legislators have juggled their passions over abortion with standard congressional procedures, looking at how both external factors (such as public opinion) and internal factors (such as the ideological composition of committees and party systems) shape the development of abortion policy. Driven by both theoretical and empirical concerns, Scott H. Ainsworth and Thad E. Hall present a simple, formal model of strategic incrementalism, illustrating that legislators often have incentives to alter policy incrementally. They then examine the sponsorship of abortion-related proposals as well as their committee referral and find that a wide range of Democratic and Republican legislators repeatedly offer abortion-related proposals designed to alter abortion policy incrementally. Abortion Politics in Congress reveals that abortion debates have permeated a wide range of issues and that a wide range of legislators and a large number of committees address abortion

If legislators are sensitive to coalitional drift, they must perforce be forward looking. In this article, we propose that legislators anticipate change in government—and any associated coalitional drift. That is, legislators recognize that the government could move from unified to divided or divided to unified. As such, how legislators structure an agency's discretion may be affected by the current partisan control of the Congress and the White House as well as their anticipated partisan control. Using U.S. trade legislation data from 1890 to 1990, we find strong empirical evidence that legislators alter agency discretion prior to changes in the political status quo.

What is the impact of lobbying on the policymaking process? And who benefits? This book argues that most research overlooks the lobbying of regulatory agencies even though it accounts for almost half of all lobbying - even though bureaucratic agencies have considerable leeway in how they choose to implement law

What is the impact of lobbying on the policymaking process? And who benefits? This book argues that most research overlooks the lobbying of regulatory agencies even though it accounts for almost half of all lobbying - even though bureaucratic agencies have considerable leeway in how they choose to implement law.

Popular and scholarly accounts argue that signing statements are important tools for presidents to shape the implementation of policy. Although signing statements might be important presidential tools, the legislative branch stands in the most immediate and direct competition with the executive for ultimate control of the bureaucracy. In this article, we assess whether congressional committees react to presidential signing statements with increased oversight. Using a data set that includes every oversight hearing held by the U.S. House between 1995 and 2007, we find evidence that congressional committees are sensitive to the number of objections raised by presidents in signing statements. As the president uses signing statements to object to a larger number of provisions in laws, the affected House committees respond with more oversight.