Overview

The Collaborative Congress is an in-depth study of how members work together to create policy in a polarized legislature. While the modern Congress is characterized by partisanship and conflict, members frequently look for opportunities to find common ground on substantive policy. This book challenges the conventional narrative of a hopelessly dysfunctional legislature by revealing the widespread use of collaboration for successful policymaking. Drawing on a new dataset of communication between members, social network analysis, and qualitative interviews, chapters demonstrate that nearly every member engages in collaboration across a broad array of issues. The book identifies the strategic and political considerations that influence a member's decision to collaborate and shows that collaborative legislation is more successful at every stage of the policymaking process. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

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9781009338264

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Reviews

'In The Collaborative Congress, Alison Craig has produced the best of what congressional scholarship has to offer in understanding how Congress does its job. Using an original and innovative measure of cooperation across members, Craig demonstrates that, despite high levels of party polarization, members of Congress work together across the political aisle on a wide range of issues and achieve surprising levels of success. This sophisticated and engaging book will appeal to students, scholars, and political observers alike.' Wendy Schiller, Brown University 'In this timely and interesting book, Craig argues that, even in our current partisan and highly polarized environment, collaboration among members of Congress - both within and across the aisle - is a regular occurrence. By demonstrating why and how our representatives collaborate to pursue policy that benefits constituents, she offers an important complement and counterbalance to research on the many ways in which the contemporary Congress does 'not' work. The Collaborative Congress deserves to be widely read and discussed.' Tracy Sulkin, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Author Information

Alison W. Craig is Assistant Professor of Government at the University of Texas. She received the Carl Albert prize for the best dissertation in legislative studies and has testified before Congress on improving civility and collaboration among members. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and published in the American Journal of Political Science and Legislative Studies Quarterly.

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