This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Burstein, P. Articles by Froese, P. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Bill Sponsorship and Congressional Support for Policy Proposals, from Introduction to Enactment or Disappearance

University of Washington

Shawn Bauldry

University of Washington

Paul Froese

Baylor University

Research on policy change tends to focus on legislative successes (bills that are enacted), policies that are especially important or controversial, and the final stages of the policy process. This article attempts to show how to improve our ability to trace support for policy proposals through the entire legislative process, for failures as well as successes and for less-visible proposals as well as more visible ones. We refine the concept of a "policy proposal"—a particular proposed solution to a public problem—as a set of identical or nearly identical bills introduced into one or more congresses; show how to find such bills, and examine a stratified random sample of 60 considered by the U.S. Congress; describe how much support the proposals receive; show that, in line with some views of legislative activity, proposals are generally on the agenda for only a short time; and suggest that trends in sponsorship provide a good way to measure support for particular proposals for policy change. It is argued that the approach developed in the article will aid subsequent studies of the determinants of policy change.

Political Research Quarterly, Vol. 58, No. 2, 295-302 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/106591290505800209


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

				V. Gray, D. Lowery, J. Monogan, and E. K. Godwin Incrementing Toward Nowhere: Universal Health Care Coverage in the States Publius, October 20, 2009; (2009) pjp023v1. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]