Congress and Its Members

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Davidson, Oleszek, and Lee’s focus on Congress as both a legislative institution and as a group of reelection-minded politicians has proven to be an extraordinarily effective and accessible way for thousands of students to understand the institution and the law-making process. A proven classic, the twelfth edition of Congress and Its Members features careful revising, new scholarship, and crucial updating.

From edition to edition, the updates you can always rely on feature coverage of:

• the 2008 elections
• the agenda of the new Congress 
• White House–Capitol Hill relationships 
• party and committee leadership changes 
• judicial appointments
• campaign finance 
• reapportionment 
• the future of partisan polarization 
• rules changes and procedural shifts

And revisions that explore the historic and significant changes since the last edition include:

• How will Congress deal with the economic crisis and financial meltdown, along with two foreign wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? 
• How will Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Reid—with consolidated majorities in the House and Senate—work with the Obama administration?
• How will Congress confront the “midnight regulations” of the Bush administration?
• What is the role of conference committees for reconciling bicameral disagreements? 
• Do the 2008 congressional elections signify a partisan realignment, or simply a continuing trend? 
• Do new developments in campaign funding, strategies, and techniques tell us something new, or do they mainly repeat past trends? 
• Has Bush’s “imperial presidency” become a precedent for future inter-branch working arrangements? How effectively can Congress strive to regain its powers and prerogatives?

Roger H. Davidson was professor emeritus of government and politics at the University

of Maryland and served as visiting professor of political science at the University of

California, Santa Barbara. He was a senior fellow of the National Academy of Public

Administration. During the 1970s, he served on the staffs of reform efforts in both the

House (Bolling-Martin Committee) and the Senate (Stevenson-Brock Committee).

For the 2001–2002 academic year, he served as the John Marshall chair in political

science at the University of Debrecen, Hungary. His books include Remaking

Congress: Change and Stability in the 1990s, co-edited with James A. Thurber (1995),

and Understanding the Presidency, 7th ed., co-edited with James P. Pfiffner (2013).

Davidson was co-editor with Donald C. Bacon and Morton Keller of The Encyclopedia

of the United States Congress (1995).

 

Walter J. Oleszek is a senior specialist in the legislative process at the Congressional

Research Service. He has served as either a full-time professional staff aide or consultant

to many major House and Senate congressional reorganization efforts beginning

with the passage of the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970. In 1993, he served as

policy director of the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress. A former

adjunct faculty member at American University, Oleszek is a frequent lecturer to various

academic, governmental, and business groups. He is the author or co-author of several

books, including Congressional Procedures and the Policy Process, 11th ed. (2020),

and Congress Under Fire: Reform Politics and the Republican Majority, with C. Lawrence

Evans (1997).

Frances E. Lee is professor of politics and public affairs in the School of Public and

International Affairs and the Department of Politics at Princeton University. She has

been a research fellow at the Brookings Institution and an APSA congressional fellow.

Most recently, she is co-author of The Limits of Party: Congress and Lawmaking in a

Polarized Era (2020). She is also the author of Insecure Majorities: Congress and the

Perpetual Campaign (2016) and Beyond Ideology: Politics, Principles, and Partisanship

in the U.S. Senate (2009) and co-author, with Bruce I. Oppenheimer, of Sizing Up

the Senate: The Unequal Consequences of Equal Representation (1999). Her articles have

appeared in the American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, Legislative Studies

Quarterly, and American Journal of Political Science, among others.