The Limits of Party: Congress and Lawmaking in a Polarized Era (Chicago Studies in American Politics)

To many observers, Congress has become a deeply partisan institution where ideologically-distinct political parties do little more than engage in legislative trench warfare. A zero-sum, winner-take-all approach to congressional politics has replaced the bipartisan comity of past eras. If the parties cannot get everything they want in national policymaking, then they prefer gridlock and stalemate to compromise. Or, at least, that is the conventional wisdom. In __The Limits of Party__, James M. Curry and Frances E. Lee challenge this conventional wisdom. By constructing legislative histories of congressional majority parties’ attempts to enact their policy agendas in every congress since the 1980s and by drawing on interviews with Washington insiders, the authors analyze the successes and failures of congressional parties to enact their legislative agendas. ​ Their conclusions will surprise many congressional observers: Even in our time of intense party polarization, bipartisanship remains the key to legislative success on Capitol Hill. Congressional majority parties today are neither more nor less successful at enacting their partisan agendas. They are not more likely to ram though partisan laws or become mired in stalemate. Rather, the parties continue to build bipartisan coalitions for their legislative priorities and typically compromise on their original visions for legislation in order to achieve legislative success. "When a party achieves control of Congress, as the Republicans did from 2014 to 2018, to what extent is it able to bend legislative outcomes toward its policy preferences? Are parties in Congress capable of following through on their vision for public policy? Can they leverage their enhanced cohesion, as we have seen in the last decade or so and procedural power as the majority party in the House and the Senate, to enact their partisan programs? The authors argue that bipartisanship remains the key to legislative success, even in a time of partisan polarization. Even in the contemporary, partisan Congress, most laws--including landmark laws such as the recent criminal justice reform legislation--still pass with broad bipartisan support."-- Provided by publisher