Talking Shops: The Effects of Caucus Discussion on Policy Coalitions

Zelizer, Adam

doi:10.1111/ajps.12636

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…Politicians themselves have welcomed experimentation to evaluate their campaign strategies and the effectiveness of public policies. The next step is to build on nascent work that uses experiments to study operations inside the legislature (Zelizer, 2018(Zelizer, , 2021. Experimental interventions will generally, if not always, be conducted alongside legislators and their staff for ethical and practical reasons.…”

Section: Toward Evidence-based Legislatingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Myth of Academics’ Non-interference in Legislatures

Zelizer

2022

Political Studies Review

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This essay discusses the history and ethics of academics’ intervention in the legislative process. Academics, and even our professional associations, have explicitly worked to change legislative operations through advocacy and consulting. I argue that subjecting such interventions to the research process to evaluate their effects makes them more ethical and transparent. Research is monitored and guided by professional associations, institutional review boards, and journals in ways that advocacy and consulting are not. If academics are already intervening in legislative processes, such efforts will be more fruitful if conducted as part of a research program. This program, which I call “evidence-based legislating,” aims to improve the evaluation of legislative processes just as the movement for evidence-based policymaking reshaped academics’ and lawmakers’ approach to policy evaluation.

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Section: Toward Evidence-based Legislatingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Toward Evidence-based Legislatingmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Myth of Academics’ Non-interference in Legislatures

Zelizer

2022

Political Studies Review

Self Cite

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“…However, legislators often do not have accurate information regarding the implications of laws if they were passed (Burstein 2014;Ranchordàs 2015). There are various sources of information that members of Congress consider when passing legislation such as interest groups, fellow members of Congress, caucuses, their constituency, and committee staff (Kingdon 1989;Zelizer 2021). To overcome a lack of information and uncertainty regarding policy, legislators attach a sunset provision to allow for a test period to determine if the law or program works as intended.…”

Section: Prior Research On Sunset Provisionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Flexible law: the impact of legislative resources on policy adoption

Dorssom¹

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Legislators require knowledge to pass legislation. However, it is not always easy for legislators to become fully informed about bills on the docket. The complexity of modern government, the size of the legislative agenda, and the demands of running for re-election make it impossible for legislators to become experts on each issue on which the government makes policy. As a result, they take cues and guidance from lobbyists (Hall and Deardorff 2006), committees (Krehbiel 1991), constituents (Jones and Baumgartner 2005), and each other (Kingdon 1989) to make decisions on bills as if they were fully informed. Despite these resources, legislators are not always well-informed about every bill under consideration in their legislature. Therefore, legislatures sometimes add sunset provisions to bills to allow for a test period. Prior research has not thoroughly examined how the lack of legislative resources impacts public policy adoption -- specifically, under what circumstances do legislators decide to attach sunset provisions to legislation? Using original datasets, this study finds that sunset provisions are used during times of legislative uncertainty, such as when legislatures are not fully institutionalized.

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Encouraging politicians to act on climate: A field experiment with local officials in six countries

Pereira,

Giger,

Perez

et al. 2024

American J Political Sci

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Local governments play an important role in addressing the climate crisis. However, despite public support for climate action, local policy responses have been limited. We argue that (1) biased beliefs about voter preferences, (2) the time horizon for credit claiming, and (3) source credibility are barriers for legislators to learn and adopt new environmental policies. We test these arguments in a real policy‐learning context. Representatives from six Western countries received customized invitations to a webinar on climate solutions for local governments. We find that constituency opinion on climate issues made local office‐holders more responsive to public preferences. Invitations sent by a climate scientist and emphasizing shorter term policy effects increased interest in the webinar, but did not boost the likelihood of policy commitments. Only US officials responded negatively to climate scientists. The results reveal concrete steps to induce climate action and contribute to scholarship on policy learning.

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Talking Shops: The Effects of Caucus Discussion on Policy Coalitions

Cited by 3 publications

References 44 publications

The Myth of Academics’ Non-interference in Legislatures

The Myth of Academics’ Non-interference in Legislatures

Flexible law: the impact of legislative resources on policy adoption

Encouraging politicians to act on climate: A field experiment with local officials in six countries

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