Verified Document

Public Policy Essay

Public Policy The process of setting congress agendas and policies has always been complex and contentious. Since some issues warrant consideration by policy makers, intense competitive exists in a position on the congressional policy agenda. This study discusses the trends in Congressional agenda setting as provided in the chart.

As seen in the chart, Bipartisan Corporation has declined in the Congress. This is considered as one of the hallmark attributes of the increasing party polarization. As the major parties move further apart from each other and become extremely homogenous, bipartisan agreements are less likely. Most polarization work focuses on individual patterns of voting and preferences instead of focusing on the type and amount of legislation, which receives partisan or bipartisan support or whether party strategy, contributes towards the polarization. This study has discovered that the rise of polarization in the ideologies of the legislature, party strategy and joint roles of preferences have driven the declining levels of bipartisanship within the Congress. As noted in the recent body of literature, Congressional parties might disagree for strategic reasons besides ideological-based reasons. The legislative process has undergone multiple steps to leading to the inherent bipartisan corporation while the Congressional agenda setting and strategy have played a key role in changing the corporate level (Campbell & Jurek, 2003).

Referring to the roll call votes of the House and the coalitions of the bill cosponsorship, it is evident that although partisan behavior has been increasing significantly in roll call votes, the reverse happens to coalitions of bill cosponsorship....

Such divergent trends may be reconciled by considering the congressional agenda and bill selection to receive roll call votes. Through bringing an explicit stress to the Congressional agenda setting from an empirical and theoretical perspective, there are temporal changes in how bills are selected to receive roll call votes. This affects the magnitude of the Bipartisan Corporation within the House of Representatives (Gary, 2000).
The changes have resulted in numerous implications for grasping polarization in the U.S. politics, congressional agenda setting and policymaking and the imperativeness of carefully considering the possible bias in roll call information. The Existing work on the Congressional agenda setting discovered that the changing chances relating to bipartisan bills merit on the list of the agenda and are given roll call votes. Based on this perspective, changes in agenda construction over time demonstrate an increasingly partisan strategy (Bartels, 2000). Observed polarization within Congress mirrors both reforms in strategy and preferences. Exclusive emphasis on roll call votes in measuring the party polarization or bipartisanship could be misleading. This might overestimate underestimate the partnership determined by the structure of the Congressional agenda.

Voting patterns have changed over time because the selection of bills and the agenda to face roll call votes is factored in instead of taking voting trends as exogenous. Therefore, partisanship, party strategy, and legislative behavior patterns have yielded the level of bipartisanship over the years in terms of bill cosponsorhip coalitions and voting. Evidently, the decline of bipartisanship…

Sources used in this document:
References

Bartels, L.M. (2000). Partisanship and Voting Behavior, 1952-1996. American Journal of Political Science 44 (1): 35-50.

Campbell, J.E. & Jurek, S.J. (2003). The Decline of Competition and Change in Congressional

Elections. In The United States Congress: A Century of Change. Columbus: Ohio State

Gary, J.C. (2000). Reversal of Fortune: The Transformation of U.S. House Elections in the
Cite this Document:
Copy Bibliography Citation

Related Documents

Public Policy
Words: 1619 Length: 6 Document Type: Research Paper

Public Policy in the State of Maryland: An Examination of Revenues and Potential Funding Options The objective of this work is to examine the funding policies in the State of Maryland of the Department of Natural Resources funding allotments and to critically analyze funding decision-making in this area of economic finance for the State of Maryland. The State of Maryland invests deeply in its natural resources, which is shown by the

Public Policy
Words: 1215 Length: 4 Document Type: Term Paper

Public Policy The Bush administration believes that hydrogen cars hold to key to reducing pollution, decreasing dependence of foreign oil, making energy more affordable and overcoming resource shortages (Onion, 2004). In Bush's 2003 State of the Union address, he revealed his goal of having significant numbers of hydrogen cars on the road by 2020, pledging $1.2 billion in federal funding to achieve his objective. In 2004, the energy department included $318

Public Policy
Words: 341 Length: 1 Document Type: Essay

Policy Proposal The public policy proposal is that the state should have an action plan for a potential Ebola outbreak. There are several reasons for this. The first reason is the health reason, where clearly there is a need to ensure that should there be any outbreak of Ebola, that it is contained, and that it does not get out into the general public. While the odds of an outbreak are

Public Policy Making It Has
Words: 2530 Length: 7 Document Type: PhD Model Answer

However, there are many limitations that are seen when it comes to the public policy ideas that are generated and the value they have (Newton & Van Deth, 2005). The first limitation is the perceived value of an idea for a public policy creation or change. In other words, if the community (or at least a large portion of it) does not see the value of the idea there

Public Policy in Local Government in a
Words: 1135 Length: 4 Document Type: Essay

Public Policy in Local Government In a general setting, the public policy is understood as a set of regulations implemented by the state in order to manage a specific issue within the parameters imposed by the current legislations. In a different formulation, "Public policy can be generally defined as a system of laws, regulatory measures, courses of action, and funding priorities concerning a given topic promulgated by a governmental entity or its

Public Policy Analysis Introducing More PE Into
Words: 951 Length: 3 Document Type: Essay

Public Policy Analysis Introducing more PE into schools as a way of reducing childhood obesity Childhood obesity is one of the most commonly-identified problems facing the nation today, yet lawmakers have struggled to address it effectively because of its multifactorial nature. "It is the No. 1 health problem in children…a study this year in the New England Journal of Medicine reported that obese children were twice as likely to die of disease

Sign Up for Unlimited Study Help

Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.

Get Started Now