Product Description: Demonstrates how local political parties have retained a role of critical importance in American politics. While the media pay the most attention to the actions of the national political committees, political scientists have long emphasized the key role of local party organizations...read more

Product Description: The Context of Legislating provides a much-needed examination of how the rules, resources, and political conditions within and surrounding different institutions raise or lower the costs of legislating. Using data tracking over 1,100 legislators, 230 committees and 12,000 bills introduced in ten state lower chambers, Shannon Jenkins examines how political conditions and institutional rules and resources shape the arc of the legislative process by raising the costs of some types of legislative activity and lowering the costs of others...read more