Incorporating the crucial updates and new research you expect, the thirteenth edition of
Congress and Its Members remains a trusted resource for introducing students to the legislative branch. As thousands of undergraduates have learned, focusing on Congress as not only a legislative body, but also as a group of reelection-minded politicians, is an extraordinarily effective way to understand the institution and the law-making process.
In addition to featuring new examples and cases drawn from recent congressional politics-including the battles over health care reform, financial regulations, economic stimulus, fiscal management, and tax policy-the authors also integrate new scholarship on representation, congressional elections, lobbying influence, and the relationship between Congress and the Court.
The thirteenth edition also features analysis of:
• the 2010 congressional campaigns and elections;
• party and leadership changes for the 112th Congress;
• executive-legislative relations under President Obama;
• new procedures in the House and Senate;
• budgeting in an era of huge deficits;
• the heightened importance of lobbyists in legislative policymaking;
• public attitudes about Congress as dysfunctional, even corrupt; and
• the courts and their impact on the interpretation of congressional statutes, the scope of congressional power, and the reach of statutory campaign finance regulations.
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.
