Colin Achilles – Center for Effective Lawmaking

Center for Effective Lawmaking 2022-2023 Annual Report

Center for Effective Lawmaking 2022-2023 Annual Report We are proud to present the Center for Effective Lawmaking Annual Report for 2022-2023. Here you will see highlights from the last academic year showcasing the accomplishments of the Center in promoting the generation, communication, and use of new knowledge about the effectiveness of individual lawmakers and U.S. legislative institutions, as well as our plans and goals for the future. These include but are not limited to:The release of our Legislative Effectiveness Scores for the 117th CongressAnnouncing the recipients of our 2022-2023 small…

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October 30, 2023

Conversations with Lawmakers / Events

WATCH: Effective Lawmaking: A Cornerstone of Democracy

WATCH: Effective Lawmaking: A Cornerstone of Democracy On Friday, October 20, 2023, the Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL) held a presentation titled “Effective Lawmaking: A Cornerstone of Democracy” as part of our “Conversations with Effective Lawmakers” Series and the Karsh Institute’s “Democracy360” event, a three-day series that brought together thought leaders, journalists, policymakers, scholars, activists, artists, and students in Charlottesville, VA, to explore collectively how to shape a thriving democratic future. CEL co-directors, Craig Volden and Alan Wiseman, moderated a discussion panel featuring former U.S. House Representative Peter Roskam (R-IL)…

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October 25, 2023

Board of Advisors

Tom Wickham: Understanding the U.S. House Speaker Situation

Tom Wickham: Understanding the U.S. House Speaker Situation 10/18/2023 UPDATE: This post, originally published on Friday, October 13, has been updated to reflect new developments, including yesterday’s speaker vote in the House. There is uncertainty concerning the status of the speakership of the United States House of Representatives. As such, the Center for Effective Lawmaking is taking the opportunity to present insights from Tom Wickham, Senior Vice President of state and local policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; he is also a Member of our Advisory Board. Previously, he was the…

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October 13, 2023

Legislative Anaylsis / Legislative Research

Pivots or Partisans?: Proposal-Making Strategy and Status Quo Selection in Congress

Pivots or Partisans? Proposal-Making Strategy and Status Quo Selection in Congress Lawmakers vary considerably in how effectively they advance their priorities through Congress. However, the actual proposal-writing strategies undergirding these differences have remained largely unexplored, due to measurement and methodological difficulties. These obstacles have included prohibitively small sample sizes, costly data requirements, and strong theoretical assumptions. In this Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL) working paper, political scientists Jesse Crosson (CEL Faculty Affiliate), Alexander Furnas, and Geoffrey Lorenz (CEL Faculty Affiliate) address these obstacles and analyze the proposal strategies of effective…

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September 27, 2023

Events

CEL Briefing with the Congress’s “Problem Solvers”

CEL Briefing with the Congress’s “Problem Solvers” The co-directors of the Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL), Professors Craig Volden and Alan Wiseman (of the University of Virginia Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, and Vanderbilt University Department of Political Science, respectively), visited the U.S. Capitol Building this week to conduct a briefing with the legislative staff of members of the congressional Problem Solvers Caucus. The caucus defines itself as “a bipartisan group of Members of Congress organized to get to ‘yes’ to help solve some of our country’s…

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September 22, 2023

Conversations with Lawmakers

Discussing Legislative Effectiveness with Representative Gerry Connolly

Discussing Legislative Effectiveness with Representative Gerry Connolly Representative Gerry Connolly has served as the U.S. representative for Virginia's 11th congressional district since 2009. Representative Connolly has been identified by the Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL) as being the most effective Democratic lawmaker in the U.S. House during the 117th Congress, as well as the most effective Democratic House Member in the area of government operations. He was also cited as having one of the longest streaks of “Exceeding Expectations” among all House members.CEL Co-Directors Craig Volden and Alan Wiseman recently…

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September 19, 2023

Legislative Research

Call for 2023-2024 Small Grant Awards

Call for 2023-2024 Small Grant Awards Proposal deadline: September 30, 2023Awards announced by: October 31, 2023The Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL) welcomes applications for grants to fund research consistent with the mission of the Center. The Center advances the generation, communication, and use of new knowledge about the effectiveness of individual lawmakers and U.S. legislative institutions. See our website (www.thelawmakers.org) for more on the CEL.The research receiving support must focus on effective lawmaking and must be designed to make an original scholarly contribution, generating and communicating new knowledge. Grants typically…

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August 25, 2023

Events

A Visit from Tsinghua University

A Visit from Tsinghua University On August 7, the Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL) hosted a group of students from China's Tsinghua University who had come to the University of Virginia (UVA) as part of a two-week visit to the United States. The students were members of Youth Voices, a delegation from Tsinghua's Center for Global Competence Development (CGCD) which is dedicated to providing guidance, support and resources on global competence development, and to promoting its integration into the university-wide student cultivation process. Invited to the United States on behalf…

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August 8, 2023

Legislative Anaylsis / Legislative Research

How Modern Lawmakers Advertise Their Legislative Effectiveness to Constituents

How Modern Lawmakers Advertise Their Legislative Effectiveness to Constituents In a complex information environment, members of Congress must communicate to their constituents their value as a representative. Specifically, they aim to convince voters that they are effective representatives and therefore ought to be reelected. Modern scholarship has focused largely on legislators’ effectiveness as lawmakers in areas like bill introduction, sponsorship, and shepherding of legislation through congressional procedures. But legislators do more than traditional lawmaking activities; they also engage in representational acts of advocacy and district-focused activity. This expanded notion of…

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August 7, 2023

Legislative Anaylsis / Legislative Research

Expertise Acquisition in Congress

Expertise Acquisition in Congress Staff members are an essential part of a well-functioning Congress, as is the expertise they acquire and use to do their jobs. It is therefore important to understand what factors contribute to or detract from staff investing in acquiring expertise and learning new skills. To examine these ideas, Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL) Faculty Affiliate Christian Fong and his co-authors Kenneth Lowande and Adam Rauh – all of the University of Michigan – advance a theory of skill acquisition, rooted in the field of labor economics, and apply it to the problem of congressional oversight of the executive branch.…

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July 25, 2023

University of Virginia+Vanderbilt University

University of Virginia
+
Vanderbilt University