Strategies of Control: Members of Congress and Policy Outcomes

Monday, June 23, 2025

Members of Congress enter their roles with various policies they hope to implement, but passing legislation is difficult. Lawmakers spend their tenure navigating complex procedures and institutional barriers created by the legislative process and the separation of powers. In this published paper in Legislative Studies Quarterly, Assistant Professor Erinn Lauterbach (Villanova University and Center for Effective Lawmaking Faculty Affiliate) and Associate Professor Melinda Ritchie (The Ohio State University) investigate how members of the House of Representatives leverage their comparative advantages to shape and pass legislation. To achieve this, the authors merged two datasets: one tracking statutory tools embedded in legislation and another capturing Representatives’ informal interactions with agencies from 2005 to 2012, encompassing nearly 14,000 bills and 65,000 contacts. Their analysis revealed that agenda-setting members rely more on statutory control, while rank-and-file members use informal means to exert influence. These findings highlight the importance of adaptable and diverse legislative strategies and suggest that even less powerful lawmakers can meaningfully shape policy outcomes.

To learn more, read the full paper here.