Dates: June 7-8, 2002
Location: Columbia University
Conference Announcement: The American Institutions Project at the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy at Columbia University, is sponsoring a Congress and History Conference that will take place June 7th and 8th, 2002 at Columbia. Following a planning session in June 2001, this event will inaugurate a series of annual meetings devoted to the discussion of substantive and methodological issues to advance scholarship at the junction of Congress and history by scholars from diverse disciplines and perspectives. This conference is motivated by our strong belief that historical work on Congress has tremendous potential to advance our understanding of legislative institutions and American politics more generally, but only if researchers confront more directly the vexing issues raised by this kind of work. Variation in legislative institutions and historical context, for example, can be exploited to test hypotheses that previously only have been applied to the contemporary Congress; thus part of the appeal of the historical research program is the application of "modern" methods (i.e.,formal theory and statistical modeling) to events and behavior that occurred long ago. Yet simply porting such methods to earlier time periods has pitfalls that can seriously dilute the potential that the historical Congress research program has to offer, for the advantages of abstraction, parsimony and systemization of formal modeling and quantitative analysis can become disadvantages when employed for historical analysis. These methods threaten to disregard the richness of history and ignore certain features of periodicity, context, and path persistence central to more traditional historical studies. A key puzzle facing historical legislative research then is how to apply these methods in a way that is sensitive to the nuances of historical analysis. One of the main purposes of the conference and workshop series we are initiating is to address such concerns about method, while also providing forums for discussion and critique of the varieties of substantive historical Congress scholarship that is in progress. The inaugural conference in June will consist of roundtable discussions and a small number of paper presentations. The roundtables, which will open and close the meeting, will take stock of the historical Congress research program, address issues confronting historical researchers of Congress across disciplines, and discuss ways to advance the research program by promoting interdisciplinary communication and cross-fertilization. The papers will represent works in progress. The conference will be attended by approximately 30 scholars, primarily from the East Coast, from three groups: (1) political and economic historians, some of whom have been calling for a revival of congressional studies amongst historians; (2) political scientists from the qualitative-historical 'APD' school; and (3) 'mainstream' Congress scholars.
Attendees: E. Scott Adler, Edwin Amenta, John Aldrich, Richard Bensel, Sarah Binder, David Brady, Alan Brinkley, Charles Cameron, David Epstein, Robert Erikson, Sean Farhang, Douglas Irwin, Jeffrey Jenkins, Ira Katznelson, John Lapinski, Robert Lieberman, David Mayhew, Nolan McCarthy, Sharyn O'Halloran, Rose Razaghian, Elizabeth Sanders, Eric Schickler, Joel Silbey, Stephen Skowronek, Charles Stewart, Gregory Wawro, Barry Weingast, Julian Zelizer.
"Parties and Institutional Choice Revisited" Sarah Binder.
"Reforming the Future: Coalitions, Congress, and Institutional Change, 1970-1974" Julian Zelizer.
"Constituency Cleavages and Congressional Parties: Measuring Homogeneity and Polarization Across Time" Jeffrey Jenkins, Eric Schickler, and Jamie Carson.
Roundtable: "The Way Forward: The Future of Historical Research on Congress" David Brady, Alan Brinkley, and David Mayhew.
Roundtable: "Taking Stock: The State of Historical Research on Congress." Elizabeth Sanders, Joel Silbey, and Barry Weingast.
For this roundtable we would like participants to discuss the current
state of historical research on congress. What have we learned? What
have been the major accomplishments in the literature? What have been
the major failures? What is the most important work currently being
conducted? What makes it important? What are the works that should
be emulated? What have been the major successes and failures in terms
of methodology? Are there any areas where there has been particularly
fruitful communication and exchange across disciplines (or across
subfields within disciplines)? Are there any areas where researchers
in different disciplines have not been communicating, but would
benefit from doing so? Are there any particular areas where certain a
discipline is excelling and others are failing?
Roundtable: "The Way Forward: The Future of Historical Research on
Congress." David Brady, Alan Brinkley, and David Mayhew.
For this roundtable we would like participants to discuss where the
historical congress research project should go in the future. What
are the most important research questions yet to be addressed? What
can be done to promote more dialog across the disciplines and across
relevant subfields within disciplines? What is the appropriate
division of labor across disciplines? Should there be more or less
convergence in approaches across disciplines? If more, how can this
be achieved? What advances would you like to see in terms of
methodology? What can be done to better train graduate students for
contributing to the historical congress literature?