Challenges Ahead for Legislative Studies

• Published date: 01 February 2015
• Date: 01 February 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lsq.12063
• Author: Sarah A. Binder

SARAH A. BINDER

George Washington University

and the Brookings Institution

Challenges Ahead

for Legislative Studies

(This is the revised text of a talk given at the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the

Legislative Studies Quarterly, Washington, DC, August 30, 2014.)

The Legislative Studies Quarterly’s (LSQ) 40th anniversary

encourages us to ref‌lect on our subf‌ield’s accomplishments and to take

stock of the challenges that lie ahead for students of legislative

politics—at home and abroad. I see three core challenges for the com-

munity of legislative scholars who consider LSQ a home.Two of these

are typical for a mature subf‌ield with decades of scholarship under its

belt: First, what direction should future theoretical advances pursue, and,

second, what role should methodology play as the subf‌ield continues to

develop? The third challenge speaks to our responsibilities as students of

popularly elected legislatures, particularly as students of the U.S. Con-

gress. What responsibilities, if any, might we have to diagnose and

perhaps repair the ills of seemingly dysfunctional legislatures?

Theory

In the “Editor’s Introduction” to the f‌irst issue of LSQ, Malcolm

Jewell urged fellow legislative scholars to “pay more attention to the

development of theory” (1976, 1). Remarking on the rising number of

empirical studies of disparate legislatures, Jewell asked, “why are we

suffering from theoretical def‌iciencies, and how can we overcome

them?” LSQ was intended from the start to be a venue for theoretical

advances in the study of legislatures: “However narrow the scope of the

article and its data base, it should shed some light on questions of general

interest to scholars studying other legislatures” (6), Jewell advised in

inaugurating the journal. Since that time, legislative scholars, prompted

by Jewell, Heinz Eulau, and others, have continued to develop an exten-

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LEGISLATIVE STUDIES QUARTERLY, 40, 1, February 20155

DOI: 10.1111/lsq.12063

© 2015 The Comparative Legislative Research Center of The University of Iowa