Information and political institutions
| DOI | 10.1177/0951629813481510 |
| Published date | 01 July 2013 |
| Date | 01 July 2013 |
| Author | Alan E Wiseman |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Information and political
institutions
Journal of Theoretical Politics
25(3) 301–308
©The Author(s) 2013
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DOI:10.1177/0951629813481510
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Alan E Wiseman
Vanderbilt University, USA
The idea for this special issue dates back to the summer of 2009. In July of that year, Craig
Volden and I found ourselves feverishlytr ying to complete a chapter for the OxfordHand-
book of the American Congress (Schickler and Lee, 2010) titled ‘Formal Approaches to
the Study of Congress’ (Volden and Wiseman, 2010). My daughter had been born just
that spring, and (as is often the case for many of us in the academy) Craig and I had com-
mitted to writing something (i.e., the chapter) without thinking about the practicalities of
various timelines. So as the conclusion of summer approached, wefound ourselves being
contacted by the editors of the volume, who were hoping for our submission as soon as
possible, and we realized that we had yet to complete a manuscript that we were entirely
content with.
In writing the chapter, our goal was to review the ways in which formal models had
been incorporated into the analysis of legislative politics (and the US Congress in par-
ticular), and to provide some guidance on how formal models might be used to engage
a wide range of additional topics in congressional studies. To ensure that we were accu-
rately characterizing the literature, we circulated an early draft of the chapter to every
author that we cited, as well as a collection of scholars who were likely to teach for-
mal theory and/or congressional politics to advanced graduate students. The response
that we received was notable in several ways. Firstly, the sheer volume of comments
was truly impressive, as more than half of the scholars whom we contacted wrote back
with extremely constructive comments. Secondly, the comments were also notable in
that they consistently pointed to a particular omission in the current draft: our failure to
incorporate a discussion of formal theories of congressional committees into the
manuscript. In the words of one colleague:
... you may be well out of space, but I think it is worth trying to incorporate—something—
on committee power.This is a g reat case of formal theory leading the way to characterize the
Corresponding author:
Alan Wiseman, Vanderbilt University, PMB 0505, 230 Appleton Place, Nashville, TN 37203–5721, USA.
Email: alan.wiseman@vanderbilt.edu
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