Laws and Roll Calls in the U.S. Congress, 1891–1994

摘要: Recent empirical studies of lawmaking activity by legislatures rely heavily on roll call based measures and assume that reflects activity. We question this assumption for the case U.S. Congress. examine several plausible sources dissonance between set enacted public statutes universe recorded votes in Congress, using a comprehensive dataset enactments 1891 1994. Because only 11.9% bills signed into law receive vote House, 7.9% Senate, 5.5% both House we provide guidance as to when studying voting behavior is likely reasonable proxy behavior. There are sometimes important differences laws do not researchers should account calls study