The annual meeting of the Legislative Studies Section was held in Washington D.C. during the national convention of the America Political Science Association. The LSS meeting was convened on Friday, at 5:30 by Chair Bruce Oppenheimer of Vanderbilt University. 

The session began with the presentation of two awards, the Richard F. Fenno, Jr. Book Prize, and the CQ Press Award. The winner of the Fenno Prize was Participation in Congress, authored by Richard Hall of the University of Michigan, and published by Yale University Press, 1996. The committee making the award was composed of Elizabeth Theiss-Morse (Chair), University of Nebraska, David Canon, University of Wisconsin, and Wendy Schiller, Brown University. 

The CQ Press award went to Gary Cox, University of California-San Diego and Jonathan Katz, California Institute of Technology for their 1996 APSA paper "Incumbency Advantage in U.S. Senate Elections." The committee was composed of David Rohde (Chair), Michigan State University , Valerie Heitshusen, University of Missouri, and Gary Moncrief, Boise State University. The Chair thanked members of both award committees for their service. 

After the presentations the minutes of the 1996 LSS Business Meeting were approved as printed in the 1997 January issue of the LSS Newsletter. 

LSS Chair Bruce Oppenheimer made several announcements. The Short Course on "Using the Records of Congress," sponsored by LSS and put on by the Center for Legislative Archives, proved very successful. The chair thanked George Connor of Southwest Missouri State University who organized the participation of LSS members. The Chair then explained the means by which the Newsletter cost overruns would be resolved, pointing out that the publication has received wide praise as a model for section newsletters. Rice University has generously offered assistance to the Newsletter in the past and again will show its recognition of the efforts of Keith Hamm and staff efforts by eliminating the deficit one last time. 

The LSS Newsletter will now be published through the Carl Albert Center at the University of Oklahoma, edited by Ron Peters and co-edited by Gary Copeland and Allen Hertzke. It was indicated that they would experiment with the provision of Web site information for parts of the Newsletter. 

The Chair reported that the Organized Sections Meeting of chairs with APSA raised two issues: 1) Sections were encouraged to become more active in recruiting graduate students; 2) Sections were encouraged to adopt rules by which they could, if at all, take public positions on issues. APSA was concerned that such positions would mistakenly be attributed to APSA. The questions were deferred to the new officers. 

The Chair took pleasure to announce that the Carl Albert Center proposed to offer a $400 dissertation prize each year for the best dissertation on legislatures. Ron Peters, Director of the Carl Albert Center, expected that LSS would independently select the awardee, whom the Center would subsequently invite to campus to make a presentation on the topic. The Chair asked for a voice vote on the proposal and received unanimous approval. The new officers would set the ground rules and the award committee appointed by the chair, in order that an announcement could be ready by the next Newsletter. 

The chair awarded outgoing Newsletter editor Keith Hamm a copy of State Staff Directory, Summer 1997, published and furnished by Congressional Press (a volume of the fifty states, heavy enough to cause a mid-air bag inspection on the flight home). 

The chair made the following appointments: 

Fenno Book Prize Committee (1997 Copyright Date): Richard Hall (Chair), University of Michigan; Michael Beckman, Penn State University; Garry Young, University of Missouri. 

CQ Press Award -- Best Paper at 1997 APSA Meeting: Gary Cox (Chair), University of California-San Diego; Evelyn Fink, University of Nebraska; Paul Harrnson, University of Maryland. 

LSS Program Chair for 1997-98: C. Lawrence Evans, College of William and Mary. 

The nominating committee--Joel Thompson (Chair), Appalachian State University; Sarah Binder, Brookings Institution; and David Olson, University of North Carolina at Greensboro--recommended the following LSS officers for the next term: 

Chair: Wayne Francis, University of Florida (1997-99) 

Secretary/Treasurer: Wendy Schiller, Brown University (1997-99) 

Members-at-Large: Gary Jacobson, Univ. Of California-San Diego (1997-99); Elaine Swift, Eastern Washington University (1997-99); and Keith Hamm, Rice University (1997-1999). 

A motion to adopt the recommendation of the nominating committee was approved by voice vote. 
Announcements 

Janet Box-Steffensmeier of Ohio State University announced a new book series on Parliaments and Legislatures, published by Ohio State University, with Advisory Editor, Samuel C. Patterson. 

Rick Wilson, National Science Foundation, reported the NSF funding for the next fiscal year appears to be okay (no cuts). 

Stanley Bach, Congressional Research Service, indicated that a large number of papers delivered by section participants were not made available for members to purchase. He indicated that he would send a proposal to the executive committee with a recommendation to alleviate the problem. 

The Meeting was adjourned. 

Respectfully submitted, 

Wayne L. Francis 
University of Florida 
Secretary-Treasurer 
Legislative Studies Section 
American Political Science Association 
 
Participation in Congress Wins 1997 Richard F. Fenno, Jr. Prize 

The Richard F. Fenno, Jr. Prize is awarded to the book that makes the most comprehensive contribution to our understanding of legislative politics. In the tradition of Professor Fenno's work, this prize is designed to honor work that is both theoretically and empirically strong. Moreover this prize is dedicated to encouraging scholars to pursue new and different avenues of research in order that we may find answers to previously unexplored questions about the nature of politics. 

This year, the committee has selected Richard L. Hall's book, Participation in Congress, as the recipient of the Fenno prize. Professor Hall's book focuses on the crucial question of why and how members of Congress engage in the drafting of legislation at the subcommittee, full committee and floor levels. In addressing this twofold question, Professor Hall successfully challenges existing theories and explanations of congressional behavior. For example, Professor Hall argues that the motivation for participation goes well beyond the one dimensional goal of "reelection." In fact, he argues that participation on a bill is more often than not governed by personal policy interests and sheer opportunity, rather than direct constituency interest in the bill. 

Perhaps more importantly, Professor Hall makes a clear case for the resurrection of congressional norms as an explanation for congressional behavior, albeit with an entirely different theoretical grounding. In other words, we do see the behavior once attributed to norms, e.g. specialization and freshman apprenticeship, not because of any sociological phenomenon, but rather because such behavior is the most efficient and strategic way of accomplishing goals in Congress. In an attempt to replace the sociological basis for our theory of congressional behavior with a theory based on institutional structure and rational calculation, many scholars have argued that specialization and apprenticeship no longer exist. Richard Hall's essential contribution has been to turn us back toward finding the proper explanation for the behavior itself, which does clearly still exist, and in doing so, he offers a vital link in our efforts to build a coherent and lasting theory of congressional behavior. 

Just as he makes strong theoretical contributions in this book, Professor Hall also takes us in a new direction empirically by defining legislative behavior as more than just roll call voting. He makes a solid case for the importance of studying participation at the committee level because in fact, the committee drafting process is prior to floor voting. Any information we have about floor voting rests on decisions that are made by representatives prior to the time a bill reaches the floor. Professor Hall aptly demonstrates that committee participation is highly individual and self-selective; even wit in the committee environment, only a few members will actually determine the content of any given bill. Since the bill reaches the floor in a predetermined form, and the floor process in the House is so tightly controlled, ti becomes imperative to understand the decisions made by these few members at the subcommittee and full committee level. 

There is a great deal more to be said about Participation in Congress but we would encourage all scholars of legislative politics to read the book in its entirety for themselves. Following in the footsteps of the scholar for whom this prize is named, Richard Hall's book belongs in the academic canon of congressional works. 

Selection committee members: Elisabeth Theiss-Morse, University of Nebraska at Lincoln; David Canon, University of Wisconsin at Madison; Wendy J. Schiller, Brown University. 

1997 Congressional Quarterly Prize 

On behalf of the other members of the selection committee--Valerie Heitshusen of the University of Missouri and Gary Moncrief of Boise State University--I am pleased to award the 1997 Congressional Quarterly Prize to Gary W. Cox of the University of California, San Diego, and Jonathan N. Katz of the California Institute of Technology for their paper: "Baker v. Carr and Incumbency in Postwar U.S. House Elections." 

The Cox-Katz paper presents both an imaginative theoretical and a sophisticated empirical analysis to explore the relationship between the Supreme Court's decision in Baker v. Carr and the growth of the incumbency advantage in House elections. The theoretical argument links the effects of redistricting on campaigns with the increase in the importance of challenger quality. Empirically, they are able to investigate evidence for indirect effects from redistricting by comparing "Baker-changed" districts with those that were not so changed, presenting data regarding a number variables linked to the incumbency advantage. Particularly impressive is the way the authors present and counter rival hypotheses. This is an interesting and innovative piece of research. 

David Rohde, Michigan State University 
 

Plans are moving forward on the construction of a Legislative Studies Section Home Page. The intent is to create a Web site that will provide section members with valuable information that they cannot find elsewhere. Current plans for the page include information on LSS membership, officers, announcements, and some legislative studies internet links. There are also plans to begin posting portions of the LSS Newsletter on the Home Page. The Home Page will be posted within the next month. While the precise address for the page is yet to be determined, it will be hosted by H-Net (the academic internet organization that is affiliated with APSA), and the LSS Home Page will be linked to the APSA Home Page (http://www.apsanet.org). The permanent address of the Section web site is http://www.apsanet.org/~lss. If you have any ideas about page content, please send comments or suggestions to Jonathan Mott (jonmott@ou.edu).