An organization can only do as much as its capacity permits. Demands on Congress have been escalating for 40 years. The number of voters has gone up 45 percent since 1980, leaving the average member of the House of Representatives with 760,000 constituents to serve. The amount of federal spending…

In short, yes, institutionally it is not built to handle the demands put upon it Diagnoses of the troubles of Congress usually focus on the three P’s: people, parties, and polarization. Tim LaPira, Lee Drutman, and I add an additional framework: congressional capacity. In short, we say look at the…

We’re all familiar with representatives in the House of Representatives. But did you know there also are delegates and a resident commissioner? So, who are these individuals, and how are they similar and different from representatives? To find out, listen into my chat with Elliott Mamet. He is a Postdoctoral…

How is Congress involved in foreign policy? That is a topic of a recent episode of the Understanding Congress Podcast. My guest was Jordan Tama, a Provost Associate Professor at American University’s School of International Service. He is the author or editor of five books on foreign policy. They are: …

Future control of the House of Representatives, however, is a much harder to predict at this point in time. More thoughts anon!

Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the Speaker in waiting, reportedly has promised to shift some power over policymaking back to committees. This is good to hear. The history of the House of Representatives over the past 50 years is a story of power flowing upward to the Speaker. As Don Wolfensberger…

Arizona State University’s Center for Constitutional Design invited me to speak on a panel on this topic. I riffed on Prof. Rick Hasen’s remarks, which argued that federalism was increasing the perils of electoral mischief by politicos, and discussed my essay, “Elections, federalism, and the peril of a partisan…

The Cato Institute’s Sphere Initiative invited me to join a Zoom panel discussion on November 1, 2022. It was fun — -the audience was civics and social studies teachers. You may watch the video at https://www.cato.org/sphere/election-reform-midterm-election.

The significance of James Madison’s contributions to creating our representative democracy cannot be overstated. He saw the troubles of the first union as a member of the Congress of the Confederation. He was a major player at the Constitutional Convention, and wrote the Federalist Papers to get the new federal…