Replication data for: Measuring Legislative Accomplishment, 1877-1994

Replication data and code forthcoming. In the meanwhile, please contact the author for access to the data Understanding the dynamics of lawmaking in the U.S. is at the center of the study of American politics. A fundamental obstacle to progress in this pursuit is the lack of direct measures of policy output, especially for the period prior to 1946. The lack of direct measures of legislative accomplishment makes it difficult to assess the performance of our political sy stem. We provide a new measure of legislative significance and accomplishment. Specifically, we demonstrate how item response theory can be combined with a new dataset that contains every public statute enacted between 1877 and 1994 to estimate "legislative importance" across time. Although the resulting estimates provide a new opportunity for scholars interested in analyzing policymaking in the U.S. since 1877, the methodology we present is not restricted to Congress, the U.S., or lawmaking.

复制数据与代码即将发布。在此期间，请联系作者以获取该数据集。探究美国立法动态，乃是美国政治学研究的核心议题之一。该研究领域取得进展的核心阻碍之一，便是缺乏针对政策产出的直接衡量指标，尤其是1946年之前的相关数据。立法成就缺乏直接衡量标准，也使得我们难以评估政治体系的运行绩效。本研究提出了一种全新的立法重要性与成就衡量方法。具体而言，本研究展示了如何将项目反应理论（Item Response Theory）与全新数据集相结合——该数据集囊括了1877年至1994年间颁布的全部公共法案——以此估算不同时期的“立法重要性”。尽管由此得到的估算结果为关注1877年以来美国政策制定研究的学者提供了全新研究契机，但本研究提出的方法论并不局限于美国国会、美国本土或立法活动场景。