Views on the hill: Disagreement and effectiveness in U.S. Senate agenda setting

Abstract

AbstractSetting the decision agenda requires restricting information and focusing attention on specific issue dimensions. Agenda setting also carries opportunity costs: focusing on some issues and proposals means others go unaddressed. Agenda setting thus generates conflict about the choice of issues and selection of alternatives and proposals. Using data on “views” attached to U.S. Senate committee reports and Volden and Wiseman's legislative effectiveness scores, I show that more effective legislators are more likely to express disagreement with agenda‐setting choices. And rather than harm senators' future prospects at advancing legislation, expressing disagreement is associated with more subsequent legislative success relative to what other individual and institutional characteristics would predict, particularly in the middle stages of the legislative process. This article's findings illuminate potential short‐term benefits to expressing disagreement in agenda setting. I also find these activities have declined over time, which suggests changes in the institutional environment about venues for expressing disagreement.Related ArticlesHeidbreder, Brianne. 2012. “Agenda Setting in the States: How Politics and Policy Needs Shape Gubernatorial Agendas.” Politics & Policy 40(2): 296–319. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747‐1346.2012.00345.x.Sohn, Hyodong. 2023. “Policy Agenda Trade‐offs for Sustainability: The Compositional Change of Attention about Energy in Legislative Hearings.” Politics & Policy 51(6): 973–1007. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12563.Steger, Wayne P. 2008. “The President's Legislative Program: An Issue of Sincere versus Strategic Behavior.” Politics & Policy 33(2): 312–29. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747‐1346.2005.tb00645.x.