The United States Congress

Scott Adler, Jeff Jenkins, and Chuck Shipan bring current political science into the classroom in an engaging and accessible way. Driven by vivid examples and clear writing, this comprehensive text asks students to think critically about Congress's role as a representative and governing body; its key rules, structures, and procedures; and its dynamic interactions with other institutions.

About the Author :
E. Scott Adler is Professor of Political Science and dean of the Graduate School at the University of Colorado, Boulder. His current research uses theoretical models of legislative organization to examine congressional agenda setting and committee power. He is the author of Why Congressional Reforms Fail: Reelection and the House Committee System, which was awarded the Alan Rosenthal Prize from the Legislative Studies Section of the American Political Science Association, and Congress and the Politics of Problem Solving. He is also co-editor of The Macropolitics of Congress. He has published articles in the American Journal of Political Science, Legislative Studies Quarterly, and Urban Affairs Review. Adler is co-PI of the Congressional Bills Project, which has compiled and coded data on all bills introduced in Congress since World War II. In 2006-07, Adler was a Visiting Professor at the Center for the Study of American Politics and Department of Political Science, Yale University. He received a BA from the University of Michigan in 1988 and a PhD from Columbia University in 1996. Jeffery A. Jenkins is Provost Professor of Public Policy, Political Science, and Law, Judith and John Bedrosian Chair of Governance and the Public Enterprise, Director of the Bedrosian Center, and Director of the Political Institutions and Political Economy (PIPE) Collaborative at the Sol Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California. His research interests include American Political Institutions and Development (with a special emphasis on Congress and political parties), lawmaking, separation-of-powers, and political economy. His current work involves book projects on how civil rights policy has been dealt with in Congress over time and how the Republican Party evolved in the South after the Civil War. Jenkins holds a PhD in political science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an MS in mathematical methods for the social sciences from Northwestern University. He has been a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University and Michigan State University. He currently serves as the Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Politics. Charles R. Shipan is the J. Ira and Nicki Harris Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Michigan, where he holds appointments in the Department of Political Science and the Ford School of Public Policy. Prior to joining the faculty at Michigan, Shipan served on the faculty at the University of Iowa, and he has also held positions as a research fellow at the Brookings Institution, a visiting research fellow at Trinity College in Dublin, and a visiting fellow at the U.S. Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. He is the author of Designing Judicial Review, is the co-author of Deliberate Discretion?, and has written numerous articles and book chapters on political institutions and public policy. He is currently engaged in?an investigation of conflict between the president and Senate over Supreme Court nominations, ?a comparative study of antismoking laws in the United States and Switzerland, and an examination of the effects of bipartisanship on public policy. Shipan received a BA in chemistry from Carleton College and an MA and PhD in political science from Stanford University.