Regardless of their political leanings, some members of Congress just seemed better at attracting support for the bills they proposed. “That wasn’t well-captured in either those models or the data that existed,” he said.
To fill the gap, Volden worked with Wiseman, who now teaches at Vanderbilt University, to develop a legislative effectiveness scoring system: the first metric to rate lawmakers not on their political stances, but on how successfully they’ve championed bills in the House or Senate. Many political scientists like to study specific policies – state-sponsored health care or gun control measures, for example. But Volden prefers to delve into what makes democracy broadly succeed or fail, and the scoring system reflects that passion.
“Are the political parties engaging in debate in a way that’s helpful? Are they able to overcome gridlock and bring about policy changes? For me, it’s less about the specific policies and more about the processes that lead to good governance,” he said.
Volden and Wiseman published their original legislative effectiveness research, which focused on the House of Representatives, in a book released by Cambridge University Press in 2014. After extending their scoring system to the Senate, they established the Center for Effective Lawmaking, which has brought together a team of top policy experts from around the country to study what makes certain legislators more successful.
“The Center for Effective Lawmaking exemplifies the promise of a public research university,” said Jay Shimshack, Batten’s associate dean for academic affairs. “The center is generating new knowledge, translating and disseminating results to the public, and making a difference in the real world.”
Some of the center’s findings are to be expected – experienced lawmakers tend to score higher, for example. But other discoveries, such as the heightened effectiveness of minority-party women, are more surprising. This year, Volden and Wiseman further extended the scope of their research when they scored members of state legislatures. Their paper presenting these results was recently named the best paper of 2020 on state politics and policy by the American Political Science Association.
While the new ratings shed light on the effectiveness of lawmakers in individual states, they have important implications at the national level as well. Volden and Wiseman found that in cases where the legislatures were more evenly divided along party lines, lawmakers (especially in the minority party) frequently struggled to advance bills into law – a situation that reflects our current Congress.