Congress in Crisis: Lawmaking Under Pressure

Abstract

The common narrative that Congress is gridlocked due to rising polarization misses the institution’s continued ability to legislate in response to crises. While there are notable examples of successful crisis response, scholars have not yet assessed how crisis lawmaking systematically differs from non-crisis lawmaking. To do this, I develop the concept of a crisis event – a negatively-valenced, time-specific, and public occurrence with origins external to domestic politics. I identify more than 200 crisis events that affected the national agenda between 1981 and 2020 and show that lawmaking in response to these events was more likely to succeed and was more resilient against polarization than non-crisis lawmaking. Interviews with Capitol Hill insiders reveal that crisis lawmaking avoids gridlock because members seek to avoid blame for the negative effects of crisis events and face pressure to “do something,” regardless of the ideological direction of the policy change. Moreover, interview and quantitative evidence suggest both rank-and-file members and leaders both prefer legislative centralization during crisis lawmaking because it allows them to achieve their goals. My research underscores the importance of crisis for evaluating congressional lawmaking. Future research should account for how crisis can change the incentives of political actors and lead them to act in ways that would be otherwise unusual.