Issue Politics in Congress

Tracy Sulkin is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She received her PhD from the University of Washington in 2002. Her work has appeared in the American Political Science Review, Political Analysis, American Politics Research, and Political Psychology. This book is based on her dissertation, which won APSA's Schattschneider Award in 2003.

"This book is a major contribution to the study of Congress and, more generally, to the fields of legislative studies and American politics. It is rigorously organized, well-written, and thorough. With this book, Sulkin unifies the work on congressional elections with work on Congress as an institution, as she links the study of congressional campaigns to the study of agenda-setting and participation in Congress." Gerald Gamm, University of Rochester

• 1. Electoral challenges and legislative responsiveness; 2. A theory of issue uptake; 3. The nature of campaign and legislative agendas; 4. Assessing uptake; 5. Who responds?: explaining individual variation in uptake; 6. Patterns of responsiveness in congress; 7. The electoral impacts of uptake; 8. Uptake and public policy; 9. Elections, governance, and representation.