Congress Reconsidered

Always a classic, Dodd and Oppenheimer’s Congress Reconsidered is the recognized source for in-depth, cutting-edge scholarship on Congress geared to undergraduates. Thoroughly updated―with ten brand new pieces and the others completely revised―this ninth edition includes cogent, timely analysis of the 2008 congressional elections, as well as coverage of: 

• the 110th Democratic Congress,specifically its energy policy, its handling of the Iraq War, and its taxing and spending; 
• the role of committees in Congress;
• leadership by women and minorities in Congress;
• the effects of campaign finance reform;
• differences in legislative activity between the Republican and Democratic Congresses;
• party coalition-building across the postwar era;
• and perspective on campaigns, elections,and political careers from member of Congress Daniel Lipinski.

Lawrence C. Dodd holds the Manning J. Dauer Eminent Scholar Chair in Political Science at the University of Florida. His books include Coalitions in Parliamentary Government (1976), Congress and the Administrative State (coauthored with Richard Schott, 1979), The Dynamics of American Politics (coedited with Cal Jillson, 1994), Learning Democracy (coauthored with Leslie E. Anderson, 2005), and Thinking About Congress (2012). His articles have appeared in the American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, Polity, Journal of Democracy, and elsewhere. Dodd has served as a congressional fellow, Hoover national fellow, and Woodrow Wilson Center fellow; president of the Southern and Southwestern Political Science Associations; and chair of the APSA’s Legislative Studies Section.

Bruce I. Oppenheimer is professor of political science at Vanderbilt University and director of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions. He has been a Brookings fellow in Governmental Studies (1970–1971) and an APSA congressional fellow (1974–1975). He is author of Oil and the Congressional Process: The Limits of Symbolic Politics (1974). His book Sizing Up the Senate: The Unequal Consequences of Equal Representation (1999), cowritten with Frances Lee, was awarded the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation’s D. B. Hardeman Prize for the best book on Congress. He is also the editor of U.S. Senate Exceptionalism (2002) and the author of numerous articles. His recent research focuses on Congress and energy policy and on variation in competition in open-seat House primaries.