Contemporary Congress

Burdett Loomis is a professor of political science at the University of Kansas, where he has taught since 1979. He has written extensively on Congress, interest groups, and state politics, including his edited book, The U.S. Senate: From Deliberation to Dysfunction. He served as an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow with Rep. Paul Simon (D-IL), and founded KU’s Washington intern program in 1983 and continues as its director. He is currently working on studies of Rep. Bob Michel and Sen Bob Dole, along with a book on Kansas politics over the past fifty years.Wendy J. Schiller is professor of political science at Brown University where she has taught since 1994. Before receiving her PhD from the University of Rochester, Schiller served on the staffs of the Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Governor Mario Cuomo. She has written extensively on the United States Senate, including her book Partners and Rivals: Representation in U.S. Senate Delegations, and Electing the Senate: Indirect Democracy before the Seventeenth Amendment. She is currently working on the effects of federalism on gender equality and human security across states. Schiller also provides political commentary on legislative politics to local and national news outlets.

• 1. The Drama of Representation2. Congressional Decentralization in Design and Evolution3. The Changing Environment of Congressional Politics 4. Congressional Elections: All for One and One for All? 5. Parties, Leaders, and Ideology in Congress 6. Presidential and Congressional Relations: Boundaries of Power 7. Policymaking in the House and Senate8. The Individual Enterprise9. The Competitive Congress: Centrifugal Forces in a Partisan Era

Any serious student in American politics, institutions, and democracy should read Loomis and Schiller’s Contemporary Congress. The text offers the historic framework of Congress’ strength and power through decades of dramatic change in the 20th-21st centuries.