Most everyone, voters, political scientists, even lawmakers, think Congress is dysfunctional. Instead of solving problems, Democrats and Republicans spend their time playing politics. These days Capitol Hill seems more a place to bicker, not to pass laws. The reality is more complicated. Yes, sometimes Congress is broken. But sometimes it is productive. What explains this variation? Why do Democrats and Republicans choose to legislate or score political points? And why do some issues become so politicized they devolve into partisan warfare, while others remain safe for compromise?

Losing to Win answers these questions through a novel theory of agenda-setting. Unlike other research that studies bills that become law, Jeremy Gelman begins from the opposite perspective. He studies why majority parties knowingly take up dead-on-arrival (DOA) bills, the ideas everyone knows are going to lose. In doing so, he argues that congressional parties’ decisions to play politics instead of compromising, and the topics on which they choose to bicker, are strategic and predictable. Gelman finds that legislative dysfunction arises from a mutually beneficial relationship between a majority party in Congress, which is trying to win unified government, and its allied interest groups, which are trying to enact their policies. He also challenges the conventional wisdom that DOA legislation is political theater. By tracking bills over time, Gelman shows that some former dead-on-arrival ideas eventually become law. In this way, ideas viewed as too extreme or partisan today can produce long-lasting future policy changes.

Through his analysis, Gelman provides an original explanation for why both parties pursue the partisan bickering that voters find so frustrating. He moves beyond conventional arguments that our discordant politics are merely the result of political polarization. Instead, he closely examines the specific circumstances that give rise to legislative dysfunction. The result is a fresh, straightforward perspective on the question we have all asked at some point, “Why can’t Democrats and Republicans stop fighting and just get something done?”
 

Among the most common features of the modern US Congress is its partisanship, a deeply felt political divide that sometimes seems to be each side’s primary motivator. In Congress we have seen heated disagreements, a tendency to blame the opposing party for any bad outcome, and attempts to undermine the other side’s successes. For those watching Congress, it is easy to assume everyone on Capitol Hill participates equally in framing issues as pitting Democrats versus Republicans. Yet in Posting for Power, Jeremy Gelman and Steven Wilson show that partisanship varies a great deal among legislators: it is motivated by reelection and promotion-seeking considerations, and it comes with no substantial legislative or electoral consequences. 

In the US Congress, lawmakers regularly choose to bicker for political gain, whether or not they disagree on issues. By classifying millions of social media posts as partisan or not, Gelman and Wilson quantify a legislator’s partisan intensity through the time and effort they spend supporting their party and bickering with the opposition. The authors argue that the partisan personas politicians create are both a home style, to help them win reelection, and hill style, to help them become politically influential by showing off as good team players. Bringing together a wide range of data on leadership races, elections, voting records, cosponsorship patterns, and lawmaking outcomes, they demonstrate the nearly consequence-free way that legislators strategically deploy partisanship to impress their copartisans and voters. Gelman and Wilson closely examine what motivates members to differ so much in developing this part of their public personas and offer clear recommendations for how to turn down the partisan heat on Capitol Hill.