Professors Craig Volden and Alan Wiseman (Professor of Political Science and Law at Vanderbilt University) received a $200,000 grant from the Madison Initiative to expand their groundbreaking research - the Legislative Effectiveness Project (LEP). Recipients of the Madison Initiative grants assist projects that strengthen representative democracy in the United States and improve the ways in which national institutions work for the American people. The award is an acknowledgment of the importance of the LEP in achieving these goals. 

The LEP studies the House of Representatives from 1973 to 2014, ranking each member according his or her lawmaking effectiveness. It is a non-partisan, objective, and data-intensive research initiative that has grown out of the scholarship of Volden and Wiseman. Using a scoring system, they rank each elected official according to his or her ability to advance law through the legislative process. They argue that legislators vary in their effectiveness at lawmaking and that these differences are measureable.

Volden and Wiseman’s work is extremely timely, as Washington faces more gridlock with each new election. U.S. voters, whether Democrat or Republican, are eager for representation that delivers tangible results. Their research gives relevant groups (public, governmental, non-profit and scholarly) a tool by which to measure the success rates of their Congressional representatives and to hold them accountable.

Director of The Madison Initiative, Daniel Stid, is enthusiastic to continue the partnership with Volden and Wiseman: “We see [the research] as playing a critical role in reshaping both the scholarly and broader public debate about the role and contributions of individual legislators and the health of the institution as a whole.”

With this new round of funding, Volden and Wiseman intend to broaden the scope of their work. They will expand the research to include the U.S House of Representatives from the most recent Congressional sessions (2013-2014 and 2015-2016) and Senate members from 1974-2013. Volden and Wiseman contend that this expansion will yield a better understanding of how legislatures work and why they produce particular public policies. They hope that their work will generate new opportunities to improve lawmaking effectiveness.

Volden and Wiseman’s research continues to bolster Batten’s reputation as a leading policy research institution. The Washington Post, The New York Times and NPR, among others, have recognized the LEP for its innovative take on the evaluation of legislators. The research is driving heated debate about the effectiveness of elected officials and their ability to get things done. Volden’s work is just one of the many projects led by Batten faculty that are producing real policy impacts on a daily basis.

The broad scope of their work has been featured in the award-winning book, “Legislative Effectiveness in the United States Congress: The Lawmakers.” You can learn more about the LEP on the project’s website.