Discussions of term limits are happening in the United States and abroad. In July 2024, President Biden announced his support for limiting the number of years that federal judges may serve. Surveys suggest that limits for judges are popular with Americans.1 Relatedly, voters have historically supported term limits for members of Congress, with the most recent survey (from July 2023) finding support among 87%.2 For now, limits are unlikely to be imposed on federal judges or members of Congress, but there are recent changes in the states. Voters in North Dakota imposed limits on their state legislators in 2022, and those limits will take effect in 2028. In Michigan, also in 2022, voters shortened the long-standing lifetime limits for their legislators from 14 to 12 years. Discussions or reforms, including the elimination of limits, have also occurred outside of the United States. In Russia, voters seemingly reset the term limits that applied previously to President Vladimir Putin, thereby allowing him to serve in office until 2036. In China, where limits for various leaders including the president were first added to the country’s constitution in 1982, limits were abolished in 2018. Although these are prominent examples of limits being lifted, a remarkable number of new limits have been enacted elsewhere, with limits on executives being imposed in 17 countries within the past decade alone. To date, only a handful of countries, most of which are in the Americas, have legislative limits.3 Conversely, nearly every country limits the service of judges.4

This article seeks to compare the policy histories of the legislative term limits in France and the United States. Both nations debated, initially adopted, and then ultimately rejected imposing term limits during the foundational moments of their democracies. Reemerging in the 1990s in America, proposals to refresh government through such limits have been successful in the states and have failed at the national level. The idea regained prominence in France when Emmanuel Macron supported it during his 2017 presidential election. Although Macron eventually abandoned the proposal, the revival of this debate is an opportunity to draw broad parallels but identify critical differences between the two nations in the philosophical debates over term limits and the ways that leaders have embraced or abandoned them to fulfill their political goals. We show how the idea circulated between the two nations, without a parallel exchange of evidence about its effects.

How do term limits affect dyadic ideological representation? Despite reformers’ claims that term limits should improve legislators’ connections to their constituents, much empirical political science research suggests that term limits actually break that electoral connection. In this study, I use a regression discontinuity design to measure the ideological gap in how Democrats and Republicans represent evenly matched districts and then explore how this gap varies across settings with and without state legislative term limits in effect. Across a number of specifications, my results are consistent with term limits exacerbating rather than improving dyadic representation. This study contributes to a growing scholarly consensus that term limits do not improve, and may worsen, state legislative representation.

This article considers a significant but overlooked set of policy developments in the latter half of the twentieth century: the extension of collective bargaining rights to most health care workers, many of whom were formally excluded for three decades under the 1947 Taft-Hartley amendments. Drawing on primary sources including archival records, an exhaustive review of congressional testimony, and rulings from the quasijudicial agency governing private sector industrial relations, this article shows that health care workers did so in two interrelated processes. First, in coordination with the civil rights movement, workers mobilized and used both disruptive and legal social movement tactics. Second, in doing so they drew the state into and revealed its position in the collective bargaining process between workers and health institutions, facilitating what is conceptualized as cross-domain policy feedback. Cross-domain policy feedback occurs when a policy in one domain (e.g., public health spending) influences the politics of a policy in a seemingly separate one (e.g., labor and employment relations). Such effects, this article suggests, are likely to occur when a policy is relatively large in scale, implicates actors with a diverse set of interests, and offers significant ambiguity and discretion in its implementation. Empirically, this article is the first to chart the institutionalization of collective bargaining rights for health care workers, among the largest group of private sector employees in the postindustrial economy. It also offers a new theoretical and conceptual framework through which to study the ways by which public policies reshape political dynamics—an enduring research agenda for students of American politics and policy.

In this article I analyze Salvador Allende’s economic program and policies. I argue that the explosion of inflation during his administration (above 1,500% on a six-month annualized measure) was predictable, and I show that the government’s response to it was political. I postulate that runaway inflation generated major disaffection among the middle class and that that unhappiness paved the way to Pinochet’s coup d’état in 1973.

Understanding the origins of policy ideas can be crucial when trying to explain dynamics of political change and continuity. Paradigmatic changes in the German pension system have been attributed to the import of “foreign” neoliberal policy ideas from transnational organizations and other countries. The literature describes such processes as policy diffusion, transfer, or translation. In contrast, this article argues that foreign pension ideas did not have a substantive influence on local policy innovations and preference-formation processes. Instead, pension policy pioneers developed their ideas predominantly “from within” through bricolage by reconfiguring long-standing domestic schools of thought. Drawing on a wide range of primary and secondary sources, the analysis combines a broad historical perspective with case studies of individual policy makers. This sheds new light on the careers of ideas and why significant actors pick them up at certain points.

This article examines three high-profile House ethics cases involving former Speakers James Wright (1988–1989) and Newt Gingrich (1994–1997) and former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (1997–2004). The analysis of the filing and disposition of charges in the three cases provides some evidence for the “politics-by-other-means” or “partisan-ethics-wars” framework that is sometimes used to evaluate ethics enforcement in Congress. However, the analysis also provides evidence of bipartisan agreement both in the ethics committee and on the floor. The article highlights the areas of bipartisan consensus and the principles behind that consensus. In paying attention to the content of the cases, it also highlights an important change in ethics investigations over time, specifically an increase in “political gain” cases. The article thus calls attention to aspects of House ethics investigations that are undervalued and inadequately addressed by the partisan-ethics-wars framework.

This article examines the Committee for Constitutional Government, a conservative organization that spearheaded a novel form of mass-based mobilization and direct-mail propaganda to counter New Deal reforms from 1937 to the late 1950s. I argue that the members of the committee offered a supple and variegated response to New Deal liberalism, one with deep roots in the American past. Organizationally, the committee differed from other conservative groups of the period in the vastly greater reach of its propaganda, the small-donor financial base of its operations, and its extensive cultivation of a grassroots movement committed to right-wing reform. The committee was a critical political actor from 1937 to 1955, systematically shaping legislation and countering the trend toward social democracy in America. The ultimate result of its campaigns was to retard the growth of the administrative state and help formulate a cogent conservative critique of reformist liberalism.

Currently, scholars hold that the government’s principal contribution to the California wine industry’s recovery from Prohibition in the 1930s was to get out of the way, freeing entrepreneurs to conduct business properly; according to this interpretation, the United States only taxed the product and impeded progress. But this article argues that in the areas of regulation, promotion, and protection of the wine industry, the federal government provided a framework for California winemakers to succeed and that, moreover, it often did so at their request and in cooperation with them. Though New Deal laws and regulations did not benefit all stakeholders equally, they did work to bring economic recovery to an industry that suffered from both Prohibition and the Depression.

This article argues that scholars’ current understanding of Social Security policy making in the 1950s is missing a crucial component: massive letter-writing campaigns by ordinary Americans. Americans’ letters to Congress—and the responses of members and their aides in public debates and constituent correspondence—reflect a more vibrant, more democratic, and messier policy-making process than scholars have previously recognized. In the 1950s, Congress voted to amend the Social Security Act of 1935 repeatedly, expanding both the number of occupations covered by the Old Age and Survivors Insurance program and the level of benefits individuals received. Scholars have depicted this expansion as the work of planners within the Social Security bureaucracy. Yet, the letters in congressional records reveal that the process of amending Social Security resulted from—and helped create—constituencies of Americans who felt entitled to make claims on the federal state apparatus.

This article traces the history of the Office of Economic Opportunity/Community Services Administration, focusing on Richard Nixon’s failed attempt to dismantle it in 1973 and Ronald Reagan’s successful effort in 1981. I explore main two main questions: Why was Reagan able to succeed when Nixon had failed? and What does the dismantling of the agency reveal about the development of American conservatism in the 1970s and 1980s? Drawing on original archival materials, I argue that the Reagan administration learned from Nixon’s failures and adopted a more professional, managerial stance when it dismantled the agency in 1981. In addition, recent work in history and political science has explored how the multiracial democratic vision articulated by LBJ’s Great Society helped fuel the modern conservative movement. By focusing on the long-term opposition against OEO/CSA, this article provides new insights into how conservatives articulated an alternative ideology to postwar liberalism.

This article presents a history of free speech in wartime in the United States from the end of World War I to the end of World War II.

In the decades immediately following the Vietnam War, there were no significant conflicts with free speech resulting from major policy or military action. In contrast, the global war on terror following the events of September 11, 2001, mirror in many ways where prior conflicts and government action clashed with Free Speech. Forty-five days after the worst attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor, Congress enacted the USA PATRIOT Act. In the months and years that followed, American forces fought abroad and opponents of and advocates for the Act fought at home. This article will review the implementation of the Patriot Act and two provisions, section 215 and 805, to follow the actions of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the federal government and those of civil liberties advocacy groups to review America’s efforts to meet the challenges of providing security for the homeland and protecting Free Speech.

Liberty of conscience, encompassing free speech, a free press, and freedom of religion, has a rich history in Anglo-American political thought, long predating the drafting of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1789. The debate over licensing acts in seventeenth-century England; the advancement of principles of toleration by John Milton, Algernon Sidney, and John Locke in the same period; the renowned, impassioned, and highly influential essays of John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon in Cato’s Letters; the flourishing of a relatively free press and free church in eighteenth-century colonial America; and the liberty-championing assertions in the several declarations of rights in the newly independent states of America all played a critical role in shaping and inspiring the popular views in America that made the First Amendment possible.

I argue that health insurance emerged as an important aspect of Nixon’s domestic policy agenda as a result of “policy escalation.” By policy escalation, I mean a cascading line of reasoning that causes policy makers focused on one apparently discrete issue to formulate approaches for dealing with other interconnecting policy areas. Policy escalation serves as an internal agenda-setting mechanism: as policy makers contemplate policy changes, they may attempt to imagine the ways in which change will affect the rationale, fiscal position, and execution of programs in other policy areas. In the case of health insurance, the Nixon administration’s proposal for replacing Aid to Families with Dependent Children with a guaranteed minimum income forced policy makers to consider how the new program would interact with the existing Medicaid program. Consideration of this question ultimately led them to formulate an approach to overhauling the nation’s entire health insurance system.

Common examples of governance policies include regulations of lobbying, campaign-finance restrictions, and term limitations. Although the public generally favors these good-government reforms, the laws often restrict the autonomy of political elites. The histories of lobby reform in New York, Georgia, and Michigan illustrate how governance policies might be adopted despite elite opposition. In the states, initial reform efforts came about due to agenda-setting events or policy entrepreneurs. Although legislators adopted lobby reforms, they preferred transparency to other lobby reforms given its limited effect on mutualistic relationships. Initial lobby laws required only disclosure and did not restrict legislator–lobbyist interactions much. Only with the advent of additional events and entrepreneurs were the initial laws strengthened to limit interactions. The histories of reform imply that narratives of policy innovation or diffusion may be complicated somewhat by elite interests and that governance policies, once adopted, may have a unique immunity from repeal.

Borrowed capacity builds upon institutional capacity scholarship to discuss how interactions between government agencies and interest groups can increase agency resources and scope during agency formation and development. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission scholars often note the lack of capacity to implement Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 during the first years of the agency. I argue that current assessments of the agency’s capacity between 1965 and 1968 are incomplete by expanding the definition of capacity to include borrowed and nontraditional forms of capacity, reviewing congressional allocations to the agency and agency budgets, and considering the active roles state and local agencies as well as interest groups played in the early implementation of Title VII. I demonstrate the agency amassed not only claims but also capacity during its early years.

This article analyzes the attitudes of Dutch employers toward social policy in the early twentieth century. Recent literature has evolved from an emphasis on power to an emphasis on preferences. Moving away from the traditional view that unions and social democrats forced social laws on employers, recent scholars suggest that firms saw specific advantages in the introduction of social laws. However, I show that the attitudes of Dutch business representatives, rather than seeking these specific advantages, merely reflected a willingness to consult, inspired by their macroeconomic view. Employers expressed the wish to attain an organized form of capitalism and accepted regulated forms of codetermination. Once the consultative platforms were in place, employers pursued strategic goals, such as labor peace and disciplining the unions. This paved the way for accepting welfare state expansion. In sum, mid-twentieth century business interests were strongly oriented toward coordinated capitalism.

On August 10, 1993, President Bill Clinton signed the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993, one of the largest fiscal deficit-reduction packages in US fiscal history. This law raised the top individual income tax rate from 31% to 39.6%, which increased the average effective tax rate for high-income earners and shifted the federal fiscal balance from deficit to surplus by the end of the century. Given major business interest groups’ criticism of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993’s heavy reliance on tax increases over spending cuts, how was the Democrat-controlled Congress able to pass this legislation? Drawing on archival evidence from the Clinton Presidential Library, this paper shows that the administration and Democratic committee chairs mobilized support from corporate CEOs, including Fortune 500 executives, asking them to lobby key legislators to support the bill. Thus, with business leaders’ support and lobbying efforts, the legislation was passed with a very slight majority.

The year 1975 marked a watershed year for Spanish-surnamed people in the United States and their relationship with the federal government. In that year Congress extended the Voting Rights Act to include a “language minority” category, requiring federal election officials to translate election materials under certain conditions. By validating language rights for language minorities, Congress expanded federal voting protections far beyond African Americans. Advocates for Spanish speakers took up the cause before Congress, which created a new federally protected category based on the long history of discrimination in education and society they collected in testimonies. These language protections catered largely to Spanish speakers, though the category also included Alaska Natives, Native Americans, and Asian Americans. The process of gaining a separate language minority status is explored in this article, which explains how Congress chose to create a law that included Spanish speakers by name.