Research on 19th Century Legislatures: Present Contours and Future Directions

Abstract

Conventional research in the history of legislatures has been abundant but unsystematic and incomplete. An empirical, social science tradition has developed recently, however, most strikingly in the study of the nineteenthand early twentiethcentury U.S. Congress and state legislatures. Systematic roll-call, biographical, and constituency analysis of those bodies suggests a political universe different from that of our own time, one in which strong partisan forces powerfully defined behavior and outlook. In addition, there was limited development of internal institutional structures and other elements that define modern legislatures. The extension of this research into other areas of legislative history and the building of organizing models and middlerange explanatory theories are the next tasks in this area of scholarship.