Francis Lieber and the Scientific Study of Legislative Politics

R Street Essay Series, November (2020).

Abstract

Political science should be an exercise in understanding politics. Yet many of today’s political scientists routinely neglect the essential elements of which politics is comprised and without which it would not exist. For example, the study of Congress should be, in part, an exercise in understanding what happens inside the House of Representatives and the Senate when their members come together on the basis of equality to resolve their differences and compromise. But political scientists have a tendency to neglect the process by which members of Congress make collective decisions over time. Explaining those decisions requires that they focus on the concrete events that compose the legislative process instead of abstract speculations that are routinely contradicted by reality. Instead of beginning their search outside of Congress for what causes members’ actions, political scientists should first consider the nature of those actions inside the House and Senate. This is because understanding the nature of a phenomenon must necessarily precede the identification of its cause. By applying this approach to the study of Congress, we can reconcile the disconnect between how political scientists think about the institution and how it actually operates in practice.