LANDMARKS IN THE STUDY OF CONGRESS SINCE 1945*

This paper traces the course of inquiry on the U.S. Congress from 1945 to the present day, noting antecedents in the work of Woodrow Wilson, and through Wilson, of Walter Bagehot. Since 1945, the study of Congress has gone through an anglophile responsible-party phase, championed especially by William Yandell Elliott at Harvard, followed by a sociologically oriented legislative-behavior phase, identified in one generation with Lewis Anthony Dexter, Stephen K. Bailey, David Truman, and especially Ralph K. Huitt at Wisconsin, and in the next generation with Richard Fenno, Charles O. Jones, Donald R. Matthews, and H. Douglas Price, among others. A third, contemporary intellectual orientation is identified most strongly with rational choice scholars, especially from the University of Rochester. The agenda of political science is formed not only by the literature but by events. Hence, the congressional reforms of the 1970s were influential in shaping the literature, as were such organizational innovations as the Congressional Fellowship Program and the Study of Congress, both projects of the American Political Science Association.