IRCPPS in the Links: A Crisis of Leadership or Institutions?

Steven L. Taylor asks if the United States' political problems are a matter of failed leadership or failed institutions:

...Congress has appeared unwilling to assert itself, something I have noted (and criticized) in the past.  Such unwillingness to more seriously confront the executive branch is a failure of leadership, to be sure.  However, I would argue that, on balance, this lack of actions is founded very heavily in a lack of adequate institutional incentives and ability to adequately engage the topics at hand...

IRCPPS in the Links: Explaining Congressional Deadlock

In the Monkey Cage, Gregory Kroger summarizes and discusses a recent Journal of Politics article by Philip Jones in an attempt to explain why the US Congress so often deadlocks and fails to compromise on even routine legislation:

Jones finds that voters weighed policy positions in their vote choices, while “peace and prosperity” outcomes had little impact on voters’ support for incumbent senators.  Figure 1 displays these findings:  the nearly flat lines for the first two charts show the minimal effect of policy outcomes on vote choice, while the steep upward slope of the bottom figure illustrates how the more voters agree with senators on policy positions, the more likely they were to vote for the incumbent...