The Landscape of Lawmaking

Lawmaking is not about enacting bills. It is about enacting policies. We portray bills as necessary vehicles for the advancement of policy ideas. To survive, a policy must be incorporated into a successful bill. But bills and policies are not the same thing. Central to our argument is the legislative hitchhiker – a policy proposal first proposed in one bill that is subsequently incorporated into another bill. Drawing on text as data methods, we demonstrate the value and feasibility of viewing lawmaking from a policy progress rather than bill progress perspective.