The Contours of American Legislative Petitioning, 1789-1950

• In Event: Historical Development of Legislatures

Abstract

We offer the first comprehensive account of legislative petitioning at the state and national level in American political history. We draw upon an original dataset describing all petitions sent to both chambers of Congress from 1789 until 1950 (a dataset which encompasses more than a half million petitions, 400,000 of which were sent to the House), as well as another database providing selected historical coverage of petitions sent to legislatures in the 13 colonies and the 48 states ranging from the Colonial period onwards. Using this data, we track the frequency of petitions and, using a newly developed classification procedure, the topics of their requests. The resulting data provide rich insights into what was probably the most important source of agenda-setting in American legislatures until the late 19th century, and which remained an important agenda-setting dynamic until the Second World War. At present, our data reveal wide variation in the frequency of petitioning requests and complaints over time and across subjects, with eras such as the 1830s and early 1900s representing peaks, and petitioning to legislatures diminishing considerably by the middle of the 20th century. We evaluate a variety of possible predictors of variation in the overall number of petitions and the specific agendas expressed through petitioning, including the content of presidential messages to Congress, agendas expressed through newspapers, unified party control of government, and the partisan match between the majority of a legislature and the legislator representing the petitioners’ district. Our paper, and the data which we will release for public use, both contribute to historical research on agenda-setting and political representation in legislatures.

Authors

• Tobias Resch, Harvard University

• Benjamin Schneer, Harvard University

• Maggie McKinley, U Penn School of Law

• Daniel P. Carpenter, Harvard University