Congress, Lawmaking, and Political Failure? The Case of the Fair Labor Standards Act * Joshua D. Clinton † Work in Progress February 19, 2008 Abstract There are many reasons why the failure to achieve policy change may be more valuable to election-focused politicians than the policy change itself. I investigate whether there is empirical evidence consistent with this possibility by looking at lawmaking activity involving the Fair Labor Standards Act. Because definitive evidence is elusive, I rely on several investigations to characterize the nature of lawmaking. I assess: whether the incidence and magnitude of policy change is consistent with policy-motivated candidates over nearly thirty years (1971- 2000), whether measures of policy demand correlate with successful legislative activity on the FLSA in the postwar period (1947-2006), and whether journalistic accounts of the legislative activity buttress or refute the statistical characterizations. I find suggestive evidence that the political system is unable, or unwilling, to achieve policy change even when change appears possible. * Research supported by a grant from the Dirksen Congressional Center and a grant from the Princeton University Committee of Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences. An earlier version was presented at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association. I thank Keith Krehbiel for constructive reactions to an earlier draft. I thank Nick Carnes and Will Bullock for excellent research assistance. † Assistant Professor, Department of Politics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544-1012. Email: clinton@princeton.edu