Jan. 22, 2018 — It’s no news to anyone that the rise of partisanship in the U.S. Congress is impeding lawmakers’ ability to function — sometimes to the point of paralysis.
“The nearly constant threat of government shutdowns is a direct result of partisanship,” said CSU Channel Islands (CSUCI) Professor of Political Science Sean Kelly, Ph.D. “The failure to appropriate in a timely manner prevents Congress from thoroughly exercising its constitutional power to prioritize and oversee government spending.”
Kelly will be researching partisanship and other influences on the congressional appropriations process as the recipient of the 2018 Arlen Specter Center Research Fellowship, which is described on the center’s website as “competitive.”
The Specter fellowship supports Kelly’s research into how Republican Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania used the appropriations process to promote his positions on social policy and for cutting edge medical research.
Specter was a big supporter of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and their research into diseases such as Parkinson’s Disease, Alzheimer’s Disease and cancer. Many of these lines of research ran afoul of conservative social policies at the time.
“He was a man caught between enlightenment values — scientific values — and conservative social policies,” Kelly said. “What I want to know is how he was able to achieve his policy interests in a political atmosphere that was increasingly turning against his point of view.”
The conflict, combined with an increasingly conservative Pennsylvania Republican electorate, ultimately caused Specter to change parties and become a Democrat, another move that interests Kelly as a political scientist.
Specter was elected to the US Senate in 1981 and stayed in office until 2010. Throughout his career, Specter served on the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, serving as the chair or ranking Republican on the Labor, Health and Human Services subcommittee for 20 years.
Sponsored by the Arlen Specter Center of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, in conjunction with the University of Pittsburgh, the award allows Kelly to conduct research in the office records of Senator Specter. The collection contains Specter’s extensive papers, audiovisuals, photographs and memorabilia documenting his 30-year Senatorial career.
Kelly will then present his research at the Arlen Specter Center for Public Service in Philadelphia later this year.
Professor of Political Science Professor Doug Harris of Loyola University in Maryland believes Kelly’s project “promises to break new ground in our understandings of contemporary congressional research.”
“His research will reveal important new empirical findings, shedding new light on the evolution of the appropriations process in the Senate,” Harris said.
Kelly hopes his research will underscore what he sees as an essential connection between the social and natural sciences. In other words, social policy and scientific research can coexist.
“They do not exist in isolation from each another, but they shape each other in very fundamental ways that determine the future scientific and economic success of our country.”