:Researchers and the public alike have long recognized that in American politics visibility matters. To claim credit for policies, to recruit supporters, and to maintain democratic legitimacy, the lawmaking process must be visible to the American public. Yet little is known about how the public perceived the legislative process during the nineteenth century. This article uses systematic qualitative and quantitative analysis of newspapers in Baltimore, Maryland, Portland, Maine, and Charleston, South Carolina, to measure the comparative visibility of lawmaking at the state and federal levels between 1830 and 1880. The research demonstrates how analysis of newspaper coverage can be used to better understand public perceptions of state and federal lawmaking during time periods without polling data. The visibility of congressional lawmaking varied greatly from one state to the next, and competition for coverage between state legislatures and Congress remained strong across the country throughout the studied period.

中文翻译：

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有形的国家和无形的国家：十九世纪立法的报纸报道

: 研究人员和公众早就认识到，在美国政治中，知名度很重要。要为政策争取功劳、招募支持者并维护民主合法性，立法过程必须对美国公众公开。然而，公众对 19 世纪立法过程的看法却鲜为人知。本文对巴尔的摩、马里兰州、波特兰、缅因州和南卡罗来纳州查尔斯顿的报纸进行了系统的定性和定量分析，以衡量 1830 年至 1880 年间州和联邦两级立法的比较可见度。研究展示了如何对报纸进行分析覆盖范围可用于在没有民意调查数据的情况下更好地了解公众对州和联邦立法的看法。