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Why Not Parties?

Party Effects in the United States Senate

Edited by Nathan W. Monroe, Jason M. Roberts, and David W. Rohde

Why Not Parties?

Party Effects in the United States Senate

Edited by Nathan W. Monroe, Jason M. Roberts, and David W. Rohde

Recent research on the U.S. House of Representatives largely focuses on the effects of partisanship, but the strikingly less frequent studies of the Senate still tend to treat parties as secondary considerations in a chamber that gives its members far more individual leverage than congressmen have. In response to the recent increase in senatorial partisanship, Why Not Parties? corrects this imbalance with a series of original essays that focus exclusively on the effects of parties in the workings of the upper chamber.

Illuminating the growing significance of these effects, the contributors explore three major areas, including the electoral foundations of parties, partisan procedural advantage, and partisan implications for policy. In the process, they investigate such issues as whether party discipline can overcome Senate mechanisms that invest the most power in individuals and small groups; how parties influence the making of legislation and the distribution of pork; and whether voters punish senators for not toeing party lines. The result is a timely corrective to the notion that parties don’t matter in the Senate—which the contributors reveal is far more similar to the lower chamber than conventional wisdom suggests.

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Political Science: American Government and Politics

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Reviews

“For nearly two decades legislative scholars have actively researched the extent and nature of party influence in today’s Congress and how it compares with the past. But the lion’s share of research has equated ‘Congress’ with the House of Representatives while largely ignoring the question of party influence in the Senate. This wide-ranging collection of essays goes a long way toward redressing the imbalance.”

Morris P. Fiorina, Stanford University

“Timely, sophisticated, and well written, this volume contains an unusual number of new and important pieces. There is no comparable book on Senate politics.”

Steven S. Smith, Washington University

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

1    Introduction: Assessing the Impact of Parties in the U.S. Senate
      Nathan W. Monroe, Jason M. Roberts, and David W. Rohde

Part 1
2    Electoral Accountability, Party Loyalty, and Roll-Call Voting in the U.S. Senate
      Jamie L. Carson
3    Party and Constituency in the U.S. Senate, 1933–2004
      John Aldrich, Michael Brady, Scott de Marchi, Ian McDonald, Brendan Nyhan, David W. Rohde, and Michael Tofias
4    Scoring the Senate: Scorecards, Parties, and Roll-Call Votes
      Jason M. Roberts and Lauren Cohen Bell

Part 2
5    The Senate Whip System: An Exploration
      Erin M. Bradbury, Ryan A. Davidson, and C. Lawrence Evans
6    Party Loyalty and Discipline in the Individualistic Senate
      Kathryn Pearson
7    Make Way for the Party: The Rise and Fall of the Senate National Security Committees, 1947–2006
      Linda L. Fowler and R. Brian Law
8    Agenda Influence and Tabling Motions in the U.S. Senate
      Chris Den Hartog and Nathan W. Monroe
9    Filibustering and Majority Rule in the Senate: The Contest over Judicial Nominations, 2003–2005
      Gregory Koger

Part 3
10 Minority-Party Power in the Senate and House of Representatives
      Sean Gailmard and Jeffery A. Jenkins
11 Catch-22: Cloture, Energy Policy, and the Limits of Conditional Party Government
      Bruce I. Oppenheimer and Marc J. Hetherington
12 Distributive and Partisan Politics in the U.S. Senate: An Exploration of Earmarks
      Michael H. Crespin and Charles J. Finocchiaro

References
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Index