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"The first-ever study to examine the development of the Senate's main governing institutions, Steering the Senate is the extraordinary account of the invention and growth of Senate floor leadership - a story that, until now, has been entirely unknown"--
List of contents
1. Individual goals and senate party organization; 2. Presiding officer, 1789-1914; 3. Caucus, 1789-1879; 4. Steering Committee, 1856-1913; 5. Arthur Pue Gorman, the Federal Elections Bill, and the invention of Elected Floor Leadership, 1890-1913; 6. Leaders and whips, 1913-1924; 7. Divergent paths and the consolidation of leadership structures, 1923-1944; 8. Party infrastructure, 1945-1980; 9. Polarization, competition, and centralization, 1981-2024; 10. Conclusion; Appendix.
About the author
Gerald Gamm is Professor of Political Science and of History at the University of Rochester. He is a Fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and he began the research that led to this book as a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He is a recipient of a Goergen Award for Distinguished Achievement and Artistry in Undergraduate Teaching at the University of Rochester. He is the author of The Making of New Deal Democrats: Voting Behavior and Realignment in Boston, 1920–1940 (1989) and Urban Exodus: Why the Jews Left Boston and the Catholics Stayed (1999). His recent articles have appeared in American Political Science Review, Legislative Studies Quarterly, and Studies in American Political Development.Steven S. Smith is Professor in the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University and Kate M. Gregg Emeritus Professor at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the 2023 winner of the Barbara Sinclair Lecture Award for his achievement in promoting the understanding of the US Congress and legislative politics. He is the author of Politics over Process: Partisan Conflict and Post-Passage Processes in the US Congress (2017), The American Congress (10 editions, 1995–2019), The Senate Syndrome: The Evolution of Parliamentary Warfare in the Modern US Senate (2014), Party Influence in Congress (2007), The Politics of Institutional Choice: The Formation of the Russian State Duma (2001), and more.
Summary
The Senate majority and minority leaders stand at the pinnacle of American national government – as important to Congress as the speaker of the House. However, the invention of Senate floor leadership has, until now, been entirely unknown. Providing a sweeping account of the emergence of party organization and leadership in the US Senate, Steering the Senate is the first-ever study to examine the development of the Senate's main governing institutions. It argues that three forces – party competition, intraparty factionalism, and entrepreneurship – have driven innovation in the Senate. The book details how the position of floor leader was invented in 1890 and then strengthened through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Drawing on the full history of the Senate, this book immediately becomes the authoritative source for understanding the institutional development of the Senate – uncovering the origins of the Senate party caucuses, steering committees, and floor leadership.
Foreword
A landmark account of how party competition drove the invention of floor leadership and created the modern Senate.
