Title: Agenda setting in the U.S. Senate : costly consideration and majority party advantage /
Authors: Den Hartog, Chris; Monroe, Nathan W.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press,
Year: 2011
Subjects: United States.; United States. Rules and practice.; POLITICAL SCIENCE / Government / General.; Legislative calendars United States.
Abstract: "This book proposes a new theory of Senate agenda setting that reconciles a divide in literature between the conventional wisdom - in which party power is thought to be mostly, if not completely, undermined by Senate procedures and norms - and the apparent partisan bias in Senate decisions noted in recent empirical studies. Chris Den Hartog and Nathan W, Monroe's theory revolves around a "costly consideration" framework for thinking about agenda setting, where moving proposals forward through the legislative process is seen as requiring scarce resources. To establish that the majority party pays lower agenda consideration costs through various procedural advantages, the book features a number of chapters examining partisan influence at several stages of the legislative process, including committee reports, filibusters and cloture, floor scheduling, and floor amendments. Not only do the results strongly support the book's theoretical assumption and key hypotheses, but they shed new light on virtually every major step in the Senate's legislative process"--Provided by publisher.
Contents: Part I. Costly Consideration: 1. Costly consideration and the majority's advantage; 2. The textbook senate and partisan policy influence; 3. The costly-consideration agenda-setting theory -- Part II. Senate Procedure and Consideration Costs:4. Committees and senate agenda setting; 5. Scheduling bills in the senate; 6. The effects of filibusters; 7. The disposition of majority and minority amendments; 8. Killing amendments with tabling motions and points of order; 9. The effects of amendments -- Part III. Testing the Costly-Consideration Theory: 10. Testing our model; 11. Implications of costly consideration -- Appendix A: Relaxing the model's assumptions -- Appendix B: Last actions and coding amendment disposition.