Agenda setting in the U.S. Senate
Subtitle: costly consideration and majority party advantage
By: Chris Den Hartog and Nathan W. Monroe
Contributors: Monroe, Nathan W.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2011
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 235
ISBN-13: 9781107006461
Subjects: United States; United States. Congress. Senate; Rules and practice; Legislative calendars
Description: "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.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 201-214) and index.
Table of contents: title: 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; title: 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; title: Part III. Testing the Costly-Consideration Theory: 10. Testing our model; 11. Implications of costly consideration; title: Appendix A: Relaxing the model's assumptions; title: Appendix B: Last actions and coding amendment disposition.