The Transformation of the U.S. Senate

The Transformation of the U.S. Senate PDF Author: Barbara Sinclair
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description

The Transformation of the U.S. Senate

The Transformation of the U.S. Senate PDF Author: Barbara Sinclair
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Get Book Here

Book Description


The Invention of the United States Senate

The Invention of the United States Senate PDF Author: Daniel Wirls
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
ISBN: 9780801874390
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
The invention of the United States Senate was the most complicated and confounding achievement of the Constitutional Convention. Although much has been written on various aspects of Senate history, this is the first book to examine and link the three central components of the Senate's creation: the theoretical models and institutional precedents leading up to the Constitutional Convention; the work of the Constitutional Convention on both the composition and powers of the Senate; and the initial institutionalization of the Senate from ratification through the early years of Congress. The authors show how theoretical principles of a properly constructed Senate interacted with political interests and power politics in the multidimensional struggle to construct the Senate, before, during, and after the convention.

Beyond Ideology

Beyond Ideology PDF Author: Frances E. Lee
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226470776
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
The congressional agenda, Frances Lee contends, includes many issues about which liberals and conservatives generally agree. Even over these matters, though, Democratic and Republican senators tend to fight with each other. What explains this discord? Beyond Ideology argues that many partisan battles are rooted in competition for power rather than disagreement over the rightful role of government. The first book to systematically distinguish Senate disputes centering on ideological questions from the large proportion of them that do not, this volume foregrounds the role of power struggle in partisan conflict. Presidential leadership, for example, inherently polarizes legislators who can influence public opinion of the president and his party by how they handle his agenda. Senators also exploit good government measures and floor debate to embarrass opponents and burnish their own party’s image—even when the issues involved are broadly supported or low-stakes. Moreover, Lee contends, the congressional agenda itself amplifies conflict by increasingly focusing on issues that reliably differentiate the parties. With the new president pledging to stem the tide of partisan polarization, Beyond Ideology provides a timely taxonomy of exactly what stands in his way.

Sizing Up the Senate

Sizing Up the Senate PDF Author: Frances E. Lee
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226470061
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
This book raises questions about one of the key institutions of American government, the United States Senate, and should be of interest to anyone concerned with issues of representation.

Party Ballots, Reform, and the Transformation of America's Electoral System

Party Ballots, Reform, and the Transformation of America's Electoral System PDF Author: Erik J. Engstrom
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107050391
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
This book demonstrates that nineteenth-century electoral politics were the product of institutions that prescribed how votes were cast and were converted into political offices.

Filibustering

Filibustering PDF Author: Gregory Koger
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226449661
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
In the modern Congress, one of the highest hurdles for major bills or nominations is gaining the sixty votes necessary to shut off a filibuster in the Senate. But this wasn’t always the case. Both citizens and scholars tend to think of the legislative process as a game played by the rules in which votes are the critical commodity—the side that has the most votes wins. In this comprehensive volume,Gregory Koger shows, on the contrary, that filibustering is a game with slippery rules in which legislators who think fast and try hard can triumph over superior numbers. Filibustering explains how and why obstruction has been institutionalized in the U.S. Senate over the last fifty years, and how this transformation affects politics and policymaking. Koger also traces the lively history of filibustering in the U.S. House during the nineteenth century and measures the effects of filibustering—bills killed, compromises struck, and new issues raised by obstruction. Unparalleled in the depth of its theory and its combination of historical and political analysis, Filibustering will be the definitive study of its subject for years to come.

The Gingrich Senators

The Gingrich Senators PDF Author: Sean M. Theriault
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199307474
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
The Senate of the mid twentieth century, which was venerated by journalists, historians, and senators alike, is today but a distant memory. Electioneering on the Senate floor, playing games with the legislative process, and questioning your fellow senators' motives have become commonplace. In this book, noted political scientist Sean Theriault documents the Senate's demise over the last 30 years by showing how one group of senators has been at the forefront of this transformation. He calls this group the "Gingrich Senators" and defines them as Republican senators who previously served in the House after 1978, the year of Newt Gingrich's first election to the House. He shows how the Gingrich Senators are more conservative, more likely to engage in tactics that obstruct the legislative process, and more likely to oppose Democratic presidents than even their fellow other Republicans. Phil Gramm, Rick Santorum, Jim DeMint, and Tom Coburn are just four examples of the group that has includes 40 total senators and 22 currently serving senators. Theriault first documents the ideological distinctiveness of the Gingrich Senators and examines possible explanations for it. He then shows how the Gingrich Senators behave as partisan warriors, which has radically transformed the way the Senate operates as an institution, by using cutthroat tactics, obstructionism, and legislative games. He concludes the book by examining the fate of the Gingrich Senators and the future of the U.S. Senate.

JFK in the Senate: Pathway to the Presidency

JFK in the Senate: Pathway to the Presidency PDF Author: John Shaw
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0230341837
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
Based on newly opened archives, congressional historian and political insider John T. Shaw sheds new light on JFK's term in the Senate

Strangers in the Senate

Strangers in the Senate PDF Author: Barbara Boxer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
An insider's view of women in politics, beginning in 1972 with a personal electoral defeat and ending with the historic transformation of the Senate 20 years later, when for the first time male candidates were rejected in droves by the voters and California became the first state in the nation to be represented by two female senators. Photos.

Master of the Senate

Master of the Senate PDF Author: Robert A. Caro
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0394528360
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 1233

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Book Description
Master of the Senate, Book Three of The Years of Lyndon Johnson, carries Johnson’s story through one of its most remarkable periods: his twelve years, from 1949 to 1960, in the United States Senate. At the heart of the book is its unprecedented revelation of how legislative power works in America, how the Senate works, and how Johnson, in his ascent to the presidency, mastered the Senate as no political leader before him had ever done. It was during these years that all Johnson’s experience—from his Texas Hill Country boyhood to his passionate representation in Congress of his hardscrabble constituents to his tireless construction of a political machine—came to fruition. Caro introduces the story with a dramatic account of the Senate itself: how Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and John C. Calhoun had made it the center of governmental energy, the forum in which the great issues of the country were thrashed out. And how, by the time Johnson arrived, it had dwindled into a body that merely responded to executive initiatives, all but impervious to the forces of change. Caro anatomizes the genius for political strategy and tactics by which, in an institution that had made the seniority system all-powerful for a century and more, Johnson became Majority Leader after only a single term-the youngest and greatest Senate Leader in our history; how he manipulated the Senate’s hallowed rules and customs and the weaknesses and strengths of his colleagues to change the “unchangeable” Senate from a loose confederation of sovereign senators to a whirring legislative machine under his own iron-fisted control. Caro demonstrates how Johnson’s political genius enabled him to reconcile the unreconcilable: to retain the support of the southerners who controlled the Senate while earning the trust—or at least the cooperation—of the liberals, led by Paul Douglas and Hubert Humphrey, without whom he could not achieve his goal of winning the presidency. He shows the dark side of Johnson’s ambition: how he proved his loyalty to the great oil barons who had financed his rise to power by ruthlessly destroying the career of the New Dealer who was in charge of regulating them, Federal Power Commission Chairman Leland Olds. And we watch him achieve the impossible: convincing southerners that although he was firmly in their camp as the anointed successor to their leader, Richard Russell, it was essential that they allow him to make some progress toward civil rights. In a breathtaking tour de force, Caro details Johnson’s amazing triumph in maneuvering to passage the first civil rights legislation since 1875. Master of the Senate, told with an abundance of rich detail that could only have come from Caro’s peerless research, is both a galvanizing portrait of the man himself—the titan of Capital Hill, volcanic, mesmerizing—and a definitive and revelatory study of the workings and personal and legislative power.