...This chapter examines feedback between income inequality and election outcomes. Aggregate time series evidence shows that rising income inequality is associated with larger Republican seat shares in the House and Senate, and larger margins of victory for Republican presidential candidates...

...This chapter compares the relative success of the majority party in the House and the Senate. After first discussing the theoretical underpinnings of the study, it analyzes the effects of legislative parties, electoral considerations, and interest groups on roll-call voting behaviors. The results...

...Nixon approved that on first entering Congress he had the “same lost feeling” he had had when he joined the military. Nixon found himself even less suited to the Senate than he had been to the House, and that unsuitability helped bring him a little away from the presidency. Presidential candidate...

...Congress is broken. For many observers, the reason why is because its members are unable to reach agreement on legislation given the polarized political environment in which they deliberate. Most blame the Senate for this dysfunction. In theory, polarization makes it harder for senators...

...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...

...This chapter provides a description of the Senate whip system in action. It provides a degree of support for contentions that majority-party leaders in the chamber influence member behavior and legislative outcomes. The portrait of party influence that emerges from this study, however, diverges...

...This chapter explores how senators have increased their party loyalty in their roll-call voting and with their fundraising efforts to help their party's candidates. It analyzes Senate leaders' potential mechanisms of discipline—the resources, positions, and opportunities that party leaders allocate...

...This chapter explores the conventional wisdom that the minority is considerably stronger in the Senate. If the Senate's institutional arrangements do confer more power on the minority party as compared to the House's institutional arrangements, then standard measures of party power should reflect...

...In the run-up to the 2012 presidential election, Democrats and Republicans were locked in a fierce battle for the female vote. Democrats charged Republicans with waging a “war on women,” while Republicans countered that Democratic policies actually undermined women’s rights. The women of the Senate...

... Pianin Eric Samuelson Robert J Clinton William J Brownstein Ronald parliamentary motions party leadership procedural motions party conflict Congress Senate liberals conservatives roll-call votes liberalism conservatism congressional voting partisanship “Ideology” refers to systems...

...This chapter looks at the partisan politics of floor procedure in the Senate, an important source of party conflict. Here the majority party wants to focus debate on its party “message,” while the minority party would like to change the subject to other issues. Moreover, the outcome of procedural...

... the opposition. This chapter examines variation in the presence of ideological issues on the Senate agenda. It argues that the strengthening of the parties as teams has helped to focus the legislative agenda on questions of ideology that most reliably distinguish between the parties. Much of the increase...

... with Japanese premier Kiichi Miyazawa, Clinton did not request Japan’s participation in the SSC Laboratory. In June the House voted resoundingly for an amendment to cancel the project, but after heated House and Senate committee hearings, the Senate voted strongly in favor of continuing it. In early October...

...The advancement of women into politics, particularly in the United States Senate, is a recent phenomenon. This chapter focuses on the U.S. Senate, analyzing how gender influences the legislative behavior of senators, like partisanship and ideology, to shape legislative priorities. First...

...This chapter evaluates the impact of gender on the policy-making activity of senators. It begins with a discussion on the policy impact of women in the Senate, emphasizing women as champions of policy initiatives on social welfare and women’s rights. It then discusses the assertion that women bring...

...According to the conventional view of legislative organization and decision making in the U.S. Senate, party effects in the Senate is something of an oxymoron. While research on the House has been both abundant and party-focused in recent years, the more sparse literature on the Senate still...

...This chapter examines the representational connection between roll-call behavior and electoral accountability in the context of Senate elections. More specifically, it examines the effects of both ideological extremity and party loyalty on senators' electoral fortunes in the context of all Senate...

...Committees have traditionally been the linchpin of the institutional power and policy expertise of Congress. However, surprisingly little discussion of the changing status of Senate committees has arisen in the current literature. The neglect is understandable, because changes regarding...

... knowledge and know-how to Chinese engineers by their American and Western homologs, and consolidated charges against US satellite manufacturers for helping to improve the performance of both China's civilian satellite launchers and its ballistic missile systems. It was complemented by hearings in the Senate...

...This chapter probes the history of the Senate’s treatment of Supreme Court nominees for much of American history. It focuses particular attention on those nominees the Senate contested and then either rejected or confirmed. In doing so, it identifies—for the first time—a connection between...