Agenda Setting in the U.S. Senate
Costly Consideration and Majority Party Advantage

Proposes a new theory of Senate agenda setting.

Chris Den Hartog (Author), Nathan W. Monroe (Author)

9781107006461, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 16 May 2011

252 pages, 56 b/w illus. 24 tables
23.4 x 15.7 x 2.2 cm, 0.47 kg

'In recent years there have been many indications that legislative parties are consequential in the Senate, but the theoretical arguments that provide explanations for this pattern have been few and limited. In this small but important book the authors argue (both formally and informally) that the majority party has procedural advantages that make it less costly to get a final vote on its proposals than the minority party. The authors enrich their formal argument with extensive examples from Senate practice and provide support for their theoretical predictions with solid systematic evidence. This book will receive a lot of deserved attention from students of the Senate, and it will influence the course of future research.' David W. Rohde, Duke University

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 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 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.

Preface
Part I: 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. Consideration Costs in the Senate: 4. Committees and senate agenda setting
5. Scheduling bills in the Senate
6. Effects of filibusters
7. Disposition of majority and minority amendments
8. Killing amendments with tabling motions and points of order
9. 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.

Subject Areas: Politics & government [JP]