Building the Bloc
Intraparty Organization in the US Congress

When will dissident members of a Congress successfully seize power from their party leaders and fellow lawmakers? When they organize.

Ruth Bloch Rubin (Author)

9781316510421, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 11 August 2017

332 pages
23.5 x 23.5 x 2.5 cm, 0.64 kg

'This deeply researched book offers a fresh perspective on congressional organization and policymaking. Ruth Bloch Rubin traces the development of the progressive Republicans of the early twentieth century, the Southern Bloc of the mid twentieth century, the Democratic Study Group of the 1960s and 1970s, as well as the Blue Dogs, the Republican Study Committee, and the Freedom Caucus of recent decades. In the process, she illustrates how intraparty organization empowers pivotal actors who drive policymaking and Congress's institutional development.' Frances E. Lee, University of Maryland

Traversing more than a century of American history, this book advances a new theory of congressional organization to explain why and how party dissidents rely on institutions of their own making, arguing that these intraparty organizations can radically shift the balance of power between party leaders and rank-and-file members. Intraparty organizations empower legislators of varying ideological stripes to achieve collective and coordinated action by providing selective incentives to cooperative members, transforming public-good policies into excludable accomplishments, and helping members to institute rules and procedures to promote group decision making. Drawing on rich archival evidence and interview data, the book details the challenges dissident lawmakers encounter when they face off against party leaders and their efforts to organize in response. Eight case studies complicate our understanding of landmark fights over rules reform, early twentieth-century economic struggles, mid-century battles over civil rights legislation, and contemporary debates over national health care and fiscal policy.

1. Intraparty organization in the US Congress
2. Procedural revolt and the House insurgency, 1908–10
3. The Senate insurgency's quest for economic reform, 1909–10
4. Securing southern solidarity, 1937–56
5. The decline of southern influence, 1957–64
6. Making the moderates matter, 1994–2010
7. Coordinating liberal hardliners, 1957–94
8. Organizing conservative revolutionaries, 1970–2015
9. Rethinking the mischiefs of faction.

Subject Areas: Constitution: government & the state [JPHC]