Minority Rights, Majority Rule
Partisanship and the Development of Congress

Minority Rights, Majority Rules explains why majority parties dominate in the US House of Representatives, while minorities often dominate in the Senate.

Sarah A. Binder (Author)

9780521582391, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 13 June 1997

256 pages, 15 b/w illus. 23 tables
23.7 x 15.9 x 2.3 cm, 0.535 kg

"In an age when partisan politics and congressional gridlock are under attack, Sarah A. Binder's stufy of procedural change in the House of Representatives and the Senate is most timely. Political historians will find this succinct, never overstated study valuable. Scrupulously documented, it is based on a thorough study of congressional sources such as the Congressional Globe and the Congressional Record, as well as works in political science." Donald B. Cole, The Journal of American History

Minority Rights, Majority Rule seeks to explain a phenomenon evident to most observers of the US Congress. In the House of Representatives, majority parties rule and minorities are seldom able to influence national policy making. In the Senate, minorities quite often call the shots, empowered by the filibuster to frustrate the majority. Why did the two chambers develop such distinctive legislative styles? Conventional wisdom suggests that differences in the size and workload of the House and Senate led the two chambers to develop very different rules of procedure. Sarah Binder offers an alternative, partisan theory to explain the creation and suppression of minority rights, showing that contests between partisan coalitions have throughout congressional history altered the distribution of procedural rights. Most importantly, new majorities inherit procedural choices made in the past. This institutional dynamic has fuelled the power of partisan majorities in the House but stopped them in their tracks in the Senate.

1. The partisan basis of procedural choice
2. The evolving concepts of house and Senate minority rights
3. Procedural choice in the early congress: the case of the Previous Question
4. Allocating minority rights in the house, 1789–1990
5. Institutionalizing party in the nineteenth century house
6. Stacking the partisan decks in the twentieth century house
7. Inherited rules and procedural choice in the Senate
8. Assessing the partisan theory
Appendices
References.

Subject Areas: Political structure & processes [JPH]