Steering the Senate
The Emergence of Party Organization and Leadership, 1789–2024

A landmark account of how party competition drove the invention of floor leadership and created the modern Senate.

Gerald Gamm (Author), Steven S. Smith (Author)

9780521883528, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 17 July 2025

496 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 3.2 cm, 0.821 kg

'Gamm and Smith bring clarity to what often have been murky historical narratives and provide a depth of detail that has not been known previously … This book should find a place on the shelf of any historian of American politics and political institutions.' Daniel S. Holt, Society for U.S. Intellectual History

The Senate majority and minority leaders stand at the pinnacle of American national government – as important to Congress as the speaker of the House. However, the invention of Senate floor leadership has, until now, been entirely unknown. Providing a sweeping account of the emergence of party organization and leadership in the US Senate, Steering the Senate is the first-ever study to examine the development of the Senate's main governing institutions. It argues that three forces – party competition, intraparty factionalism, and entrepreneurship – have driven innovation in the Senate. The book details how the position of floor leader was invented in 1890 and then strengthened through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Drawing on the full history of the Senate, this book immediately becomes the authoritative source for understanding the institutional development of the Senate – uncovering the origins of the Senate party caucuses, steering committees, and floor leadership.

1. Individual goals and senate party organization
2. Presiding officer, 1789–1914
3. Caucus, 1789–1879
4. Steering Committee, 1856–1913
5. Arthur Pue Gorman, the Federal Elections Bill, and the invention of Elected Floor Leadership, 1890–1913
6. Leaders and whips, 1913–1924
7. Divergent paths and the consolidation of leadership structures, 1923–1944
8. Party infrastructure, 1945–1980
9. Polarization, competition, and centralization, 1981–2024
10. Conclusion
Appendix.

Subject Areas: Politics & government [JP]