Too Weak to Govern
Majority Party Power and Appropriations in the US Senate

In Too Weak to Govern, Peter Hanson demonstrates the majority party's important and underestimated ability to control the unruly Senate floor.

Peter Hanson (Author)

9781107063150, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 24 November 2014

208 pages, 46 b/w illus. 25 tables
22.9 x 1.3 x 15.2 cm, 0.45 kg

'In short, Too Weak to Govern is a worthy contribution to our understanding of the US Senate. It not only shows that majority parties in the chamber can exercise influence in the appropriations process but also shows the conditions under which they do. Those who maintain that Senate parties and their leaders are without power or, conversely, that they are effectively the same as their counterparts in the House will have to reckon with Hanson's fine tome.' Matthew N. Green, Perspectives on Politics

Too Weak to Govern investigates the power of the majority party in the United States Senate through a study of the appropriations process over a period of nearly four decades. It uses quantitative analysis, case studies, and interviews with policy makers to show that the majority party is more likely to abandon routine procedures for passing spending bills in favor of creating massive 'omnibus' spending bills when it is small, divided, and ideologically distant from the minority. This book demonstrates that the majority party's ability to influence legislative outcomes is greater than previously understood but that it operates under important constraints. However, the majority generally cannot use its power to push its preferred policies through to approval. Overall, the weakness of the Senate majority party is a major reason for the breakdown of the congressional appropriations process over the past forty years.

List of figures
List of tables
Preface
Acknowledgments
1. The limited-influence theory of the Senate
2. Testing expectations
3. The first wave (1979–87)
4. Back to the regular order
5. The second wave (1995–2012)
6. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Constitution: government & the state [JPHC], Politics & government [JP]