Agenda Setting in the U.S. Senate

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. Monroes 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 books theoretical assumption and key hypotheses, but they shed new light on virtually every major step in the Senates legislative process.

Spis treści:
Preface
Part I
1. Costly consideration and the majoritys 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 models assumptions
Appendix B, last actions and coding amendment disposition.