Majority Leadership in the U.S. Senate: Balancing Constraints By ...

may be more figurative than literal, they nonetheless provide a check, if by expectation only, on his otherwise strictly partisan behavior.

To Fill a Void

The Senate is understudied compared to the House, particularly on the topic of leadership; and what is known about Senate leadership derives largely from House studies, much of which is anecdotal and erratic. The goal of this research is to take a step toward filling that void in understanding. In his article on Democratic party leadership in the Senate, Huitt wrote:

While scholars have rendered the point moot with regard to the House, it remains applicable to the Senate. On the way to ameliorating Huitt's lament, this study offers general trend reporting and descriptive statistics combined with the leaders’ own words to present an introductory and broad portrait of becoming and being Senate majority leader. The result is an appreciation for the unending search for balance among constituencies and the limited discretion available to one dependent on multiple constituencies.

To Use a Multimethod Approach

This topic necessitates a multimethod approach. Neither “hard” nor “soft” data alone are adequate to describe Senate leadership. For that reason, perhaps, the principles and practices of leadership in the Senate have eluded researchers. As emphasized earlier, the Senate is a distinctive legislative body. Its elaborate, formal, supermajoritarian rules governing a chamber of 100 individuals have created an atmosphere that is a “club” for insiders (Matthews, 1960) and a “citadel” for those outside (White, 1957). As such, most of the politics in the Senate historically transpires