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

leader to being leader. Chapter 2 offers a job description for U.S. Senate majority leaders. As the first full-fledged account of what a majority leader does, it explicates legislative duties, such as scheduling votes, and institutional ones, such as diplomatic receptions and social events. These administrative and managerial tasks represent Senate constraints on Senate majority leadership.

To introduce partisan constraints, chapter 3 presents a discussion of leadership selection. The selection calculus includes factors such as prior leadership and regional balance; media acumen is also a growing requisite. A necessary but not sufficient condition to a senator's selection to majority leadership is ideological placement within his party. Comparison of the ideological placement of candidates in every contested selection of Senate majority leader indicates that successful candidates are median voters within the party caucus. This finding generates competing hypotheses for the behaviors exhibited by leaders that are explored in chapter 4. One hypothesis, based on a projection of ideological convergence, states that a majority leader, if not a middleman at selection, becomes one with leadership; the other is one of divergence, hypothesizing that a majority leader becomes more extreme with leadership. An examination of voting trends of Senate majority leaders from their first Congress, to the Congress immediately prior to selection, to all congresses during their tenure as leader allows for analysis of ideological stability or change. Findings here respond to conventional wisdom and help to overturn conclusions espoused a generation ago. Future leaders begin as median voters in their party, but drift in response to the size of their majority upon becoming leaders.

Chapter 5 presents extra-institutional constraints by the president on Senate majority leadership. The Senate majority leader bears an expectation to serve as presidential broker to the chamber. Heightened under unified government, such a relationship constrains the majority leader from policy innovation and from deviation from the presidential or party agenda. This expectation originates with the position of Senate majority leader, and its continuation evidences the path-dependent evolution of the office.