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

1970s, the rank and file subsequently returned it en bloc as necessary to meet their legislative goals; that is, they granted to their party leaders the authority to whip votes on key issues. This is party government (American Political Science Association, 1950; Schattschneider, 1942) conditioned to important issues, or “conditional party government,” and over the years, that issue base has grown. Rohde advanced the view that membership homogeneity determines leader power, which, in turn, determines leadership style. The result is a leadership responsible to its members and one capable of party-line policymaking. This line of party cohesion is formalized as the “party cartel theory” by Gary Cox and Matthew McCubbins (1993, 2005). As parties in Congress have strengthened, indicated by an increase in intraparty cohesion, the majority party has acted like a cartel, writing the rules of the game and setting the agenda, which has given them advantages in the legislative arena. Leaders, then, are like police, meting out rewards and punishments based on party loyalty. The result is party-line lawmaking and policy, framed by admirers as pure party government and by critics as majority run amok.

That being said, and keeping in mind the distinction between a majoritarian and supermajoritarian institution, Sinclair observed that majority party leadership may be impossibly constrained with supermajoritarian rules. Sinclair (2001b) noted that leaders, in the Senate as in the House, must meet members’ demands—specifically their legislative or policy goals. But, as she so aptly described earlier (1989), the transformation of the Senate, from one characterized by mid-century institutional folkways to one known for its late-century individual-oriented practices, makes party government in the Senate hard to achieve. Rather than the almost feudal structure of the 1950s, in which committees were led by their chair-barons, the institution Sinclair wrote about is one of individuals who use public arenas, such as floor speeches and media statements, to freely voice their positions. This increased activity, she noted, has changed the nature of influence in the body. No longer are committees the primary bases of influence, but neither has that influence become concentrated within party leadership. Instead, influence is widely dispersed among individuals who seek it out, and that individualism is compounded