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

The study examines Senate majority leadership in terms of the constituencies, both electoral and functional, of the Senate majority leader. These constituencies—state, party, Senate, and president—are found to represent constraints on the Senate majority leader as their demands often compete, and the ways in which Senate majority leaders balance them form the contours of Senate majority leadership. It might seem obvious for there to be much variance as Senate majority leaders and their constituents change over time, and, to be sure, differences in leadership styles emerge. However, what is more striking is not the change but the continuity that guides the institutional development of Senate majority leadership. The path dependence is one of constrained Senate majority leadership, not for the conventional wisdom that the majority leader operates in a supermajoritarian institution (Sinclair, 2001b), but for the broader reason that a plethora of intra-, inter-, and extra-institutional forces pull at the leader.

The scope of inquiry is comprehensive, beginning with an identification of trends in the selection of senators to become majority leader. There is no stepping-stone pathway to leadership, but there does seem to be one constant factor in leadership selection: ideological orientation. The idea that senators, before their selection, are universally “middlemen” (Truman, 1959) within their party provides a baseline for the measurement of change in their voting behavior once they become majority leader. This linkage of preleader to leader voting behavior enlarges the compass of the present study from becoming leader to being leader. In addition to looking at voting behaviors, this study enumerates many of the other tasks that are required of Senate majority leaders, noting changes in expectations from the emergence of the office to the present. It also drafts something of a job description for the position of Senate majority leader. Still, voting remains the single activity by which the leader represents, or balances, multiple constituencies. This work, then, traces the voting behavior of Senate majority leaders, analyzing by way of statistical findings how the leader represents his party constituency by roll-call voting. One key, but often overlooked, variable that this study examines is the size of a leader's majority.