In this article, I examine the roll-call voting behaviour of U.S. Senate Majority Leaders, finding that Leaders generally locate around the ideological mean and median of their party at selection and at the beginning of their tenure but move toward the partisan extreme as their leadership progresses. Statistical analysis links this movement to size of majority; that is, as their partisan majority increases, their roll-call voting becomes more extreme. These findings, then, contribute a new interpretation of the existing literature’s ‘middleman’ theory of congressional party leadership.
Aldrich, John H. ( 1995) ‘A Model of a Legislature with Two Parties and a Committee System’, in Kenneth A. Shepsle and Barry R. Weingast (eds) Positive Theories of Congressional Institutions. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
2.
Aldrich, John H. and David W. Rohde ( 2001) ‘The Logic of Conditional Party Government: Revisiting the Electoral Connection’, in Lawrence C. Dodd and Bruce I. Oppenheimer (eds) Congress Reconsidered, 7th edn. Washington, D.C.: CQ Press .
3.
Baron, David P. and John A. Ferejohn ( 1989) ‘Bargaining in Legislatures’, American Political Science Review83: 1181-206.
4.
Binder, Sarah A. ( 2003) Stalemate: Causes and Consequences of Gridlock . Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press.
5.
Binder, Sarah A. and Steven S. Smith ( 1997) Politics or Principle?: Filibustering in the United States Senate. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press.
6.
Bowler, Shaun, David M. Farrell and Richard S. Katz (eds) ( 1999) Party Discipline and Parliamentary Government . Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press.
7.
Caro, Robert A. ( 2002) Master of the Senate. New York : Knopf.
8.
Cox, Gary W. and Mathew D. McCubbins ( 2003) ‘A Precis on Legislative Leadership’ , Working Paper.
9.
Downs, Anthony ( 1957) An Economic Theory of Democracy. New York: Harper and Brothers.
10.
Erikson, Robert S. ( 1978) ‘Constituency Opinion and Congressional Behavior: A Reexamination of the Miller-Stokes Representation Data’, American Journal of Political Science22: 511-35.
11.
Erikson, Robert S., Michael MacKuen and James A. Stimson ( 2002) The Macro Polity. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
12.
Gamm, Gerald and Steven S. Smith ( 2002a) ‘Party Leadership and the Development of the Modern Senate’, in David W. Brady and Mathew D. McCubbins (eds) Party, Process, and Political Change in Congress: New Perspectives on the History of Congress . Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.
13.
Gamm, Gerald and Steven S. Smith ( 2002b) ‘Emergence of Senate Party Leadership’ , in Bruce I. Oppenheimer (ed.) U.S. Senate Exceptionalism. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press.
14.
Hatcher, Andrea ( 2008) ‘Presidents and Senate Majority Leaders: A Path Dependent Theory of Partnership’. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association , Chicago, IL.
15.
Heberlig, Eric S., Marc J. Hetherington and Bruce A. Larson ( 2004) ‘The Continuing Polarization of Congressional Parties: The Role of Leaders and Fundraising’. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association , Chicago, IL.
16.
Hetherington, Marc J. ( 2001) ‘Resurgent Mass Partisanship: The Role of Elite Polarization’, American Political Science Review95: 619-31.
17.
King, David C. and Richard J. Zeckhauser ( 2002) ‘Punching and Counter-Punching in the U.S. Congress: Why Party Leaders tend to be Extremists’. Paper prepared for the conference on ‘Leadership 2002: Bridging the Gap between Theory and Practice’, Center for Public Leadership, 14-15 March 2002, Cambridge, MA.
18.
Krehbiel, Keith ( 1998) Pivotal Politics: A Theory of U.S. Lawmaking. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press .
19.
Lee, Frances E. ( 2008) ‘Agreeing to Disagree: Agenda Content and Senate Partisanship, 1981-2004’, Legislative Studies QuarterlyXXXIII: 199-222.
20.
Levendusky, Matthew S. and Jeremy C. Pope ( 2004) ‘Incorporating Constituency: Modeling Legislative Politics with Constituency, Party and Personal Factors’. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, IL.
21.
Loewenberg, Gerhard, Peverill Squire and D. Roderick Kiewiet (eds) (2002) Legislatures: Comparative Perspectives on Representative Assemblies. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
22.
Matthews, Donald R. ( 1960) U.S. Senators and Their World. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press .
23.
Mayhew, David R. ( 1974) Congress: The Electoral Connection. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
24.
Miller, Warren E. and Donald E. Stokes ( 1963) ‘Constituency Influence in Congress’ , American Political Science Review57: 45-56.
25.
Montgomery, Gayle B. and James W. Johnson ( 1998) One Step from the White House: The Rise and Fall of Senator William F. Knowland. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
26.
Oleszek, Walter J. ( 1991) ‘John Worth Kern: Portrait of a Floor Leader’ , in Richard A. Baker and Roger H. Davidson (eds) First Among Equals: Outstanding Senate Leaders of the Twentieth Century. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly.
27.
Patterson, Samuel C. and Anthony Mughan (eds) (1999) Senates: Bicameralism in the Contemporary World. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press.
28.
Peabody, Robert L. ( 1976) Leadership in Congress: Stability, Succession, and Change . Boston: Little, Brown .
29.
Poole, Keith and Howard Rosenthal ( 1997) Congress: A Political-Economic History of Roll Call Voting . New York: Oxford University Press .
30.
Poole, Keith and Howard Rosenthal ( 2001) ‘D-NOMINATE after 10 Years: A Comparative Update to Congress: A Political-Economic History of Roll Call Voting’ , Legislative Studies QuarterlyXXVI: 5-29.
31.
Riddick, Floyd M. ( 1988) Majority and Minority Leaders of the Senate: History and Development of the Offices of the Floor Leaders. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office.
32.
Riker, William H. ( 1962) The Theory of Political Coalitions. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
33.
Rohde, David W. ( 1991) Parties and Leaders in the Postreform House. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press .
34.
Rules of the Senate Republican Conference, 24 September 1990, Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office.
35.
Sinclair, Barbara ( 1989) The Transformation of the U.S. Senate. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
36.
Sinclair, Barbara ( 1995) Legislators, Leaders, and Lawmaking. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
37.
Sinclair, Barbara ( 2001) ‘The Senate Leadership: Passing Bills and Pursuing Partisan Advantage in a Nonmajoritarian Chamber’, in Colton C. Campbell and Nicol C. Rae (eds) The Contentious Senate: Partisanship, Ideology, and the Myth of Cool Judgment. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
38.
Sullivan, William E. ( 1975) ‘Criteria for Selecting Party Leadership in Congress: An Empirical Test’, American Politics Quarterly3: 25-44.
39.
Truman, David B. ( 1959) The Congressional Party: A Case Study. New York: Wiley.
40.
Van Der Slik, Jack R. and Samuel J. Pernacciaro ( 1979) ‘Office Ambitions and Voting Behavior in the U.S. Senate: A Longitudinal Study’, American Politics Quarterly7: 198-224.
