Description: The Senate majority and minority leaders stand at the pinnacle of American national government - as important to Congress as the speaker of the House. However, the invention of Senate floor leadership has, until now, been entirely unknown. Providing a sweeping account of the emergence of party organization and leadership in the US Senate, Steering the Senate is the first-ever study to examine the development of the Senate's main governing institutions. It argues that three forces - party competition, intraparty factionalism, and entrepreneurship - have driven innovation in the Senate. The book details how the position of floor leader was invented in 1890 and then strengthened through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Drawing on the full history of the Senate, this book immediately becomes the authoritative source for understanding the institutional development of the Senate - uncovering the origins of the Senate party caucuses, steering committees, and floor leadership.
Brief description: Gerald Gamm is Professor of Political Science and of History at the University of Rochester. He is a Fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and he began the research that led to this book as a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He is a recipient of a Goergen Award for Distinguished Achievement and Artistry in Undergraduate Teaching at the University of Rochester. He is the author of The Making of New Deal Democrats: Voting Behavior and Realignment in Boston, 1920-1940 (1989) and Urban Exodus: Why the Jews Left Boston and the Catholics Stayed (1999). His recent articles have appeared in American Political Science Review, Legislative Studies Quarterly, and Studies in American Political Development.
Review Quotes: 'Put most directly, Gerald Gamm and Steve Smith have produced a tour de force book in Steering the Senate. Their research diligence, skilled analysis, theoretical grasp, and engaging presentation have yielded bountiful returns on their investment of several decades. They have uncovered new material and findings about the Senate, its parties and leadership, and their development. In doing so Gamm and Smith not only rewrite the history of the Senate, correcting much of the existing conventional wisdom and myths, but they also offer a persuasive theory for understanding when parties and leadership make major institutional changes. Not only is Steering the Senate a must read for political scientists and historians who study American political institutions and for their students, but it will also be valuable for journalists, staff, lobbyists, officeholders who frequent the Senate corridors.' Bruce Oppenheimer, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Vanderbilt University