What the Filibuster Tells Us About the Senate
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Eric Schickler
We argue that even as the Senate filibuster poses serious governance challenges in today’s Congress, it persists because most senators prefer to maintain the minority’s right to obstruct. We consider what this rank-and-file support for the filibuster tells us about the nature of individual senators’ preferences and about the Senate as an institution. We believe that continued support for the filibuster underscores the importance of personal power and publicity goals, the ability of rules to provide “political cover” for legislators, and the role of shared understandings about the appropriate use of rules and about the Senate’s place in the political system. Where nineteenth-century senators propagated a set of beliefs that limited the legitimate use of obstruction, today’s senators have developed an alternative set of beliefs that bolsters the institutional role of the filibuster. Under these circumstances, reform will likely require substantial pressure from outside the institution rather than emerging from within the Senate.
©2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction
- Governing through the Senate
- Article
- On Being Second: The U. S. Senate in the Separated System
- Through the Looking Glass, Darkly: What has Become of the Senate?
- Making Laws and Making Points: Senate Governance in an Era of Uncertain Majorities
- Polarization, Obstruction, and Governing in the Senate
- Legislative Coalitions, Polarization, and the U.S. Senate
- Hanging With the Filibuster Pivot
- Senate Delegation Dynamics in an Age of Party Polarization
- The Electoral Risks of Senate Majority Leadership, or How Tom Daschle Lost and Harry Reid Won
- Obstructing Agenda-Setting: Examining Blue Slip Behavior in the Senate
- The Past and Future of the Supermajority Senate
- What the Filibuster Tells Us About the Senate
- Commentary
- Unified Budget Accounting in the United States Congress: The Persistence of Government Deficits and Debt, 1967-2010
- Review
- Review of The Speaker of the House: A Study of Leadership
- A Response to Joseph Cooper's Review of The Speaker of the House: A Study of Leadership
- Review of The Myth of Presidential Representation
- Review of American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us
Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction
- Governing through the Senate
- Article
- On Being Second: The U. S. Senate in the Separated System
- Through the Looking Glass, Darkly: What has Become of the Senate?
- Making Laws and Making Points: Senate Governance in an Era of Uncertain Majorities
- Polarization, Obstruction, and Governing in the Senate
- Legislative Coalitions, Polarization, and the U.S. Senate
- Hanging With the Filibuster Pivot
- Senate Delegation Dynamics in an Age of Party Polarization
- The Electoral Risks of Senate Majority Leadership, or How Tom Daschle Lost and Harry Reid Won
- Obstructing Agenda-Setting: Examining Blue Slip Behavior in the Senate
- The Past and Future of the Supermajority Senate
- What the Filibuster Tells Us About the Senate
- Commentary
- Unified Budget Accounting in the United States Congress: The Persistence of Government Deficits and Debt, 1967-2010
- Review
- Review of The Speaker of the House: A Study of Leadership
- A Response to Joseph Cooper's Review of The Speaker of the House: A Study of Leadership
- Review of The Myth of Presidential Representation
- Review of American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us
