Agenda Setting in the U.S. Senate

Chris Den Hartog is an assistant professor of political science at California Polytechnic State University. He has published articles and chapters about the legislative process in Congress, its evolution across history, and its effects on congressional policy making. Professor Den Hartog's work includes studies of the nineteenth-century House and the contemporary House and Senate. Nathan W. Monroe is an assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Merced. His work has appeared in journals such as the Journal of Politics, Legislative Studies Quarterly, Political Research Quarterly, Public Choice and State Politics and Policy Quarterly. Professor Monroe previously held faculty positions at Michigan State University and the University of the Pacific.

• Preface; Part I: 1. Costly consideration and the majority's advantage; 2. The textbook senate and partisan policy influence; 3. The costly consideration agenda-setting theory; Part II. Consideration Costs in the Senate: 4. Committees and senate agenda setting; 5. Scheduling bills in the Senate; 6. Effects of filibusters; 7. Disposition of majority and minority amendments; 8. Killing amendments with tabling motions and points of order; 9. Effects of amendments; Part III. Testing the Costly-Consideration Theory: 10. Testing our model; 11. Implications of costly consideration; Appendix A: relaxing the model's assumptions; Appendix B: last actions and coding amendment disposition.

'Agenda Setting in the U.S. Senate is a major contribution to scholarship about the chamber and about legislative leadership in general. In contrast to the traditional portrayal of Senate party leaders as relatively weak, Den Hartog and Monroe provide a compelling conceptual rationale and ample empirical evidence for consequential leadership within the chamber. Their masterful book belongs on the shelf of any serious student of congressional politics.' C. Lawrence Evans, College of William and Mary