Steering the Senate

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. Steven S. Smith is Professor in the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University and Kate M. Gregg Emeritus Professor at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the 2023 winner of the Barbara Sinclair Lecture Award for his achievement in promoting the understanding of the US Congress and legislative politics. He is the author of Politics over Process: Partisan Conflict and Post-Passage Processes in the US Congress (2017), The American Congress (10 editions, 1995–2019), The Senate Syndrome: The Evolution of Parliamentary Warfare in the Modern US Senate (2014), Party Influence in Congress (2007), The Politics of Institutional Choice: The Formation of the Russian State Duma (2001), and more.

• 1. Individual goals and senate party organization; 2. Presiding officer, 1789–1914; 3. Caucus, 1789–1879; 4. Steering Committee, 1856–1913; 5. Arthur Pue Gorman, the Federal Elections Bill, and the invention of Elected Floor Leadership, 1890–1913; 6. Leaders and whips, 1913–1924; 7. Divergent paths and the consolidation of leadership structures, 1923–1944; 8. Party infrastructure, 1945–1980; 9. Polarization, competition, and centralization, 1981–2024; 10. Conclusion; Appendix.

'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