Abstract
The United States Senate is marching, Senate style, toward majority rule. Chamber rules have long required super, rather than simple, majorities to end debate on major and minor matters alike. But occasionally over its history – and several times over the past decade – the Senate has pared back procedural protections afforded to senators, making it easier for cohesive majorities to secure their policy goals. Both parties have pursued such changes – sometimes imposed by simple majority, other times by a bipartisan coalition. Why has the pace of change accelerated, and with what consequences for the Senate? In this article, I connect rising partisanship and electoral competition to the weakening of partisan commitments to Senate supermajority rule. No one can predict with any certainty whether the Senate will yet abolish the so-called “legislative filibuster.” But pressures continue to mount towards that end.
About the author
Sarah Binder is a professor of political science at George Washington University and a senior fellow in Governance Studies at The Brookings Institution, specializing in Congress and legislative politics. She is an associate editor of The Washington Post Monkey Cage blog, a former co-editor of Legislative Studies Quarterly, and GW’s Faculty Senate parliamentarian. She is the author or co-author of five books, including most recently with Mark Spindel, The Myth of Independence: How Congress Governs the Federal Reserve (Princeton University Press 2017). Binder received her Ph.D. in political science from the University of Minnesota in 1995 and B.A. from Yale University in 1986. She joined Brookings in 1995 and George Washington University in 1999. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2015.
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