Legislative Effectiveness in the United States Senate

Drawing on data from 1973-2014 (93rd-113th Congresses), we develop a new method for measuring the legislative effectiveness of members of the United States Senate that builds upon Volden and Wiseman’s analysis of legislative effectiveness in the U.S. House. We compare the construction and analysis of our Senate Legislative Effectiveness Scores (LES) to those of the U. S. House over the same 40-year time-period; and we demonstrate that many of the factors that correlated with a Representative’s legislative effectiveness hold true for U.S. Senators. We likewise demonstrate that Senators who were highly effective lawmakers in the U.S. House continue to be highly effective lawmakers in the U.S. Senate; and we illustrate how the direct impact of majorityparty status on legislative effectiveness has vacillated substantially over the past 40 years in the United States Senate. Working Paper: 4-2017 Research Concentration: Legislative Politics and Policymaking  Prepared for presentation at the 2017 Annual Meetings of the Midwest Political Science Association. The authors thank the Madison Initiative of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation for ongoing financial support of the Legislative Effectiveness Project. The authors also thank Robert Krebs and Joseph Nedland for outstanding research assistance, and Michael Xu and Nicholas Zeppos, Jr., for their programming efforts and expertise. This manuscript has benefited from helpful conversations and correspondence with Richard Arenberg, Jean Bordewich, Daniel Diller, Linda Gustitus, Bruce Oppenheimer, and Marianne Upton. Please direct all questions and comments to Alan Wiseman ([email protected]). Volden: Professor of Public Policy and Politics, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, University of Virginia. Wiseman: Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor of Political Economy, Professor of Political Science and Law, Vanderbilt University. 1 Legislative Effectiveness in the United States Senate Craig Volden Alan E. Wiseman March 2017 Abstract Drawing on data from 1973-2014 (93rd-113th Congresses), we develop a new method for measuring the legislative effectiveness of members of the United States Senate that builds upon Volden and Wiseman’s analysis of legislative effectiveness in the U.S. House. We compare the construction and analysis of our Senate Legislative Effectiveness Scores (LES) to those of the U. S. House over the same 40-year time-period; and we demonstrate that many of the factors that correlated with a Representative’s legislative effectiveness hold true for U.S. Senators. We likewise demonstrate that Senators who were highly effective lawmakers in the U.S. House continue to be highly effective lawmakers in the U.S. Senate; and we illustrate how the direct impact of majorityparty status on legislative effectiveness has vacillated substantially over the past 40 years in the United States Senate.Drawing on data from 1973-2014 (93rd-113th Congresses), we develop a new method for measuring the legislative effectiveness of members of the United States Senate that builds upon Volden and Wiseman’s analysis of legislative effectiveness in the U.S. House. We compare the construction and analysis of our Senate Legislative Effectiveness Scores (LES) to those of the U. S. House over the same 40-year time-period; and we demonstrate that many of the factors that correlated with a Representative’s legislative effectiveness hold true for U.S. Senators. We likewise demonstrate that Senators who were highly effective lawmakers in the U.S. House continue to be highly effective lawmakers in the U.S. Senate; and we illustrate how the direct impact of majorityparty status on legislative effectiveness has vacillated substantially over the past 40 years in the United States Senate.  Prepared for presentation at the 2017 Annual Meetings of the Midwest Political Science Association. The authors thank the Madison Initiative of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation for ongoing financial support of the Legislative Effectiveness Project. The authors also thank Robert Krebs and Joseph Nedland for outstanding research assistance, and Michael Xu and Nicholas Zeppos, Jr., for their programming efforts and expertise. This manuscript has benefited from helpful conversations and correspondence with Richard Arenberg, Jean Bordewich, Daniel Diller, Linda Gustitus, Bruce Oppenheimer, and Marianne Upton. Please direct all questions and comments to Alan Wiseman ([email protected]). Volden: Professor of Public Policy and Politics, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, University of Virginia. Wiseman: Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor of Political Economy, Professor of Political Science and Law, Vanderbilt University. 2 The U.S. Senate often has been referred to as the “world’s greatest deliberative body,” and it has a long and storied history of tradition and extensive legislative debates.1 While the formal lawmaking powers of the House and Senate are identical, the Senate and individual Senators have long been viewed as being more influential than the House and individual Representatives. As noted by Bryce (1893, 112) in his observations of the American Republic: It may be doubted whether the Senate has excelled the House in attachment to the public good; but it has certainly shown greater capacity for managing the public business, and has won the respect, if not the affections, of the people by its sustained intellectual power. Several institutional features of the Senate might have contributed to Bryce’s perceptions and comparisons across the chambers. First, and most obvious, Senators’ longer legislative terms allow them to cultivate substantial policy portfolios that affect an entire state (if not entire regions of the nation), rather than focusing primarily on an individual congressional district. Second, the Senate has the formal ability to impose checks on the executive branch through its advice and consent power over presidential appointments to the executive and judicial branches. Third, the Senate has a constitutionally mandated role in foreign affairs, given that all international treaties are (technically) subject to Senate ratification. Finally, any individual Senator has various “prerogatives” (i.e., Sinclair 2017, 24) that she can, in principle, exercise during the lawmaking process to gum up the work, potentially leading to legislative gridlock. Given the prominent role that the Senate and its members play in the lawmaking and governing process in the United States, it is not surprising that at numerous points in time, and through much of the 20th Century, in particular, the Senate has served as the springboard for many presidential aspirants. In the 2016 presidential election, for example, four of the five Democratic candidates who declared their candidacy were current or former members of the 1 MacNeil and Baker (2013) provide a recent treatment of the history of the Senate. 3 Senate; and five of the seventeen Republican candidates had served in the Senate. Even Senators who have not sought the highest office in the land have often leveraged their privileged positions in the American political system, as members of the Senate, to draw attention to their legislative agendas and accomplishments. The extent to which all Senators, including those who are vocal about their lawmaking achievements, are truly accomplished lawmakers is open for debate. The distinction between Senators who are “show horses” in contrast to “work horses” was a sentiment that was commonly invoked by Senators Carl Hayden (D-AZ) and Lyndon Johnson (D-TX). There are clearly distinctions to be drawn between Senators who actually engage the process of lawmaking (and make an impact while doing so), and those who simply claim to be influential wielders of legislative power. While scholars and more casual observers of the Senate can quickly point to examples of Senators whom they believe to be effective lawmakers, such claims are often justified by drawing on extensive biographical materials, such as Caro’s (e.g., Caro 2002) path-breaking books on Lyndon Johnson, or illustrative cases, such as Redman’s (1973) portrayal of Warren Magnuson, in The Dance of Legislation. With the exception of Matthews’ (1960) pioneering work on the internal workings of the Senate, however, we have very little data-driven analysis that can provide us with guidance about which Senators are effective lawmakers, what makes them effective, and how they became effective.2 Such a scholarly omission is notable, particularly given that a wide range of scholars have taken advantage of various aspects of the Senate’s rules and organizational structures to explore important questions in political science. Scholars (e.g., Binder and Smith 1997, Brady and Volden 1998, Koger 2010, Krehbiel 1998, 2 Other scholars (e.g., Price 1972) have, however, produced foundational scholarship that analyzed comparative case studies of the legislative journeys of different bills in the Senate, which have allowed them to offer tentative conclusions regarding the necessary conditions for legislative success. 4 Wawro and Schickler 2006) have investigated the evolution of the filibuster to explore the consequences dilatory action and parliamentary rules on lawmaking. Others (e.g., Lee and Oppenheimer 1999) have likewise exploited the fact that each state has two Senators to explore the distributional consequences of disproportional representation. In addition, the ratification of the 17th Amendment, which mandated the direct election of Senators, has provided scholars (e.g., Bernhard and Sala 2006, Gailmard and Jenkins 2009), with a lens through which to explore the relationship between electoral mechanisms and the nature of representation. However, on the more fundamental question of who is most successful at moving her legislative agenda items forward in the Senate, and why, we have few answers. Building on Volden and Wiseman’s (2014) explorations of legislative effectiveness in the United States House of Representatives, we seek engage these questions. Are some Senators more effective lawmakers than others? If so, what explains this variation in legislative effectiveness across Senators; and what are the implications of variance in individual Senators’ lawmaking effectiveness for the ability of the chamber to collectively engage a wide range of policy problems in contemporary American politics? To answer these questions, we develop a new method for measuring the legislative effectiveness of members of the United States Senate, and construct Legislative Effectiveness Scores (LES) for every member of the U.S. Senate from 1973-2014 (93rd-113th Congresses). We compare the construction and analysis of our Senate Legislative Effectiveness Scores to those of the U. S. House over the same 40-year time-period; and we demonstrate that many of the factors that are correlated with a Representative’s legislative effectiveness also hold true for members of the U.S. Senate. Our analysis of the Senate Legislative Effectiveness Scores also reveals patterns that were not accessible in the House data. Specifically, we demonstrate that