Minority-Party Power in the Senate and House of Representatives

Abstract

Studies of party power in the U.S. Congress have become ubiquitous in recent years, with a vast majority of such studies focusing exclusively on majority party power. On those occasions when minority party power has been considered, coverage has typically been limited to the House of Representatives. In this chapter, we focus on a key facet of minority party power – specifically, the minority’s ability to exert negative agenda control, or block legislation that a majority of its members opposes – and examine such power, first, in the Senate and, second, across the Senate and House. Consistent with conventional wisdom, we find some evidence that the Senate minority party possesses greater negative agenda control than the House minority party, especially on legislative vehicles where such control theoretically should be in evidence. However, contrary to conventional wisdom, the clearest formal source of the Senate minority’s negative agenda control – the filibuster – appears not to be a significant instrument of power across a range of legislative vehicles.