The Less Responsive Chamber?
Politics and Development in the Early US Senate
A valuable examination of how the U.S. Senate’s responsiveness has evolved
Description
Who did members of the early US Senate represent? Many scholarly and popular political accounts of the Antebellum era assume that senators were exclusively representatives of the state governments because pre-reform senators were chosen by state legislatures. However, The Less Responsive Chamber? examines senators’ relationships with three potential targets of representation—the state governments, the state legislature, and the electorate of the state.
Through both empirical analyses and detailed case studies, the book demonstrates that senators cared about the public and did not strictly view their representational role as one of being faithful agents to state governments. While senators’ floor speeches, circulars, and correspondences frequently referenced the state electorate as their primary constituency, they were often directed to represent a variety of interests. Further, senators were aware of and responded to public opinion as well as intrastate political dynamics. By documenting how the interests of political parties, states, and the public influenced the Senate’s behavior during the early years of the United States, this book offers insight into a period whose fraught politics continue to impact our lives today.
Joel Sievert is Associate Professor of Political Science Texas Tech University.
Reviews
“The Less Responsive Chamber? makes an important contribution to our understanding of the antebellum Senate. It will be of interest to scholars and students of American politics, legislative studies, American political development, political history, and representation and electoral politics.”
- Charles J. Finocchiaro, University of Oklahoma
“Joel Sievert brings a wealth of historical data, and deep knowledge of the congressional literature, to bear on a question of renewed importance: whom did US senators represent before direct elections? The Less Responsive Chamber? makes the convincing case that senators represented the people of their states, and not just the legislatures that selected them. A vital contribution to the historical study of Congress.”
- David Bateman, Cornell University
“Many today worry that the Senate is insufficiently responsive to the popular will. In this careful study of the early Senate, Sievert provides a counterpoint: even in an era when senators were selected by state legislatures rather than directly elected by voters, they sought to be responsive to the mass public. For the optimists among us, this suggests the Senate’s representational structure may not be the obstacle to democratic government we think it is.”
- Ruth Bloch Rubin, University of Chicago