Parties and Leadership I

Committees and the Simulation

Matt Glassman, who co-wrote and co-edited Party and Procedure in the United States Congress, teaches in our Washington Program. He talks about congressional leadership, starting around 18:00:



Two layers of power in Congress:  the party system and the committee system.

"I'm an appropriator, see. That's one of the places I was forged."  -- Nancy Pelosi

Elections Have Consequences

Hill leadership

• House
• Senate

Theories of party government (Davidson 147-149) and Edmund Burke:

In all bodies, those who will lead, must also, in a considerable degree, follow. They must conform their propositions to the taste, talent, and disposition, of those whom they wish to conduct: therefore, if an assembly is viciously or feebly composed in a very great part of it, nothing but such a supreme degree of virtue as very rarely appears in the world, and for that reason cannot enter into calculation, will prevent the men of talent disseminated through it from becoming only the expert instruments of absurd projects!

Speakership Elections

Factions and Member Organizations

Note:  even majorities of the president's party may split with the administration agenda.  See Democrats on trade in 1993 and 2014.