The motivation for this post begins with Ezra Klein, then Jon Bernstein, then Ezra Klein again. Read those first. In the latter post, Ezra writes:
bq. Given the impact an individual senator can make, you’d think there would be a lot more competition among senators to a) build the sort of reputation that gives their ideas credibility and b) offer up enough big ideas that the legislator gets a real role in the process. Though it could also be the case that legislators are risk averse, and they don’t necessarily want to step to the center of these processes. Or maybe I’m missing other factors here. Surely some of the fine folks over at The Monkey Cage have a learned opinion on this …
My opinions about legislative politics are far from learned. But I’m willing to piggyback on the work of others, namely a 1995 article by Wendy Schiller, “Senators as Political Entrepreneurs: Using Bill Sponsorship to Shape Legislative Agendas” (gated). A four-word answer to Klein’s implicit question might be “it ain’t that easy.”
Here is Schiller:
bq. [Some researchers] describe the Senate as a place where specialization, deference to senior members and apprenticeship have all given way to broad based legislative activism. I will argue that the Senate is far more structured than current views allow.
I take that statement as relevant because Klein seems to be asking why senators are not legislative activists.
Schiller’s focus is bill sponsorship. She argues that introducing a bill entails resource costs (consultations with other members and interest groups to get intelligence); opportunity costs (sponsoring this bill will entail ignoring other issues); and political costs (opposition among constituents, groups, and other senators). These costs could be outweighed by various kinds of benefits — for public policy, for the Senator’s constituents, for his or her reputation as an expert, etc. The point is: the kind of investment necessitated by “a real role in the process,” to quote Klein, is not clearly something that all senators will find worthwhile. It may be too costly to “consistently flood the zone with compromise proposals and new policy initiatives,” as Klein writes elsewhere in his post.
Schiller then estimates a model of how many bills Senators sponsor. Senators in states with larger economies — and presumably a more diverse set of interest groups — sponsor more bills. So do those with larger staffs.
Senators’ institutional positions also matter a great deal. Bill sponsorship increases with seniority. It increases when senators are committee chairs, when they serve on more committees, and especially when they serve on the Finance Committee. However, senators on the Appropriations, Armed Services, and Foreign Relations Committees introduce fewer bills (although clearly those committee assignment provide other opportunities for Senators to be influential). All of these committee effects are more evident in bills introduced in committees on which Senators serve.
How to distill this to speak to Klein’s question? I think the answer is two-fold. First, Senators may not view entrepreneurship as an unalloyed good. Big ideas cost them capital, and they simply may not see enough reason to spend it. Perhaps this is the sort of risk-aversion that Klein has in mind. Second, even ambitious entrepreneurs may find themselves constrained by senatorial power structures involving seniority and committee positions, not to mention norms such as deference to senior colleagues.
The empirical question that now comes to my mind is this: if you in essence control for these factors by focusing on the Senators with substantial seniority, institutional power, and the like, how many of them meet Klein’s criteria for reputation and big ideas? Here’s a guess: most of them. I’ll leave it for someone with more knowledge of the institution to figure out whether that’s even close to correct.