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Sizing Up the Senate: The Unequal Consequences of Equal Representation

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Sizing Up the Senate is a book every doubter of the US government should read. It is well researched, well written, and pathbreaking in what it analyzes.

The authors analyze the different relationships big state and small state Senators have with their constituents, the differences in legislative strategies used, the different committees big state and small state Senators tend to join, and finally the differences in federal funding.

For constituents, small state Senators rely on old-fashioned hand-shake campaigning and constituent service, big state Senators rely on TV media. Small state Senators do most of their fundraising in the year before the election, big state Senators do fundraising continuously. Small state Senators also tend to win reelection by wider margins, and small state residents have much higher opinions of their Senators than big state residents do of theirs.

For strategies, if a vote in the Senate is going to be close, small state Senators are much more likely than big state Senators to hold out in hope of getting something for their state. Lee and Oppenheimer analyze over thirty votes that were delayed because of hold outs and find that small state Senators were the ones holding out over half the time. If a big state and small state Senator are both holding out, the small state Senator is more likely to be the one rewarded, since a reward to his state is less expensive than a reward to a large state Senator.


Small state Senators basically function like Congressmen. Instead of working on big issues of national concern, they tend to work on getting projects for their districts (or, "states"). Small state Sens have an incentive to do pork barrel work because getting a bridge built in, say, Montana, is going to have a proportionally bigger political payoff than getting a bridge built in Florida.

For committee assignments, small state Sens try to get on committees that deliver pork. Since 1947, the Senators on Appropriations have come from states with an average of 5.29 Congressmen, since 1947, the Senators on Energy and Public Works have come from states with 3.29 Congressmen, the Senators on Veterans Affairs come from states with an average of 4.61 Congressmen, and the Senators on Commerce have come from states with an average of 6.18 Congressmen. By contrast, the Senators on Foreign Relations, Small Business, Labor, and Banking, come from states with an average of 7.63 to 8.89 Congressmen.

Finally, Oppenheimer and Lee show that small states get a much bigger share of the federal budget pie than larger states. They demonstrate that California is shortchanged by billions of dollars every year.

Lee and Oppenheimer show how the checks that the Framers of the Constitution wanted on the Senate have never functioned. They also show how the two-Senator rule was just the product of a compromise, and not any theory about government (in fact, Madison, Hamilton, Wilson, and Franklin all opposed equality).

Sizing Up the Senate The Unequal Consequences of EQUAL REPRESENTATION

Frances E. Lee and Bruce L. Oppenhiemer

First, my background is History in terms of academics, and Army in terms of experience. Yet, for my own reasons, I was compelled to read this book. The first thing to note is that the intended audience is other academics. This is a scholarly work intended for scholars, not something to read while waiting to fall asleep. As such, it uses the awkward tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them structure that I so disliked in collage. Technical terms and jargon are not explained for the lay public, and given the difference between the dictionary definitions and official use of terms in my profession, I hesitate to assume the obvious meanings in some places. Despite this, the document has obvious use to political handlers and lobbyists who deal with the Senate. I wasn't always sure the logic followed, but it must be admitted I'm more useful if you need to deal with a Soviet tank regiment than a quorum call.

I was amused and annoyed by the common use of the feminine pronoun for generic Senators. My academic background is in History, where Truth is more important (or should be) than what is desired, and my military background provides me with a bias towards accuracy that caused me to tweak on each time her or she was used for an overwhelmingly male class. I make no claims as to the desirability of this fact, just that I was concerned by the contrary use of pronouns. The use of punctuation is more modern than I was taught, lo these many years ago, but the use of grammar and format was more archaic than I was taught as well.

Multiple sources were used for the data, including election results, FEC records, Federal outlays, archives, interviews and statistical analysis. Indeed, the latter was quite some surprise to me. I began to be impressed by page 10, with the examination of the smallest theoretical percentage of the population needed to elect a Senate majority.

More than once I'd find myself pondering something, or questioning how something else would interact, and find the answer in the next paragraph. On the other hand, I was astonishingly unimpressed with the admittedly odd statistics on diversity. These are not the fault of the authors, and given the use of statistics and other maths as often as possible I understand the desire for inclusion, but I remain unconvinced this is especially amenable to mathematical analysis. I question the originating theorist's choice of what to measure to produce diversity.

I was amused with the great concern to limit error in some places, next to places where (quite small) potential errors were present. Nothing that I can construe as significant, but I'd have said that of some other places where the authors saw fit to mention possible error. For instance, an examination of Democratic vs Republican Senators appears to roll up the occasional independent into the Republicans. Another place I was wondering if the phrase should have been "we have no reason to think... ," rather than "there is no reason to think... ." A couple of times the sample selected was not sufficiently explained to answer all of my questions. The careful use of qualifying statements was common enough to lead me to question the times they were not used.

Chapter 4 closes with the note that Senate apportionment works in a counter-majoritarian way against the party that would otherwise have more power most of the time. As the Senate was originally to protect the people from their own excesses, and weaken the power of the majority, I can only offer the following sage bit of military lore: Luck counts.

Chapter 5 closes with "the riskiest of political science endeavors-a prediction." I could pretend sympathy, since my average conversation with my commander goes something like : "Graves, what are the bad guys going to do now?" "Well sir..."

Two other military concepts that I'd like to see brought into the study are span of control, which deals with how many subordinates or alternately, problems, a leader can deal with simultaneously. The other is an old military intelligence truism; Perception is more important than reality. I'd like to see some examination of one or two of those fields in the book in light of the difference between what is, and what is perceived to be.

This is, despite the quibbles above, an impressive book, that may well deserve to be called required reading in the field. I read it during breaks in a command post exercise, and I intend to go back and do an additional reading when I can limit distractions. I'd be quite pleased, in a theoretical sense, to have either of the authors in my all source intelligence cell, provided they can analyze well under a time crunch. Yet I have reason to believe at least one of them would not be amenable to military service.

I'll simply close by saying that only the aiming of the book at a narrow audience keeps me from saying that anyone with an interest in the Federal Government should read this work post haste.